PURPOSE:
In collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society introduces the Tribal Mapping Analytics Project to engage tribes in improving and expanding technical assistance in collecting, managing, and analyzing animal movement data. The project secured a tribal representative on the US. Geological Survey Corridor Mapping Team. The Corridor Mapping Team was established in 2018 in response to the Department of Interior Secretary Order 3362. The goal of this collaboration is to provide technical assistance to tribes in mapping corridors for elk, mule deer, and pronghorn. Maps that help identify migration routes, stopovers, potential threats to animal movement, and direct conservation actions. With the objective of ensuring tribes are actively engaged in received support to map tribal ungulate migration corridors, equitably. The project will support workshops and trainings sessions to assist tribes in analyzing movement data. The NAFWS Tribal Mapping Analyst is available to support tribes in processing ungulate movement data, collecting movement data, building programming, and data management systems.
In partnership with United Tribes Technical College (UTTC) the capacity of the project has grown to be able to store tribal data on protected tribal servers for processing. This partnership supports the ability for NAFWS to support tribal data analysis and ensure tribal data sovereignty. UTTC is an educational institution in Bismarck, North Dakota, that is operated by five Tribal Nations in North and South Dakota including: Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold, the Spirit Lake Tribe, the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. UTTC has served over ten thousand students from more than 75 federally recognized Indian Tribes across the nation. UTTC is a 1994 Tribal Land-Grant institution, therefore USGS and UTTC hold mutual interests in a number of program areas related to agricultural and environmental science.
