Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Sep 24/99) - The Beaufort Sea Conference 2000 wrapped up Saturday in Inuvik -- with all participants giving it high marks.

Delegates were particularly pleased with two aspects of the conference -- the scale of the community and youth participation.

"You rarely find such a collection of ideas from community elders and scientific wisdom," said Bob Bell, chairman of the Fisheries Joint Management Council.

Bell said that major conclusion reached at the conference was the need to nurture this relationship and its level of co-operation.

"A number of insights arose," he said. "We have to pull up our socks on communication and getting information from our programs out to the communities -- people are not as aware of our programs as they should be."

Bell said the level of community involvement, by individuals like Sachs Harbour Mayor Peter Esau and Danny Gordon, at the conference will only helped this process.

"What I think we have done is gone some distance to providing folks like those with the ability to have influence over how resources are managed," he said.

Stretching over three-and-a-half days of workshops, presentations and discussions, the conference brought together 150 elders, college and high school students, regional representatives, scientists and managers to focus on the major issues facing the Beaufort over the coming decade. More than half the delegates came from the communities. The Joint Secretariat's Mike Muller praised the success of the youth component.

"Many people said it was the best youth presentation they'd seen," he said. "The way they related to spending half the time with adult delegates and then have the time discussing among themselves was impressive -- they were able to express themselves on a wide variety of topics ... and then feel comfortable enough to stand up and talk in front of 150 people."

Tracy Davison, 16, from Samuel Hearne school confirmed that the 20 youth delegates had experienced a produced conference.

"We learned a lot and produced a lot of recommendations," she said. "Our presentations tried to show how we're concerned about renewable resources and how we want to be involved in co-management -- I think we had some influence."

Sachs Harbour's Andy Carpenter Sr. said that while it's difficult to assess the success of a conference immediately after its conclusion, Beaufort Sea 2000 was a step in the right direction -- if that progress continues.

"It's good so long as the issues aren't put away on the shelf," he said.

Bell said participants will be preparing post-conference reports and that the presentations and youth delegation recommendations will be included in a special issue of the arctic science periodical sometime next year.