LIL GOLINE/NORMAN WELLS - When Glen Guthrie first came North, he didn't know anything about trapping.

"I'm from Vancouver. The biggest trap I ever saw was a big mouse trap," he said.

Trapper Glen Guthrie's efforts in hunter education were recognized with the Lloyd Cook Award. - Photo courtesy of Glen Guthrie

By now he's learned a thing or two about traditional hunting, and it's his job to help keep the tradition alive.

"One of the concerns from the people in all of the communities up here is that the youth aren't learning their traditional practices or traditional ways of life," he said. "And is there some way that we can fix this?"

As communications officer for the Sahtu Renewable Resources Board, Guthrie is part of a team working to ensure young people learn traditional hunting skills while in school.

Earlier this summer, the Fur Institute of Canada recognized Guthrie with the Lloyd Cook Award for his efforts to educate people about the importance of hunting and trapping.

The renewable resources board has been running trapper education programs, such as Take A Kid Trapping, with five schools in the Sahtu each fall and winter for nearly seven years. Guthrie helps develop the projects and secure funding and local Dene and Metis experts to run them, and the students receive high school credits by participating.

"It's kept a few kids in school who otherwise would have dropped out and it's brought a couple of kids back to school who did drop out because they wanted to go out on these trapping programs and they couldn't do it unless they were good students. And, they subsequently graduated from high school," Guthrie said.

"It's a totally positive thing for a lot of these kids."

Though he can now "set a 330 with the best of them," Guthrie said he had a fairly steep learning curve, which he got over with the help of local elders and trappers including Richard Popko, a previous recipient of the Fur Institute's Jim Bourque award for trapping excellence.

"They're top-notch trappers and when they tell me something I obviously listen because they're experts," Guthrie said, emphasizing that preserving culture and tradition is important.

"The ones in school right now, they're being faced with a lot of issues that previous generations haven't had to deal with. I mean, first of all they do have their land claim, they've got roles and responsibilities now that they never used to have, they're walking into that world," he said - a world in which climate change and industry concerns are at the forefront.

"But at the same time, they're missing a whole chunk of their lives. And it is their lives. It's not just something that they can do, or that they used to do, it's part of their identity."