A Fort Yukon tribal crew that fights fire across the country just locked in funding through 2031

The wildland firefighting crew run by a Fort Yukon tribal organization has federal funding secured through early 2031, under a pair of task orders worth $500,000 in all.

The crew belongs to the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments, the tribal consortium that serves the Yukon Flats — the same organization that provides health care, natural-resources work and education across the region. Its firefighting crew, roughly 20 strong, draws its members from Fort Yukon, Venetie and Arctic Village, and it is part of a tradition that runs deep in Interior Alaska: for generations, Alaska Native families have made up the hand crews that fight the state's summer fires.

The federal contract-crew program was built in part to keep that tradition alive, giving village-based crews steadier work than the old system, in which emergency firefighters were hired only as needed. Contract crews can also take on work between fires, like clearing brush to reduce fire danger. They meet the same national standards as Type 2 hand crews anywhere, and they can be sent to fires far beyond Alaska — crews like this one deploy to the Lower 48 as well.

The crews help protect a fire-management area covering more than 191 million acres across northern Alaska — a swath larger than the state of Texas, much of it remote boreal forest and tundra where lightning-sparked fires can burn for months. CATG's crew is already in the field this year, having been assigned in June to a fire near Ambler in Western Alaska.

For CATG, the fire crew is also an expression of self-governance — part of a broader effort, the organization says, to put the management of the Yukon Flats' land and resources in the hands of the people who live there. The new funding runs through March 31, 2031.