Arctic wildlife face numerous challenges due to the current climate crisis, leading to population declines that have detrimental impacts for traditional harvests of Arctic peoples. Circumpolar Indigenous communities are seldomly involved in population monitoring. Additionally, live capture efforts for threatened species are being phased out due to logistical and ethical constraints. This emphasizes the need for collaborative relationships with hunters and herders to create a holistic management approach that preserves traditions while successfully monitoring the well-being of Arctic wildlife. Our project takes the first steps towards this goal by creating a standardized method to measure allostatic load (the cumulative impact of stressors) in two keystone Arctic species (polar bears and reindeer). This is done by combining multiple biomarkers to create a total score for allostatic load in an individual, called an allostatic load index. Once established and validated with archived samples, this method will be adapted to be used with harvested wildlife to create strong opportunities for Indigenous participation in management and sustainable conservation goals, ensuring Indigenous involvement in the management practices that impact their food sovereignty. Our project will work with community-based monitoring efforts, including close working relationships with hunter/trapper organizations in Canada and Greenland and Sámi herders in Fennoscandia, to target research to address important questions about the safety of their food and the health of their culturally significant animals. This project is one of the first to implement the use of allostatic load indices in free-ranging wildlife, creating a modelling framework that can quantify the cumulative impact of stressors on threatened wildlife, predicting populations that are at increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Once successfully implemented in threatened Arctic wildlife, this new approach will pave the way for future wildlife management practices around the world.