7.23.18 // alaskan forest // AK
Tag: alaska
Alaska governor declares emergency for Indigenous languages | CBC News
Walker acknowledged the state’s role in undermining and discouraging the use of Indigenous languages generations ago.
“I know we need to celebrate where we are, but boy, if you don’t reflect on where you’ve been, it really is only part of the discussion, part of the celebration,” Walker said.
Alaska governor declares emergency for Indigenous languages | CBC News
Muskoxen,
Bering Land Bridge National Park, AlaskaWith thick, long fur that trails like a skirt, muskoxen make motherhood look easy. Called Oomingmak
in the Inupiaq Eskimo language, meaning “hairy one” or “bearded one,”
muskoxen live in complex social circles with up to 75 in a herd, which
can be seen frolicking through the Alaskan tundra.A female will give
birth to a single calf in April or May,
weighing about 20-30 pounds. The calf is able to stand and move around
hours after birth, and eats small, tender plants that are abundant and
nutritious. When danger approaches, muskoxen stick together, either
forming a line or a circle against predators. Calves will stay near their mothers or hide in the center of the circle for protection.Photo by Jason Gablask, National Park Service
Wolves Are Losing Ground to Industrial Logging in Southeast Alaska
Excerpt:
For 12,000 years, wolves have roamed Southeast Alaska’s rugged Alexander Archipelago—a 300-mile stretch of more than 1,000 islands mostly within the Tongass National Forest. Now, their old-growth forest habitat is rapidly disappearing, putting the wolves at risk. As the region’s logging policies garner controversy, a new study examines what the wolves need in order to survive.
Largely isolated from mainland wolves by water barriers and the Coast Mountains, the Alexander Archipelago wolf (Canis lupus ligoni) is widely considered to be a subspecies of gray wolf genetically distinct from other North American populations. In the 1990s and again in 2011, conservationists sought to protect the island wolves under the Endangered Species Act, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service denied these petitions—most recently, in January 2016.
Despite their decision not to list the subspecies, in their analysis, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service highlighted Prince of Wales Island as the area of greatest concern for the archipelago wolves, due primarily to impacts of logging and trapping. Bigger than the state of Delaware, Prince of Wales is the largest island in Southeast Alaska and the fourth-largest island in the U.S., after Hawaii, Kodiak Island and Puerto Rico. The island’s lowland hills are blanketed with temperate rainforests of spruce and hemlock and strewn with winding rivers and fjords.
Today, logging roads etch elaborate curlicues into the island’s topography. The extensive road system provides hunters and trappers with easy access to the wolves, which are simultaneously prized for their pelts and regarded as competitors that steal hunters’ deer. According to Roffler, 60 wolves were hunted or trapped last year, 2 illegally. The total number of wolves killed without permits is, of course, impossible to obtain. Roffler said that ADF&G estimated that 231 wolves inhabited Prince of Wales and surrounding smaller islands in the fall of 2017.
Although hunting and trapping have the potential to eradicate wolves in the short-term, habitat loss from logging poses an even greater long-term challenge for wolf survival, said Roffler, whose study of wolves on Prince of Wales was recently published in Forest Ecology and Management. Logging primarily affects wolves by reducing habitat for deer, their primary source of prey. To learn more about which pieces of the fragmented landscape the wolves tend to frequent, Roffler and her team distributed radio collars among 13 wolves in 7 packs. The radio collars transmitted wolf locations for up to two years per animal, allowing unprecedented insight into their movements.
Wolves Are Losing Ground to Industrial Logging in Southeast Alaska
Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge now has a $1bn price tag on it | Kim Heacox | The Guardian
Years ago, camping in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge, I watched a herd of caribou – 100,000 bulls, cows and their three-week-old calves – braid over the tundra, moving to a rhythm as old as the wind.
“Not many places like this left today,” said my friend Jeff, sitting next to me above an ice-fringed river.
And so Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski believes this refuge – 80 miles east of Prudhoe Bay – could generate $1bn over 10 years once it’s opened to oil leasing. She and her Republican colleagues slipped this drilling provision into the Senate Republican tax bill. Murkowski repeatedly says this development would cover just 2,000 acres, “about one ten-thousandth of ANWR”.
The acronym ANWR conveniently deletes the words “wildlife” and “refuge”, with no regard for the polar bears, Arctic fox, musk oxen and migratory ground-nesting birds that come there every summer, some species from as far away as Patagonia.
Alaska’s lieutenant governor, Byron Mallott, has said that drilling in ANWR is necessary to deal with climate change. His caddywhompus logic: we need to drill for more oil to raise money to address a problem that’s caused by humanity’s addiction to oil. Why not just say the truth? We want the money. Murkowski adds: “We have waited nearly 40 years for the right technology to come along for a footprint small enough for the environment to be respected.” They have not.
Alaskans have been trying to drill here for decades, using one crazy rationale after another. At one hearing the state’s lone congressman, Don Young, put a blue pen mark on his nose to show how small the industry footprint would be. Clever man. The development would in fact be a spider web of roads, pipelines, well pads and landing strips smack in the middle of the biological heart of the refuge. It would look less like a refuge and more like Prudhoe Bay, where thousands of spills have been reported.
Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington says the whole idea is “ludicrous”, noting that the Republican tax plan would add roughly $1.5tn to the national deficit in five years [with the richest 1% of Americans reaping half of the tax cuts]. “I am disturbed,” she says. She should be.
Christopher Lewis, a retired BP manager of exploration, has said: “I do not believe that there are any adequate, commercially viable reservoirs in the Arctic refuge.” The reality is “there are other less sensitive and less costly places to explore”.
Climate Change Has Doubled Snowfall in Alaskan Mountains
Excerpt:
New research shows that the Alaska Range receives an average of 18 feet of snow per year—that’s more than double the average of eight feet per year from 1600-1840.
The likely culprit, according to researchers from Dartmouth College, the University of Maine and the University of New Hampshire, is none other than climate change.
“We were shocked when we first saw how much snowfall has increased,” said Erich Osterberg, an assistant professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth College and principal investigator for the research. “We had to check and double-check our results to make sure of the findings. Dramatic increases in temperature and air pollution in modern times have been well established in science, but now we’re also seeing dramatic increases in regional precipitation with climate change.”
The Alaska Range, North America’s highest mountain range, is a 600-mile long chain of mountains that stretches from the Alaska-Canada border to the Alaska Peninsula. The range is best known for its largest mountain, Denali, and its namesake park, Denali National Park and Preserve.
According to the research, snowfall during the winter has jumped 117 percent since the mid-19th century in Southcentral Alaska. Summer snows increased 49 percent in the same period.
The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports on Tuesday, adds more evidence on the effect of climate change on regional precipitation. Earlier this month, an analysis published in the journal Environmental Research Letters found that human-caused warming likely intensified Hurricane Harvey’s record rains over Houston.
To study the behavior of musk oxen, a wildlife conservation scientist dresses up as a grizzly bear.
Musk oxen are not the only charismatic creatures perfectly suited to the wind-blasted, tundra of the Alaskan Arctic. Meet Joel Berger, Wildlife Conservation Society senior scientist, Colorado State University professor – as well as expert on hoofed mammals. In addition to gathering photos to track how fast musk oxen are growing, Berger conducts a seemingly hazardous test: He dresses up as a grizzly bear, approaches the herd, and gauges their reactions. Berger uses this unusual technique to find out whether the presence of more male oxen makes the herd safer from bears. Watch the video to learn more!
I know nobody Outside cares, but the State of Alaska is closing in 11 days.
If someone wanted to report on that other than panicked Alaskans, that would be great.
Every “non-essential” state employee is going to be laid off on July 1st. HR is quietly telling people to file for unemployment now, because the Dept. of Labor will be shutdown along with everyone else. No ferries. No municipal airports. No food, water, or livestock testing.
All because the state senate won’t agree to an income tax.
The older I get, the more I prefer to eat the rich.
That is unconscionable.
Wait, are they being laid off or furloughed? Lay offs because of a budget problem is unbelievably short sighted and will actually cause damage that will take the state government years to recover from…
Currently? Laid off.
We’ve never gotten this close to a state shutdown before, so nobody really knows what the fuck we’re doing. ATM, there’s not even a plan for who’s going to process the time sheets due on July 1! The House passed a budget and then gaveled out, leaving the Senate holding a budget they’ll NEVER okay.
I shit you not: MY OWN HOUSE REP WAS HANGING AROUND OUTSIDE MY WORK BUILDING IN JEANS AND A T-SHIRT JUST CHATTING PEOPLE UP THESE PEOPLE I SWEAR TO GD.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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