Tag archives for Alaska
Bears of the Last Frontier: Interview with Chris Morgan (Ecologist, Author, TV Host)
Posted by Jordan Carlton Schaul of University of Alaska on May 5, 2011 News Watch Contributing Editor, Jordan Schaul, interviews his colleague, Chris Morgan, co-creator of the soon-to-be-released film ‘Bears of the Last Frontier’ and author of the book by the same title.
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Three thousand square miles of Alaska’s Cook Inlet have been designated as critical habitat for the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale, NOAA’s Marine Fisheries Service announced today. “Scientists estimate there are less than 350 Cook Inlet beluga whales left in the wild. This distinct population segment was listed as endangered in October 2008,” the Fisheries…
By Jordan Schaul Bison are symbolic of the American prairie and the wooded landscape and meadows of Canada’s boreal forest. But today they are no longer part of Alaska’s landscape. As the largest terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere, they are an iconic species, and their return to Alaska would be monumental. I became involved with the wood…
Kodiak bears are a large subspecies of brown bear, found only on the Kodiak archipelago off the Alaska coast. The population of Kodiak bears is considered to be healthy relative to populations of other brown bears, so there is no need to develop a breeding program. Consequently, bears orphaned on Kodiak are often left to…
In the instant that a female Kodiak bear was shot dead on Alaska’s Kodiak Island last month, life changed irrevocably for her baby cubs. The mother had made the fatal error of wandering into a human settlement and, as normally happens when large wild carnivores come into contact with people, she paid with her life.…
Steven C. Amstrup, a former chairman of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group and a world authority on polar bears, has joined the conservation group Polar Bears International as senior scientist. A long time scientific advisor to PBI, Amstrup was previously wildlife biologist with the United States Geological Surveys’s Alaska Science Center in Anchorage. He…
More than a century after they were driven from the wild, wood bison, a close relative of plains bison and the largest mammal in North America, are set to make a comeback. If all goes according to plan, the first wood bison could be released into Alaska’s interior as early as 2012. By Jordan Schaul…
Healing Journey: On to Anvik
Posted by Ford Cochran on July 18, 2010 National Geographic grantee and contributor Jon Waterhouse, an avid paddler and Alaska Region Director of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, is leading the 2010 Healing Journey down the Koyukuk River from Coldfoot to Koyukuk, Alaska. Along the way, he’s calling from the field via satellite phone to share stories with BlogWild readers of the…
Healing Journey: Huslia on the Koyukuk
Posted by Ford Cochran on July 13, 2010 National Geographic grantee and contributor Jon Waterhouse, an avid paddler and Alaska Region Director of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, is leading the 2010 Healing Journey down the Koyukuk River from Coldfoot to Koyukuk, Alaska. Along the way, he’s calling from the field via satellite phone to share stories with BlogWild readers of the…
Healing Journey: Midnight Arctic Afternoon
Posted by Ford Cochran on July 3, 2010 National Geographic grantee and contributor Jon Waterhouse, an avid paddler and Alaska Region Director of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, is leading the 2010 Healing Journey down the Koyukuk River from Coldfoot to Koyukuk, Alaska. Along the way, he’s calling from the field via satellite phone to share stories with BlogWild readers of the…
Scorched in a ‘Frozen Wasteland’
Posted by Ford Cochran on July 1, 2010 National Geographic grantee and contributor Jon Waterhouse, an avid paddler and Alaska Region Director of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, is leading the 2010 Healing Journey down the Koyukuk River from Coldfoot to Koyukuk, Alaska. Along the way, he’s calling from the field via satellite phone to share stories with BlogWild readers of the…
Scorched in a ‘Frozen Wasteland’
Posted by Ford Cochran on July 1, 2010 National Geographic grantee and contributor Jon Waterhouse, an avid paddler and Alaska Region Director of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, is leading the 2010 Healing Journey down the Koyukuk River from Coldfoot to Koyukuk, Alaska. Along the way, he’s calling from the field via satellite phone to share stories with BlogWild readers of the…
Healing Journey: Trail of the Frozen Frogs
Posted by Ford Cochran on June 29, 2010 National Geographic grantee and contributor Jon Waterhouse, an avid paddler and Alaska Region Director of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, is leading the 2010 Healing Journey down the Koyukuk River from Coldfoot to Koyukuk, Alaska. Along the way, he’s calling from the field via satellite phone to share stories with BlogWild readers of the…
Phone Calls From the Healing Journey
Posted by Ford Cochran on June 28, 2010 National Geographic grantee and contributor Jon Waterhouse, an avid paddler and Alaska Region Director of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, is leading the 2010 Healing Journey down the Koyukuk River from Coldfoot to Koyukuk, Alaska. Along the way, he’s calling from the field via satellite phone to share stories with BlogWild readers of the…
By Ford Cochran Award-winning author Gretel Ehrlich visited National Geographic headquarters last week to discuss her new book In the Empire of Ice: Encounters in a Changing Landscape. The volume chronicles her experiences among indigenous Arctic people living on the thawing edge of climate change. I spoke with her about what she’s witnessed over many…
The coniferous forest that wraps around the subarctic latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere offers the world’s best opportunity to apply conservation as a climate change strategy, according to a report released today. The boreal forest, as it is called, must be preserved because it is holding vast amounts of carbon in and under its trees, and also because it offers…
Grant Helps Explorers Turn Garbage Into Fuel
Posted by Ford Cochran on October 16, 2009 Though public attention has focused on oil reserves beneath Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, fossil fuels such as petroleum and coal aren’t the northern state’s only energy resources. Now, two National Geographic Emerging Explorers will receive a grant to see if microscopic life forms from the Alaskan tundra could help turn garbage into fuel in…
Photo of wolverine courtesy National Parks Service A wolverine that Wildlife Conservation Society researchers have been tracking since early April has crossed into northern Colorado–the first known incidence of a wolverine in the state since 1919, the New York-based conservation charity said this week. “The wolverine, a young male labeled M56, [that] was captured near…
Biologists have found no sign of the invasive Norway rats that have decimated native bird populations for more than 200 years on Alaska’s remote Rat Island, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reports. The scientists came to this conclusion after searching intensively for rats for more than two weeks, FWS said in a statement. Rat…
Posted by Malaspina Glacier in the Gulf of Alaska (created from a Landsat satellite image and NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) —Image courtesy NASA I was stunned to hear that ice loss from glaciers in the Gulf of Alaska adds up to 84 gigatons a year, or about five times the average yearly flow of the Colorado…
Beluga whales in the Cook Inlet in Alaska have been listed as an endangered species, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced today. “In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering,” said James Balsiger, acting assistant administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. Photo courtesy NOAA
