Julie Hagelin needed a fake bird. She found one in an unexpected place. The biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is studying the mysterious olive-sided flycatcher, known for its piercing “quick, three beers!” heard above black spruce bogs throughout Alaska. The bird, which weighs as much as a dozen pennies and migrates […]
Anchorage– Alaska industry, Alaska Native groups, and state and local governments scored a significant win Friday when U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) listing of the U.S. Arctic population of bearded seals under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) was “inherently arbitrary and capricious.” The court ordered the listing […]
On top of an ice body more than two miles thick, Chris Polashenski last summer hoped to find a candy wrapper that might have fallen from Carl Benson’s pocket 60 years ago. As he repeated the Alaska glaciologist’s measurements on the Greenland ice sheet, Polashenski realized that six decades of snowfall, windstorms and glacier movement […]
Strontium is a trace element and mineral people use to make glow-in-the-dark paints and toothpaste for sensitive teeth. In research for his college degree, Sean Brennan used strontium’s unique qualities to track salmon in an Alaska river. At Brennan’s Ph.D. defense at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, advisor Matthew Wooller praised Brennan’s ambitious plan and his […]