NORTH OF COLDFOOT — Though the calendar calls it springtime, the thermometer on the truck reads minus 28 F on this sunny morning a few days past spring equinox. I am riding shotgun with Knut Kielland, an ecologist at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has invited me to […]
Mike Taras has worked for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for many years, but this is the first time he has said the words “nuisance lynx.” Taras, a wildlife education and outreach specialist, said people are seeing a lot of lynx in Alaska’s Interior. “I don’t remember people calling in telling us about […]
The evidence is in: Snowshoe hares near Wiseman eat lots of dirt. “I have thousands and thousands of photos of hares eating soil in this one little spot,” said Donna DiFolco, a biologist and cartographer with the National Park Service. DiFolco has studied hares in the eastern portion of Gates of the Arctic National Park […]
In her study of one of the farthest north lynx populations in North America this summer, Claire Montgomerie used her ears. While looking at the satellite tracker a female lynx was wearing, Montgomerie saw the animal was hanging around a hillside north of the Arctic Circle, not far from Coldfoot. The University of Alaska Fairbanks […]