NEAR BALLAINE LAKE — Over the blat of engines and hum of tires on nearby Farmers Loop, Mark Spangler hears the chuckles of the animal he is studying. Male wood frogs in a one-acre pond on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks are singing a song of spring. The mating calls of several […]
Statewide) — From Alaska’s southern reaches north to Fairbanks and points beyond, word has it that bears are waking and starting to move. And that can mean only one thing: It’s time for Alaskans to assume their best “bear aware” behavior. “We had a report the other day of a grizzly out around Nordale Road,” […]
For a town of its size (4,300 people), Barrow receives more visits by scientists than anyplace in America. The northernmost community in the U.S. has hosted researchers since Army Lieutenant P. Henry Ray built a polar observatory there in 1882. This different-than-anywhere-else place with fewer people than a one-stoplight town in Texas has attracted scientists […]
Ugnerkaq – Spring Ugnerkartuq awa’i. – Spring is here. Spring is an unpredictable season in the Kodiak Archipelago. Some years, calm weather ushers in longer days and milder temperatures, but in others, winter storms pound the coast and snow falls well into April. For Alutiiqs, spring is a time of waiting as the subsistence cycle […]