A most fortunate encounter

This day started with a disagreement with the editors of the new Iditarod book over whether something did or didn't happen during the 1974 race. I distinctly remember watching mushers cross the ice on two rivers near Anchorage. Others say that only happened in the first race in 1973 and in '74 there wasn't enough ice so they had to truck the dogs over two bridges to restart on the other side.

I even have a photograph of one team on the ice, but have no idea where it is so proving my point was difficult.  I had to leave the issue unresolved but I thought at least going my way and head for Anchorage.

I stopped at one of those super stores to get cash and something to eat.  While I was waiting for someone to sell me a few chicken tenders, I looked over into the seating area next to the delicatessen section. Sitting there was one of the mushers who actually crossed that ice during that 1974 race.  Disagreement resolved. Right now.

I had not seen him in at least 25 years. Dick Mackey had gone on to win the Iditarod in 1978 by the slimmest margin in history, literally by a lead dog's nose.

The next year as a race official he flew along the trail just as I was doing, gathering material for "The Last Great Race." At every stop we sat around fires or tables laden with beaver stew or on steel folding chairs in village community centers and Dick Mackey shared his knowledge with me, analyzed the progress of various mushers, assessed the quality of the trail, and the quality of different dog teams as the race moved toward Nome. I can honestly say he made my book so much better than I could have done without him. His expertise and willingness to share it meant so much to the finished product and I have been eternally grateful for his help.

And there he was sitting with his wife in the deli section of Fred Meyer on the very day I needed to confirm there was ice on the Matanuska River in 1974.

To tell the truth we talked so much I almost forgot to ask him about that. We covered how we are dealing with aging, firewood,  and views of the modern race compared with the old days. It had been a tough trail this year, but in the years Mackey ran the race they were all tough and the race did not get nearly the tactical support it gets now.  Even the trail itself was not guaranteed to be there.

"One guy this year complained it wasn't fun," he said. "you know in all my races, even running on a clear night with everything going well and stars shining or the moon or northern lights, I never thought of it as fun." he said, "satisfying, yes, but work, not fun."

The comment hit home. I have a friend who thinks everything is fun. But, everything isn't fun. I have built three houses during Alaska winters and while I found that satisfying, and I was happy about it, it was never, ever fun. I was glad to hear someone else enjoyed experience the same way I do. And as far as the tough trail this year, I knew what he was getting at, but I had to say I have not run the race so I have no standing to say what is tough and what isn't and who has it harder and who doesn't, but then I looked at him and said: "what you guys went through just doesn't compare with today."

And he said about the fun complaint, "you know three girls finished last this year and they came across the finish line with 12 or 14 dogs and all smiles. And they did it in 11 days." They found a way to have fun. In his day, Mackey ran races that took more than 20 days.

We have other shared experience too.  He is 81 now and I mentioned that I was planning for 81 by mapping out how much firewood I need to put in to get myself to that point so I can still make it to the East Pole, with a lot of the work already accomplished.

He laughed, smiled at his wife and they agreed they have about five years worth of firewood stacked right now. Made me feel like my plan is good, given that I have almost 10 years to get to 81 with five years of firewood under the house.

So, with the firewood issue settled, the state of the race thoroughly discussed and most of all the disagreement about ice on a river in 1974 resolved we said our good byes and went our separate ways again.  I felt richer for the experience.

Photo finish: Dick Mackey wins the 1978 Iditarod by 1 second.

Owl be seeing you in the polar vortex

Updated Jan. 21, 2015, April 19, 2014

OK, here goes. Wacko theory No. 8,634.

Much of the eastern United States suffered some heavy winter weather this year, largely blamed on something called the polar vortex. That is a combining of elements involving the jet stream the positioning of high pressure centers in the cold north and warmer weather far offshore to the south. In my limited knowledge I don't think it's fair of me to explain it much beyond that.  However there will be links below to places that will.

Earlier in the winter, in November and December, people began spotting snowy owls way south of their usual habitat. Normally they nest in Arctic regions and migrate south for the winter but generally stay north of 60 degrees latitude.  Anchorage, Alaska is at about 60 North. This year there were sightings throughout the midwest and as far east and south as Virginia. It struck me that these two events might have something in common.

I remember suggesting to one friend she overlay a map of the vortex onto a map owl sightings, but I never heard back. So, today I gave it a try and look what I came up with. The map on the left below is of the vortex; the one on the right is snowy owl sightings in November and December. Coincidence? Ha, I don't think so. Of course there are exceptions but it sure looks like the snowy owls congregated just where the vortex was gong to show up later.

One blast from the polar vortex on AccuWeather.

Snowy owl sighting reports on eBird.

Now, taking it a step further, could the snowy owl migration pattern have been a harbinger of the polar vortex that was about to slam the eastern United States.  Could they be the wooly bear caterpillars of the bird world?

Years ago I read an article in Sports Illustrated magazine written during the construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline. In it the author wrote of his fascination with bananas on a dining hall table on the Arctic Coast of Alaska. He noted that in nature when an animal appears far outside its normal habitat, it's an indication the herd is in trouble. And then he's looking at humans and bananas in the Arctic and wondering if our herd was in trouble.

Were the owls such a warning? Is the snowy owl in trouble for some reason? Was there a low point in their normal prey species? Were they just trying to be friendly alarmists to warn people of the coming harsh winter? What else could be going on? One would take a whole new wacky theory and I am only good for one a day. But consider this, Alaska is in the weather path for winds to bring radiation from Japan. Ponder that one for a while. Meanwhile I am sticking with the owls simply going where they were most comfortable, and willing to go so far as to guess they have some indicator that helps them anticipate what winter is going to do and they act accordingly.

The point here, though, is not the speculation about why it happened or theories about motivation. The point is simply the observation that snowy owls showed up ahead of time in the same areas where the polar vortex later brought its storms.

But we have a warning for those folks on the East Coast. We are going to be wanting our owls back, and soon.

A BIT OF AN UPDATE: Some comments have shown up, several saying the change in migration is due to a change in prey species. One said voles were down in the Arctic while another blamed a decline in the lemming population. That makes sense. That, however doesn't change the basic premise pointing out the correlation between the owl migration and the location of the polar vortex. Perhaps it's the lemmings or voles that signal the change in weather pattern. There a couple of new links to articles about the phenomenon below.

ANOTHER UPDATE: That snowy owl a commenter on here mentioned, the one who was rescued after it was hit by a bus in Washington, D.C., was scheduled to be released today (4/19) in northern Minnesota. Here's that story. There were other rescues, too, at least two, one in Cleveland and another in Portland, Oregon.

Graphic credits: Polar vortex: Accuweather.com; owl spottings: eBird.com; snowy owl photo: Wikkipedia


Another version from Alaska Dispatch News 12/10/16

It's happening again in 2015

Audubon magazine article on the snowy owl irruption

New York Times: Snowy owl a harbinger of climate change?

Snowy owl

Snowy owl migration 2013, eBird

NASA animated depiction of the winter's polar vortex

What's a polar vortex?

Bush rules: break one and pay a price

It's the Equinox at the East Pole.

Despite the freedom it affords, there's a set of rules for living in the Alaska Bush. Well, actually, there are several sets of rules. Everyone has a personal set, based on experience, advice and common sense and no two sets are exactly alike.

Probably the first rule on everyone's list, or should be is: You are on your own. If something goes wrong there is no one around to help and no way to call. Keep this in mind every time you approach a new task.

The weather is here,
I wish you were beautiful.

Down around No. 812 or so on my list is this one: At least in March you break trail with the snowmachine in the morning after the snow has set up in freezing temperatures overnight; in the afternoon when the snow is softer you break trail on snowshoes.

The one photo is the result of ignoring rule No. 812 and attempting to break trail on a heavy snowmachine in late afternoon.

There should be some kind of corollary to that rule but I can't seem to find the right words. The thing is I could have drop-kicked my little Tundra over that knob. Instead I brought this big lunker for its  power and it took a couple of hours of shoveling, a lever and fulcrum and at least two hookups with a come-along and a good 50 feet of rope before it came free. Then once it did break loose it rolled over on its side on this hill. You break a rule, you pay, sometimes double. My Tundra has never rolled over. 

Rule No. 812 violated and the payment.

Now, that mistake was made trying to pack a loop up and down the hill to bring up a bunch of firewood. Forgive me lord, but I took down a giant sort of healthy birch tree. Mind you that tree has been partially blocking my view of Mount McKinley for the past 28 years, so it has been approached with some patience and consideration. Rationalization? Once cut open it exposed the beginnings of rot in the lower trunk. That is the way of a climax forest.

Over the course of the week between digging out the snowmachine several times and lifting heavy sections of birch, some so heavy I had to split them first, my body took a pretty good beating. Another one of those rules. Stay in shape. But there's this about staying in shape. It seems no matter how hard you gain, you are still just as beaten at the end of any chore. The understanding came one day after hiking the trail. At the beginning of the first winter out there that hike had been exhausting. Still, toward the end of the season, it still wore me out. The thing was, when I started out it was taking me about three and a half hours and by the end of winter I was doing it in less than two and a half. So, using just as much energy but doing it in only about two-thirds the time. I tried to explain it to my son one time when he complained about always being tired after basketball practice. Shouldn't it get easier as you get better? he asked. And I said, no, because you are expanding the horizon.  When a sprinter breaks 10 seconds in the hundred does he quit? No, he goes for a 9:98 and then a 9:96 and will always be just as tired if he gives his all, like I told my son and so many others have said, you leave it all on the field.

So as the week went on I felt myself dealing with it much better and lasting longer and best of all, that lack of firewood mentioned after the previous week is over. I was able to split all the wood from a year-old blow-down I cut up last summer and get it stacked under the house to dry. That will be ready next winter. So now I have birch. Plus, under the porch is the remains of the 50-foot birch I cut this week drying for me to split this summer or fall and the way I use firewood out there any more, worth at least a couple of years. 

The remains of the huge birch, still to be split.

Firewood from the blow-down, drying away.

You think of things while splitting wood and one of those this time was all things considered, I should be able to keep coming out there for at least the next 10 years. That would make me 81. If over that time while I am still in good shape, I could put in 10 years worth of firewood, I might be able to stretch it out a few more years. So, now the goal is to cut one big tree over each of the next five or so years and thus take firewood out of the chore cycle for the next five or more after that. We'll just have to see how far I can extend it. Of course that means staying in shape too.

All in all spending the better part of two weeks at the East Pole was marvelous. The weather could not have been better. Clear, cold nights and warm sunny days, day after day and still going on into the future. Almost every day I spent an hour or two on the porch just soaking up rays. Only one major disaster. And this rule should be well above No. 812: I ran out of Jell-O.  This was serious. I don't know why but working hard in the cold almost demands a helping of Jell-O afterward and I thought I had enough but I ran out mid week. A friend on Facebook and who has lived on boats and in the Bush offered to order an air drop. We do have our inside humor.

Does he look regal or what?

Walter had the time of his life running free. I was a little  concerned about him tangling with a moose but there was very little sign around so I let him go. Of course he's still a puppy and took advantage of every chance to try to knock me down the hill again. The baying of  a hound in the deep woods, even if it is objecting to a passing snowmachine is still music to the ears.

It was tough to leave this morning and I found myself thinking of excuses to stay. I had no real reason to leave except maybe running out of Jell-O, but I always could have bought a few more supplies and gone right back. Once committed, though we came back. Next year it might be worth thinking about spending a month.

Now about those rules. With the snowmachine I broke two and then there was the Jell-O. That is one of the interesting parts of those rules, you keep adding to them as you blunder from one chore to another. I have always liked to say let's move on to bigger and better mistakes. As long as you don't make the big one it's all character building. But, too, I like to say I am 71 years old, this  IS my character. There is also some satisfaction in overcoming difficulties without having to call the guy, even when those difficulties are of our own making. Overcoming a shortage of Jell-O however isn't done easily

So there should at least be a corollary to that rule No. 1. It would go something like this. If you are alone and make a mistake, there is no one around to laugh at you, no one to ridicule you, in fact what happens in the woods, stays in the woods if you want it to. Of course if you choose to expose yourself on a blog that's your choice but you do so at your own risk.

So laugh all you want; I have more than a year's worth of birch firewood under the house now despite my rule-breaking and my beaten-up body and that feels good. 

Firewood and Revery

MIght be, could be, maybe, if

Flight 370: IF the plane flew northeast it COULD have landed at the East Pole. Heading out today to check.

The endless flight

Does anyone remember the lingering illness of Gen. Francisco Franco? When day after day newscasters had to reach for something to say about it as the general clung to life? 

And then, Chevy Chase about a month after Franco's death reported on the Saturday Night Live news that Gen. Francisco Franco is still seriously dead. 

Well, if they don't find this missing airplane soon, how much more can the talking heads find to speculate about? It's everywhere all day long and every damned sentence begins with "if."

The crux of it is Flight 370 is still seriously missing.

Two children of war

Whatever prompted my parents to take such a youngster to this movie, I will never know. It must have been in the late 40s or early 50s and all that I remember was it involved a group of kids living in the rubble of a city bombed out during World War II. It was probably Berlin, but could have been London or a hundred other cities that suffered the same kind of devastating bombardment. If those parents had a reason in mind for showing me this movie, the guess is it was to bring home the horrors of war to an impressionable mind. I might have said something a kid would say about wanting to go to war and be a hero. I took something quite different away from it.

I saw a group of kids in a Hollywood white-washed version of a war environment having the time of their lives, living in that rubble, scrounging for food and clothing, totally independent and indifferent to what was going on around them. And, that's all I remember though I am guessing everything turned out all right or I wouldn't have such a fond recollection.

Since then the memory of that movie has risen twice at least while reading two books, one this past week, and one several years ago. Both of them showed what really should have been taken from that movie.

In "A Long Way Gone, Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah, the author at the age of 12 in the late 1990s became immersed in a civil war in his native Sierra Leone. A group of rebels attacked his village, killed as many people as they could while the few survivors scattered into the jungle or across a river only to be killed or chased again from the next village where they settled. Beah himself managed to survive several deadly attacks with a group of friends as they made their way almost the length of their country's coastline attempting to escape the fighting and at the same time trying to locate family.

Along the way they encountered numerous difficulties, one of the most telling being chased out of villages or refused entry because the residents mistook them for the feared child solders known for heartless murders in the conflict.

The war caught up with him and he was conscripted into the loyalist army and forced to be a soldier himself, carrying the most modern of infantry weapons including the ultimate WMD as described in the movie "The Lord of War," the Kalashnikov AK-47. He became a killer himself surviving several battles with rebel soldiers and showing no mercy to the enemy, even cutting the throats of prisoners.

This is no pretty story of a clean GI Joe fighting heroically against a common obviously evil enemy. This is about a filthy war in which child soldiers who were apparently quite comfortable slitting an enemy prisoner's throat were feared by the general population. Beah didn't even know if he was with the good guys or the bad guys, just that he was a soldier and killed the enemy. Every step of his journey took him farther from his childhood and turned him into this cold killer as a child soldier.

Eventually a rescue agency was able to pull him out of the army and take him to rehabilitation which he and his friends fought bitterly, wanting only to get back to the only thing they saw themselves as anymore – soldiers.  

After about eight months he was deemed rehabilitated and in the process had discovered an uncle whom he had not known about and who took him in.  But the war followed and the rebels entered Freetown where the uncle lived, bringing the mayhem and death to the country's capital.

Firewood. Why is it always about firewood?

Mount McKinley came out for most of the first part of the week.

This is how Walter travels. There's an insulated cover on his carrier and a good
thick pad underneath him. It is just too far for him to run and I can't go slow en-
ough for him to keep up. Incidentally this kind of weather is why I love March
so much in this part of Alaska.

Made a trip to the East Pole and spent almost a week happy in the woods. I would have stayed longer but of all things I ran out of dog food and it was the one thing I could not substitute for easily or do without.  I mean by that, I am not giving Walter a prime steak unless we are starving.

This was Walter's first trip and his first encounter with deep snow. He survived both with his personality intact. 

I can tell you this, you have not lived until you tried to negotiate your way downhill on snowshoes trying to maintain control over a sled heavy with firewood. For added enjoyment picture a 70-pound puppy who decides it is time to play and launches himself at you, slamming into your chest. Down I went in a mess of birch sections, sled, rope, dog and three feet of snow with these slabs on my feet that would not let me move and a dog licking my face. It took a while to extract myself from that, collect the wood and get on down the hill.

His first deep snow didn't stop him at all. He plunged into it like
a bulldozer would and made trails all over the place.

The whole adventure was what caused the question about firewood. The last time I lived there for any length of time I put in a good deal of firewood. But since then it seems to be two- or three-day trips two or three times a year. As a result I haven't added any to the pile since about March 2005, but I have continued using it.

This trip I used up the last of the birch. I still have a fair supply of dried spruce but that burns so fast; it wouldn't have lasted me the rest of the winter if I had stayed.

This had been in the back of my mind for the past few years and last summer I cut up a huge birch that had fallen down. It was quite a way up the hill behind the cabin so I stacked it intending to bring it down with a sled in winter when moving around with a load is easier,  unless, of course, you have a playful puppy.

A whole new area to explore indoors too. And once again, no, 
I don't barbecue indoors. I keep it inside so someone won't take it 
off the porch. If I am there for a longer period, I put it out.

So, I went to haul that wood to the cabin only I couldn't find it under four feet of snow. I thought even with a lot of snow the pile would stand above the surrounding area enough so I could find it, but no deal. I must have shoveled half the hill and never found it.  I finally invented something of an avalanche probe and went back shoving it into the snow until I hit something solid. That took about four hours counting trips up and down to the cabin and other peripheral activities. For example, when I did find it, the logs were frozen together and I had to go get a maul to knock them loose.

I managed to get about a third of it down to the cabin and split some. It was still too green and didn't burn well, but I at least have a start on a new supply that will be ready by next winter. Now I plan another trip shortly to spend a few days doing just firewood to catch up.

It is sort of my security blanket. I am not a radical survivalist, but I always think if things go all to hell either in my personal life or in general, the cabin would be my refuge. A good supply of firewood should be there just in case, plus it is nice to go out there and not have to worry about keeping warm. And, of course, if you read this blog often, you know what firewood means in the big woods.

A friend, Joe May, once described his life as "… out here where a man is judged by the size of his firewood pile ..." Mine is pretty small right now.

Angels' light

A strange light fell across the woods below the cabin. Accented against a fashionable shade of gray sky and deeper grays in the woods which the light failed to illuminate, a small area fought back against the gloom. More striking than most you see in Alaska, it was one of those lighted areas that show up on some pretty dismal days and you can always spot one if you are elevated enough to see any distance at all. A black forest will suddenly yield to a bright gold meadow and then to black again, a bright red spot on an otherwise dusky tundra, the chartreuse green shining below a mountain forest that lines a beach.

This was that kind of light only brighter, perhaps because it was closer and perhaps because it reflected off snow still clinging to every branch in every tree.

Angels' light. When The Archangel in a foul mood decides to let everyone know by using the gray sky curtains masks the land to match his mood, that is the day we get. But the angels lie in wait and as soon as he turns his back or bends to sip his cappuccino or perhaps catch a quick nap, they pull back seams in the curtains and allow some light to brighten the otherwise gray landscape. Then, giggling, they run away, leaving the light to shine for those who chance to see it and, too, wait to hear the uproar when their little prank is discovered. But he knows, he always knows and there are never any repercussions.

A few random thoughts about this year's Iditarod race

Mushers and dogs are taking a beating from the trail: that's evident from the number of early scratches, and reports of injuries to mushers and equipment along the way. A couple of leading contenders have been knocked out already and others are walking wounded.

Now, a thought on preparation. At this writing Sonny Lindner is leading the way toward the halfway point. He is also one of the few mushers who still have the original number of dogs that started. I noticed watching the restart on TV he had a different sled from the normal, with the long basket of a freight sled and shields along the stanchions that connect the basket to the runners. Those stanchions are the weakest link on sleds like that and those shields might have proven to be just the ticket. Now that he's leading, well, wait, that is a bit of a misnomer. You can't really know who's leading until everyone has taken a 24-hour layover. 

Martin Buser who led into Nikolai, took his 24 there and is back on the trail. He had left Takotna only about 10 hours behind Linder who had yet to take the 24.

So, back to Sonny. Given this circumstance, I was reminded of something he told me happened in the 1985 race. That one was stopped a couple of times because weather had prevented airplanes from flying the mushers' supplies to checkpoints. The race was stopped twice so the supply train could catch up.  As Sonny told it, he and Rick Swenson had discussed how harsh that winter had been and anticipated just such delays. They sent extra supplies to the trail so they could keep going despite any weather problems. Both said they felt cheated because they had prepared for such an eventuality and could have kept going but they were forced to stop anyway, allowing others to catch up with them.

Given that, and Alaska's unpredictable weather this year, I suspect Sonny and probably others of the more experienced racers, did something along the same lines, sending extra supplies, including sled repair or replacement equipment to checkpoints, anticipating the difficulties a bad trail could cause. The fact that he is out front, still driving 16 dogs I think is testament to the kind of preparation he does before a race. It's way too soon to predict outcomes or even leaders, but too, it is no accident where Sonny is right now and still driving 16 dogs.

And, speaking of preparation: It was difficult to look at the pictures of the Fairwell burn where there was no snow and the dogs, drivers and sleds were taking a beating from bare ground. (I read one report quoting a musher as saying actually the lack of snow doesn't bother the dogs all that much for several reasons)This might have been prevented. The burn area has often been left without snow. Winds blow across it unimpeded and loose snow flies  away. Years ago when Jack Niggermeyer was race manager he would send snowmachiners over the trail as soon as there was any snow at all during the winter.  That packed the snow onto the trail and laid a base for it. When the wind blew, the snow on the trail stayed put and mushers found a more reliable surface when the race came around. I really don't know if there was snow ever on the burn this year, but if there was, the race management made a mistake by not packing it down when they could have.

And, a gripe I have always had: The Anchorage Daily News had a headline calling the trip across the burn "grueling." That word used to be employed so often you would have thought the official name of the event was "The Grueling Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race." I may not be among the elite writers of the world, but I can say honestly in three books and numerous articles I have never used the word "grueling" once (except here).

200,000 miles on a dog sled
Iditarod and Truman Capote: One degree of separation?

FYI the Farewell burn: In 1977, one of Alaska's largest ever wildfires blazed across the area consuming more than 300,000 acres of forest and leaving nothing but a wasteland of burned stumps and tangled brush.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave

A meme showed up on line recently in which a woman says she judges a man by what he looks like after walking into a spider web.  That answers a lot of questions about my life. I am sure I did the spastic ninja dance a few times myself after such an encounter. But I also schooled my nephew so maybe he learned better than I ever did.

It went this way. He spent a summer with me.  He was a nice enough kid but a little clumsy and not well educated in the common sense of things. It seemed everything we did together, he fumbled somehow. There was the day I got a fishhook through the flesh between my thumb and forefinger with a four-pound pink salmon writhing on the end of the line. Mixed in with my cursing, I managed finally to convince him to hand me the dikes so I could cut the hook and get rid of the fish at least.

Another time I borrowed a second four-wheeler and we took a trip to the East Pole. The trail as usual was severely rutted and at one point he got his machine sideways in the trail, rear wheels in one rut and front wheels in the other and unable to drive out of there. I stopped and went back and he asked me what to do.  I told him to get off the machine and then I lifted the front with one arm, turned it back onto the trail and walked away.

The rest of the trip went fine and we spent the night at the cabin. The next morning I thought I might have been a little rough on him and so I suggested he lead the way out. That seemed to pump him up a little. He appeared to be so happy about it I held off telling him the downside of going first. You see overnight spiders spin their webs between trees, some of them all the way across the trail. There are days when you tangle with one web after another if you happen to be the first one out that day, and it turned out we were the first ones out that particular day.

I can still see him twisting and flogging the air every time he ran into one, and there were a lot of them after a humid night, wiping them off his hat with a hand and soldiering on down the trail. To his credit he never complained once, suffering in silence. I had all I could do to keep from laughing, wishing only that I had a video camera.

To this day I have never admitted to him that though I did want to boost him a bit, I did it in part so I wouldn't have to battle the webs. So, Sam, if ever you wander onto this site and read this, I do apologize. I also hope you learned so that in future expeditions into the woods, you never again took the lead on the trail if you were the first ones down it in the morning.

And of course turnabout is only fair. Have to wonder if my own spider dances didn't lead to my present situation, the victim of spiders' webs and women’s' judgments.

Photos: Summer trail to the East Pole

Alaska government maintains a steady assault on wildlife

The other day news came out that Alaska officials have petitioned the federal government to have humpback whales removed from the endangered species list. This was just the latest in a series of attacks on various wildlife populations, including the state's own scientists. A quick search turned up the following state actions attempting to remove protections for wildlife in the state in order of open more areas to resource exploitation.

Here are just a few of them, beginning with the wild humans:

About three years ago Alaska biologists were removed from at least one federal science committee because the state had instructed employees representing Alaska that they were to only follow state policy, not the science involved. Rightly the federal science panel refused to seat the Alaska representatives which now leaves Alaska out of serious discussions involving wildlife management in a variety of areas that are important to the state.

Just a few days ago the Alaska Dispatch reported state Fish and Game officials wiped out an entire wolf pack in the area of the Yukon-Charlie Rivers National Preserve. This is a continuation of long-running state policy to remove wolves to protect more popular game species, despite the admonition that the Yukon-Charlie preserve was to be maintained as close to its natural environment as possible. Wolves that inhabit Denali National Park, the state's prime tourist attraction, have been killed in the name of management just outside the park perimeter.

Federal and state authorities have identified a significant population decline for Beluga whales in Cook Inlet. That population has been declared a distinct sub-group of Belugas and received some critical habitat protections. The state has continuously fought this distinction to avoid having to meet control standards on economic developments in the Inlet relative to the whales.  However a federal judge has ruled the federal government violated three statutes designed to protect the whales in order to allow oil and gas exploration in Cook Inlet. The Cook Inlet population is on the federal endangered species list. As a matter of fact, it was the beluga issue that prompted the state to silence our own biologists, forcing them to follow policy instead of science.

When the federal Interior Department proposed designating areas of Alaska's Arctic coastal plain critical habitat for polar bears, the state objected strenuously and eventually sued, complaining the designation would threaten the oil industry and the general economy. This issue becomes attached to the federal climate-change discussion which the state also continues to deny fearing additional regulation on industry. Polar bears depend on Arctic ice for hunting and survival and as the polar ice cap shrinks, they are losing critical habitat on the ice and moving ashore in greater numbers.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski has continually attacked the Environmental Protection Agency in attempts to diminish its regulatory authority.

A game preserve near Anchorage has raised a small herd of wood bison, which are much larger than the plains bison most people are familiar with. The idea has been to release them into their former habitat in western Alaska. But the state continues to hold up the release because there is no provision in the program to allow hunting which one state official warns would allow protective federal regulations that would hinder development in the areas where they are released.

A Delaware company is attempting to strip mine 32 square miles in the Chuitna River drainage on the west side of Cook Inlet south of Anchorage. In addition to the massive strip mine, the project includes destroying 11 miles of a critical salmon spawning stream. Like the potentially disastrous Pebble project which if allowed could destroy major portions of the rich Bristol Bay red salmon run, the state has remained fairly quiet about the project, which usually means quietly working to make it happen. The governor promised in his election campaign there would be no favoring one resource over another, but this comes from a former employee of Conoco Phillips, which for mineral extraction including petroleum makes him immediately suspect.  Any opposition to either project has come from groups of citizens. At least that was until recently when that darned old EPA stepped in.

Granted these are short descriptions of complicated issues and more is to be learned about each one of them, and about other wildlife issues not mentioned. What the list points out is just how dedicated Alaska's state government is to ensuring a healthy future for the wildlife under its jurisdiction. What the list shows is that the state isn't, in fact it is determined to shut down any protection for wildlife it can, to the extreme of actually suing the federal government to prevent controls. It actually did sue the federal government over the polar bear designation.

Taken individually, any one of these can escape notice over time except for those people directly concerned, but when collected in one place they make a convincing argument that the state government is doing anything it can to suppress wildlife populations in favor of monied interests.

Each issue will be decided on its own merits, but the number of issues in all of which the state took a stand against protecting wildlife leaves little doubt where state officials' priorities lie. On the weight of evidence it seems to be a designed attack on wildlife protection, partially hiding an agenda for uninhibited development which often to gain favor and mask the downside is couched in terms of that favorite come-on politicians use to gain support for any issue – "jobs." And with the threat of either losing jobs or the promise of many new jobs, those state officials get the general population to support a position that is very much the opposite of one of the reasons we all came to Alaska, notably our wildlife as part of the grand mystique of the north. Or, and this might be worse: It could be just a knee-jerk reaction to any federal attempt at any regulation at all or to any attempt to protect wildlife whatsoever.

At a time in history when wildlife needs more protection than ever, here on the last frontier we just don't give a damn about no stinking animals, unless it is our precious moose. We will kill wolves and even bears to protect those moose. Anything else is fair game, so to speak.

Alaska Legislature looking to sell wildlife to the highest bidder

Chuitna River

Pebble prospect

EPA steps in the restrict Pebble project 

Yukon-Charlie wolf slaughter

US Fish and Wildlife polar bear habitat proposal (PDF)
More and more polar bears coming ashore

Cook Inlet Beluga whales
Belugas: If a politician says the earth is flat …

Alaska wants humpback whales off the endangered species list

Federal endangered species list relative to Alaska

State endangered species list

Just a side note: Do  you think people don't plumb the Internet looking for what is said abut them? This the first post in which I mentioned Conoco Phillips. Within an hour after it was posted, there was the first hit ever from Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Coincidence? There are no coincidences.
Listing from Revolver Maps web tracker:

2

Bartlesville

Mar 1, 2014

6.67%

1

A redpoll update

Getting plenty of these guys.

Heard from my friend who lives near Denali Park yesterday – he has lots of redpolls at his feeders. There hasn't been even one at my feeders this year after last winter when hundreds showed up daily for almost three months. At this time last year I had gone through about eight 40-pound bags of black sunflower seeds. This year I am not even halfway through the second one.

The invasion of the redpolls is on (2013)

Superflights