Wildlife on the move: what Skagway and Nome residents see changing in Alaska

Three wet muskoxen in Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. NPS.

When the weather and the landscape change, animals follow their food, or starve if it disappears. That is how the National Park Service (NPS) opens its wildlife article in the series Observing Change in Alaska's National Parks, which gathers what residents of Skagway and Nome have seen near Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park and Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. Shifting habitat and animal die-offs, the article says, are a significant effect of climate change. They mean fewer game animals such as moose and caribou for people who depend on them, and they ripple through an ecosystem from birds to fish to insects to plants, where losing one species can mean losing another that relies on it.

The residents' accounts below are paraphrased from the NPS article.

Seabirds that starved

Murre carcasses washed up at the high tide mark. USGS / Tony DeGange.

In 2016 a large number of dead birds washed ashore at Skagway, and the town was deeply worried. Joanne Beierly recalled collecting 40 dead common murres from the beach in one January, and said the birds that came ashore were only part of the toll. They had starved: the small fish the murres eat had not been feeding on the right things and could not build enough fat. Beierly linked this to warmer water from climate change. Elaine Furbish added that the fish the murres depend on may now be going deeper than the birds can dive.

New arrivals

Changing weather can bring species to a place where they could not survive before, and some people consider them invasive because they can keep spreading and out-compete native species. In Skagway, observers noted that Eurasian collared doves, which they call ring-necked doves, have taken over backyard feeders and pushed out smaller natives such as chickadees. They also see more crows and fewer warblers, while rusty blackbirds and red-winged blackbirds have started to come through, which birders may welcome.

A North American beaver. NPS.

Beavers are among the biggest arrivals in the Arctic. Since the 1980s, Skagway residents have seen more of them, and their dams have increased flooding and damaged the lower Chilkoot Trail. Nome residents are also concerned. Warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons mean more willows and other shrubs, which beavers eat and build with, and more food means more beavers. Charlie Lean described dams creating wintering ponds for coho salmon while blocking other fish from moving upstream to spawn, so those species decline. At Serpentine Hot Springs in Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Ken Adkisson said the dams change the stream's flow, raising the risk of erosion and flooding and threatening buildings. In fall 2022 a beaver deterrent was built there.

Building a beaver deterrent at Serpentine Hot Springs, fall 2022. NPS.

Insects

Insects are less visible than moose or bears but just as vital. They pollinate plants, break down dead trees and plants, and, like the canary in the coal mine, their populations are often an early sign of larger environmental change. Skagway gardeners have noticed. Furbish said pest damage on trees and shrubs is changing dramatically. Lynne Cameron found black aphids on her delphiniums; they have always had aphids, but green ones, and she traced these to Florida. Dorothy Brady reported big night crawlers wrecking her yard. Emily Willis described woolly-bear caterpillars that she never saw ten years ago: first cute, then a rash on her daughter, then all over her willow and raspberries. She also finds more maggots in king bolete mushrooms, so she now picks them within a couple of days of emerging, before the flies' larvae get in.

Animals on the move

Migrating caribou running over snowy terrain. NPS / Kyle Joly.

The Arctic is changing faster in response to warming than other places on Earth. Nome residents have noticed shifts in the timing of the caribou migration and more moose moving in, which affects subsistence hunting and the wild foods people harvest.

Changes in the sea

A chum salmon jumps out of the water. USFWS.

Only Nome residents discussed marine life, perhaps because of who was interviewed or because so much Bering Sea research is based in Nome.

• Gay Sheffield said that in just ten years whales, porpoises and fish have turned up 500 miles beyond their previous northernmost records, and that the first hanasaki crab documented in U.S. waters came from Diomede Island. The species originates in South Korea and Japan and is now thriving.
• Howard Farley Sr. said that one year his boats could not find the crab they have fished for 25 or 30 years, and he blamed a blob of warm water that came up the coast. He also said his crew pulled a hundred cod from their pots when they used to get one or two, though cod fetch far less than salmon.
• Jacob Martin said fish arrive earlier than the date when subsistence fishing permits start, and that weeks of rain make fish hard to dry, so some people now cut vertical strips that dry faster.
• Charlie Lean explained the king crab fishery: through the 1980s, fresh water from Norton Sound made the sea east of Nome too fresh for king crab, so crabbers fished to the west. In the early 1990s the salinity switched, with less shorefast ice, less layering in the water and less fresh water until spring melt, and the crab expanded east.

Disease

Die-off events have been observed in both Skagway and Nome. Sheffield said that starting in 2011 an unidentified disease struck seals and was called an "unusual mortality event", and that hundreds of seabirds washed up dead on St. Lawrence Island. That turned out to be the first avian cholera documented in Alaska, and the first in seabirds. The common cause of death among seabirds has been emaciation. Vera Metcalf said her community worries about ocean acidification and harmful algal blooms, because what walruses eat from the seabed ends up affecting the food people depend on, and a healthy environment is a sign of healthy communities.

Sources

• National Park Service, Wildlife, part of the series Observing Change in Alaska's National Parks; residents' comments paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.