Category Archives: wildlife
Ten Years of Bearcam
This week is the anniversary of the Katmai Bearcam. It went online 10 years ago as a partnership between The National Park Service and explore.org.
This access to the Brooks Falls Bears has led to the worldwide celebration of Fat Bear Week, and has certainly brought awareness to the rather independent lives of these bears of Katmai.
15,393 people went through NPS orientation at Brooks Falls in 2021. That same year, 10.9 million people tuned into the bearcam online.
Salmon Tales
Alaska has two very different salmon stories being told in 2022. In one, the Bristol Bay Fishery is booming. Last year the salmon harvest set a sockeye record in Bristol Bay, and the region has already topped that record in 2022. Over 73.7 million sockeye salmon have returned to their spawning grounds in and around Bristol Bay, with over 56 million harvested.
The Yukon River basin, however, is headed for its worst run ever. The sonar station has never recorded such a low number of Chinook salmon, and the run for the entire drainage-wide system may only hit 50,000. Not one tributary is expected to make their escapement goals. Salmon fishing for the entire drainage, which includes the rivers in and around Fairbanks, has been closed for the entire season.
The chum salmon run, which starts in late summer, is also expected to be bad. The season will start out closed for fishing, with a hope that enough chum return to open for a fall season. No one is expecting it to open.
Pine Rat
Katmai Bear Cam
The Bear Cam at Brooks Falls within Katmai National Park is back up and running. It is brought to us every year by the fine folks at explore.org
The link is here:
https://www.explore.org/livecams/explore-all-cams/brown-bear-salmon-cam-brooks-falls
You eyeballin’ me?
My welcoming committee when I arrived home the other night. Her calf was on the other side of me, blockading the trail to the cabin. Neither moose was in an accommodating mood.
Nanuqsaurus
Fossils of the previously unknown species of dinosaur were discovered in Alaska’s North Slope in 2006. A cousin of the T-Rex, the Nanuqsaurus (polar bear-lizard) was originally thought to be approximately half the size of a T-Rex, but more recent evidence points to the Arctic dino as being in the size range of the Albertosaurus.
The Nanuqsaurus roamed what is now Alaska some 70 million years ago, and new findings have evidence of the species living in what is now Denali National Park.
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