Wildlife

It’s been another good year for Alaska’s wood bison herd. A recent population survey shows that the Lower Innoko and Yukon Rivers herd is healthy and growing.

The herd was started in 2015 with the transplant of 130 animals from Alberta, Canada. The bison suffered significant losses in 2018 and 2020 due to heavy snows, winter rains and late springs, but better weather over the last two years has seen a rebound with record and near-record calf production.

Department of Fish and Game wood bison biologist Tom Seaton says a Nov. 28 population survey reflects significant herd growth.

“The minimum count of bison out there was about 150, so the population grew about 45% in this last year, and about 19% of that was just from natural growth from having a good calf crop and really good survival of yearlings and adults,” he said.

Seaton says the other 26% of growth is from the introduction of 28 yearlings, again imported from Canada and barged out to the Lower Innoko River area this past summer. He says the young animals have the potential to accelerate herd growth.

“Once they get to the reproductive age classes, which is like 3 years old to twenty years old, they’ll be producing a lot of calves,” he said

The wood bison reintroduction project has been shepherded by Alaska Native groups, Fish and Game, the Bureau of Land Management and others. The goal is to reestablish the animals in Alaska, where they disappeared from the wild over a hundred years ago.

Seaton says if the Lower Innoko Yukon herd continues to grow, limited harvest could be allowed according to a directive from 30 different interest groups, which together manage the herd.

“When that three-year average growth shows enough that you can also harvest ten animals and have a similar amount of growth, then we’ll start to hunt,” he said. “And if there are good winters in the next five years, then it will probably happen in the next 5 years.”

Meanwhile, a second wood bison reintroduction project is being considered. Seaton says 10 bison at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Large Animal Research Station, another 30 at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, plus additional animals from Canada could seed a herd in the Eastern Interior.

“Some folks in the Upper Tanana have written the governor asking for wood bison there,” he said. “There’s also quite a bit of interest in the Lower Tanana. There’s some interest in the Yukon Flats.”

Seaton says planning meetings this winter will bring together interest groups to talk about a new reintroduction project.

Environmental groups are suing the federal government over next week’s federal lease sale in Cook Inlet, alleging the environmental analysis on the sale was incomplete and did not consider less harmful alternatives.

The long-anticipated federal sale will put up for bid nearly one million acres and was previously canceled, due to lack of industry interest. This time, it’s required in federal law, part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Sue Mauger is executive director of Cook Inletkeeper, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. She said the environmental review process was hurried to comply with the end-of-the-year deadline.

“Just because they were rushed to get this done, that does not allow them to skip steps,” Mauger said. “And they clearly have.”

She said the Interior Department failed to consider alternatives that could lessen the impacts of oil and gas development on wildlife — like auctioning off a smaller area of the inlet, for example. And she said the process does not take into account the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which sets the ground rules for environmental regulations

“We ultimately want no oil spills,” Mauger said. “We want minimal, if any, impacts to our whales and sea otters and fisheries.”

It’s unclear what would happen to leaseholders if a judge were to make a ruling on the case after the sale takes place.

Mauger said the plaintiffs hope oil and gas companies take the suit into account before they bid. And she said it’s important to let the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management know that it has to follow a more rigorous environmental review before it holds a sale like this one and another one in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Our hope is, first of all, that no one bids on Dec. 30,” she said. “And the second option is for BOEM to realize that they rushed through a lot of things and haven’t addressed a great many concerns, and that they go back and actually come up with a more reasonable environmental impact statement.”

The Department of the Interior declined to comment on the suit.

There’s no guarantee oil and gas companies will place bids in next week’s sale. Oil and gas company Hilcorp has been the only company to bid on federal leases in recent years. The company recently announced it was rethinking its natural gas contracts amid uncertain supply.

Currently, another lease sale is taking place in the state waters of Cook Inlet. That sale includes 2.8 million acres both on- and offshore from Wasilla to Anchor Point.

An underweight polar bear cub roaming alone near oil drilling facilities at Prudhoe Bay last month has been taken to the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage.

The bear was first spotted around Thanksgiving eating foxes and, after a few days, observers confirmed that it was orphaned, according to David Gustine, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s polar bear program lead.

Fish and Wildlife sent a team of polar bear biologists to Prudhoe Bay to check on the cub.

“The team, in consultation with the Alaska Zoo veterinarian, made the difficult and rare decision that the approximately 10 to 11-month-old male bear should be removed from the wild population,” agency officials wrote in a statement Wednesday. “This decision was made because the bear was exhibiting comfort around people, raising concerns for potential human-bear conflicts.”

Gustine said the cub wouldn’t have survived on its own since it was separated from its mother so early. Cubs typically spend up to two and a half years with their mothers. The decision to capture rather than kill the polar bear cub was based in part on zoo capacity in Alaska and beyond, said Gustine.

“The bright side here is there is lots of demand for polar bears in the U.S. zoo system,” he said. “And so we have options to work with our zoo partners – obviously the Alaska Zoo here in Anchorage has space and the need, and they’re a great partner.”

To catch the cub, he said, biologists put out a tube-shaped, 10-foot-long “culvert trap.” It was then sedated and crated as cargo on an Alaska Airlines flight from Deadhorse to Anchorage.

Fish and Wildlife said the cub weighed in slightly underweight at 103 pounds.  Polar bear cubs at a similar age typically weigh in at 120 to 220 pounds. It also had small cuts on its upper lip. The cub is being treated at the zoo, and is not on public display.

“Our primary concern is for the wellbeing of the cub,” said Alaska Zoo Executive Director Patrick Lampi. “It had been observed eating a fox, (and the) lacerations on its upper lip are likely from that activity. With rabies in fox prevalent in the Prudhoe Bay area, we have special extended quarantine procedures in place for this cub.”

The cub’s ultimate fate has yet to be decided, although Fish and Wildlife said it will not be released into the wild due to its age and familiarity with humans.

“The decision to remove this bear from the wild was not made lightly,” said Gustine. “Removing a bear is not a good outcome for the individual or the wild population, but we felt it was the best course of action in this situation.”

Aside from the bear being “a little on the small side,” Gustine said everything else seemed about normal for a cub so far.

“Outside of that, you know, it was a wild animal, a wild bear, behaved I think normal given the circumstances,” he said. “Which is just what you want to see, and a good prospect for him doing well in captivity.”

The last polar bear cub removed from the wild in Alaska was Kali, a male discovered near Point Lay in 2013 by a hunter who shot its mother without realizing the sow had a cub.

After initial care at the Alaska Zoo, Kali was eventually resettled at the St. Louis Zoo and remains there today.

The Alaska Zoo on Wednesday posted a video of the Prudhoe Bay polar bear cub in a snowy enclosure playing with an empty bucket. The zoo said the bear is doing well.

“Zookeepers are caring for him, providing him with lots of enrichment and helping him to adjust to his new surroundings,” said the post.

The Alaska Zoo currently has one female polar bear, Cranbeary. Its prior polar bear residents, Ahpun and Lyutyik, died a few years ago.

Fish and Wildlife’s Division of Management Authority will decide whether  the new cub will stay at the Alaska Zoo or move elsewhere, according to Gustine.

“I think we’re pretty optimistic that the bear will remain here in Anchorage at the Alaska Zoo, but we’re not certain at this point,” he said.

Neither Fish and Wildlife Service nor Zoo staff have yet decided what to call the bear, Gustine said.

“No names. No names yet, no,” he said, laughing. “They’ll talk to the zoo about that.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service thanked the zoo for its help housing the Prudhoe Bay cub, as well as Hilcorp for initially reporting the animal and Alaska Clean Seas for logistical and field support.

A dead brown bear cub found on Kodiak Island is one of the latest signs that the current strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza behind the deaths of tens of millions of birds is continuing to circulate in wild populations, infecting a variety of species.

The cub carcass, discovered on Nov. 26 by a local deer hunter, was the world’s first documented death of a brown bear from the current strain of avian influenza, said Nate Svoboda, the Kodiak area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The cub’s virus infection, confirmed by a laboratory in the Lower 48, was announced on Wednesday by the department.

It was the second such bear death in the United States; the first U.S. bear known to have died from the infection was a black bear cub in Glacier Bay National Park, a case that followed an earlier black bear case in Canada, said Dr. Bob Gerlach, Alaska’s state veterinarian.

Expect to keep finding birds and possibly other mammals infected with this strain of influenza, warned Gerlach, who gave a presentation on Wednesday to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s Local Environmental Observer Network.

Unlike past waves, which passed quickly through bird populations before petering out in a matter of months, this strain appears to be extremely persistent, Gerlach said.

“The concern is it’s maintaining itself in the wild bird populations,” he said in the webinar. That means state and federal agencies and their partners will have to keep monitoring outbreaks and bracing for more waves of infected wild and domestic birds after migratory species arrive next spring, he said.

“What we’re anticipating is this may be here for a while,” he said.

Around the world, the virus has damaged several populations of birds, including some rare species. Among the bird populations hard hit by this avian influenza are cranes in Israel, where thousands were found dead about a year ago, and more recently, pelicans and other seabirds in Peru.

Several mammals of different species have also succumbed to the virus. In the United States, the list includes red foxes — with some cases found in Alaska — and in the Lower 48, land animals like skunks and raccoons. Some marine mammals have also died from the disease, notably harbor seals in Maine.

The brown bear cub discovered on Kodiak Island was likely dead for only two or three days, and there were no signs of damage to the body, Svoboda said. However, he said, it was emaciated, which is unusual for a bear in the fall, the time of year when bears are normally their maximum weight, having packed on fat in preparation for denning.

The infected black bears found in Glacier Bay National Park and in Forillon National Park in Canada’s Quebec province were both euthanized. They were found to be extremely ill, having trouble walking, and racked by seizures, state officials said. The Alaska black bear cub was blind and had been abandoned by its mother, they said. Necropsies revealed that both bear cubs had encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, Alaska and Canadian officials said in statements.

The black and brown bear cubs likely picked up the virus after eating infected birds, Gerlach said. There is no evidence that bears can infect other bears with the virus, he said.

And there is no evidence that humans are at much risk from this virus, Gerlach said. “This particular strain does not have a high propensity to get into and infect people,” he said in the LEO webinar.

That is good news for Alaska bird hunters, he said, though the usual advice about sanitation practices of handwashing, glove-wearing and avoidance of sick birds and animals continues to apply.

Since the disease emerged in Alaska birds last spring, about 800 samples from dead animals suspected to have infections have been processed, and there were nearly 100 cases confirmed by Lower 48 labs to have been positive, Gerlach said. The vast majority were from birds, though there were some mammal cases.

That is only a small fraction of the cases in the wild populations, Gerlach said. Officials in Alaska are limiting their shipments of samples because the Lower 48 labs doing the testing are backlogged and are placing higher priority on commercial poultry.

That has left a lot of birds untested, in Alaska and elsewhere. In the Bering Strait and Yukon-Kuskokwim regions, for example, residents have reported numerous suspected but unconfirmed cases of avian influenza among wild birds. Those included swans and various types of geese that were exhibiting strange and distressed behavior consistent with influenza infection.

Meanwhile, there are numerous wild birds that are healthy but infected with the virus – and able to spread it around, Gerlach said. He cited some recent tests by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which found a significant number of Southcentral Alaska birds were carrying the virus but unaffected by it.

“They’re still flying around and depositing their droppings everywhere,” he said.

Whatever virus is spread by those birds could linger a long time in the environment, Gerlach said, pointing to research led by U.S. Geological Survey wildlife geneticist Andy Ramey that found that avian influenza viruses can remain infectious for more than a year in Alaska’s wetlands environments.

“Unfortunately, we do know that the extreme cold up here preserves the virus very well,” he said. “So we do know it’s going to be a problem for us.”

This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.

A highly contagious form of avian influenza was found in a Kodiak brown bear cub. It’s one of only four mammals in Alaska known to have contracted the virus, and the first brown bear to be found with the disease.

A deer hunter found the cub’s carcass on Nov. 26 about half a mile from the road near the Pasagshak State Recreational Site in Kodiak and reported it to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. A necropsy later determined the cub died of a strain of avian influenza that has plagued both feral and domestic flocks across the country.

Dr. Kimberlee Beckmen, a wildlife veterinarian for the Fish and Game, says the virus doesn’t spread between mammals, but it can affect scavengers like Kodiak brown bears.

“It’s not foodborne, so they don’t get it by ingesting, but they get it by inhaling the virus,” she said.” So while they’re scavenging, they’re probably inhaling the virus and that’s how it gets into their system.”

The virus has ravaged bird populations across the nation, but especially waterfowl.

“It’s a virus that’s carried by waterfowl normally, and not every bird gets sick,” said Beckmen. “But certain species are more susceptible — and we’ve been seeing this outbreak mainly hit birds like eagles and ravens, and other birds that scavenge on dead birds.”

The virus hasn’t been widespread in mammals, and Beckmen said it’s not much of a threat to humans.

“In the world there’s only been three people that have had the virus, and the one in the U.S. wasn’t even sick from it,” she said.

While there have been no cases of domestic pets such as cats or dogs infected with the virus, Beckmen warns they could be at risk while swimming or while retrieving hunted game.

“The risks that I perceive for dogs would mainly be for retrievers if they’re used to retrieve waterfowl, or if they’re taken out and swum in a lake or a pond that’s highly contaminated with waterfowl droppings,” she said.

Nate Svoboda is Fish and Game’s Kodiak area wildlife biologist. He says wetland areas near rivers and streams are most likely where waterfowl and other animals can get infected.

“Anywhere where waterfowl congregate would be an area that is probably more likely to experience the sort of outbreak or have birds that might have died from this,” said Svoboda.

The biologist said some of the most reliable signs of infection would be an animal stumbling around or walking in circles.

“For example, the cub that was found in the Southeast that also suffered from bird flu, the people who reported it said it appeared drunk,” he said.

Other signs of infection are dead animals with no obvious cause of death such as predation. Svoboda said the best thing the public can do is to keep an eye out and report suspicious animal behavior and deaths to Fish and Game.

“If animals start dying for an unknown reason, let us know you know, even if it’s domestic poultry, that comes up dead, you know, that would be valuable for us to know and potentially test them for the virus,” he said.

A muskox attacked and killed a man near Nome on Tuesday, according to Alaska State Troopers.

Troopers spokesperson Austin McDaniel said Curtis Worland was trying to haze a group of muskox away from his dog kennel at home when one of the muskox attacked him. He was declared dead at the scene.

Worland had worked in Nome as a court services officer since 2009.

“Curtis Worland was a dedicated member of the Alaska Department of Public Safety,” McDaniel said. “He served the state well as a court services officer, and he will certainly be missed.”

McDaniel said a 911 dispatcher told troopers about the fatal attack. Alaska Wildlife Troopers and Alaska Department of Fish and Game will investigate. McDaniel said they may decide to kill the muskox if it’s deemed a public safety threat.

For people, fatal muskox encounters are rare. But news outlets have documented the animals attacking and killing dogs in rural Alaska.