Wildlife

The endangered population continues to slip and calf numbers are few, but no single factor has been identified as the cause.

Those who win a permit — $30 applications are due online or by mail by March 1 — will be able to watch bears sometime between June 7 and Aug. 25.

Several communities above or near the Arctic Circle rely on patrols where people use vehicles, lights, beanbag shotguns or other nonlethal measures to scare bears out of town. The bear patrol program in Wales, where Tuesday’s attack occurred, had lapsed, though it’s unclear that it could have prevented the mauling even if it had been active.

Questions linger over what factors may have contributed to Alaska’s first fatal polar bear mauling in more than 30 years. An administrator said some employees at the Wales school hit the bear with shovels in an attempt to get it to leave.

The 24-year-old woman from St. Michael and her 1-year-old child were attacked in Wales near the village school in the middle of the day Tuesday, troopers said.

A Wales resident shot and killed the bear as it attacked the pair, Alaska State Troopers said.

The moose was spotted by an aerial survey team flying over Interior Alaska.

Under the Trump administration in 2020, the Park Service liberalized wildlife regulations, including allowing bear baiting. The Biden administration wants to undo those rules.

Residents say the unchecked herds of musk oxen have morphed from a novelty to a nuisance to a threat. A group is asking state officials to reform management protocols.

In Alaska, collisions with moose are 5.7 times as frequent in the December-to-February period as in the least collision-prone time of the year, the late spring.

Big flocks of the highly vocal, berry-gobbling birds can be entertaining to watch in winter.

Moose, eagles and ravens keep wildlife specialists occupied in winter around Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, which faces unique challenges.

One researcher’s studies found that black-capped chickadees can gain an additional 10% of their body weight each day by stuffing themselves, before using that fat to shiver all night to stay warm.

A lone polar bear cub that was wandering the Prudhoe Bay oil field was evacuated and sent to the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced.

The Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group voted to propose reducing the harvest for resident subsistence hunters from five caribou a day to four caribou per year, just one of which could be a cow.

This is also the first-ever moose sighting in southwest Washington, the National Park Service said. The last recorded moose sighting in Western Washington was just west of Stevens Pass in 2009.

A wide variety of Arctic animals, including polar bears, are being exposed to a tick-borne pathogen normally associated with rabbits and hares, a new study said.

The lawsuit follows an unsuccessful attempt in 2020 to convince NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service to delist ringed seals administratively.

State wildlife officials don’t plan to halt predator control in light of the findings by retired scientists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The animal fell into the home’s lower level after slipping through a window well, responders said.

“Most of the time with an eagle release, it’s like, ‘Good luck, hope I never see you again,’” one Bird TLC worker said. “Caring for something since it was an infant, it’s different.”

It was the first Alaska-breeding godwit chick to be tracked making the migration. Researchers hope data from this study will help answer questions on why godwit population is declining.

Bear 747 blasted past the competition to reclaim his title. Fat Bear Week has taken off since its launch in 2014, with a record number of votes cast this year.