Wildlife

Scientists earlier this summer made a rare sighting of two pairs of North Pacific right whales, noteworthy because only about 30 of the massive, endangered animals are thought to remain in the waters off Alaska.

“The fact that an otter attacked a person was certainly surprising,” said a wildlife biologist with Fish and Game, who added that it’s hard to know what the motivation behind the otter’s “unusual behavior” was.

Researchers and federal scientists still have no definitive explanation for the cause.

Beluga Whale Alliance volunteers, filmmakers and tourists watched from Seward Highway pull-offs.

Polar bear sightings were more common in the Chukchi Sea city just above the Arctic Circle before the climate warmed and sea ice retreated north.

Gray whales are known for being hardy and resilient — “the jeeps of the ocean,” as retired U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration biologist Wayne Perryman calls them — but something has gone badly wrong.

The killer whale was stranded for hours before the tide came in and it “meandered around a little before swimming away.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it is initiating a review to determine if protections for wolves are warranted.

Bears often recover from injuries naturally, but Fish and Game officials will dispatch an animal if it doesn’t seem like they’ll recover.

The injured bear left the area and had not been located by Tuesday afternoon, troopers said.

While online posts might make it seem like there are more bear encounters than ever in Anchorage, a wildlife official says that isn’t the case: Bear-centric social media posts are just making sightings more public.

The black bear then raided nearby camps Sunday and charged people on Fourth of July Beach before it was killed by troopers.

The shaggy, curly-horned animals were nonexistent in the state at the turn of the last century, but they started thriving on Nunivak Island after a remarkable journey in the 1930s.

The visitor sustained minor injuries to his forearm and was knocked into a river, the National Park Service said.

The three bears that were shot had been getting into trash cans, a Fish and Game biologist said.

Jason Umbriaco’s border collie, Buckley, ran off during the attack, but with the help of Soldotna hospital employees, they were reunited the next day.

While there aren’t any natural snake populations here, people do still spot them once in a while. Could Alaska’s climate ever be hospitable enough for snakes to exist in the wild?

A Kenai National Wildlife Refuge ranger said the Sunday night attack is not believed related to an attack in a nearby area two weeks ago that left two campers badly injured.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not adequately explain why it reversed its earlier decision that Pacific walrus warranted greater protection due to declining sea ice.

“The first thing I think to do is push it, push a bear, push an apex predator, man,” she later recalled.