Background Articles

Researchers say climate change is playing a big role in the collapse, which has left thousands of people along the river without the salmon they depend on. 

Moose in Southeast Alaska are being harvested in new areas, indicating a potential expansion of their population and distribution.

More than 80 per cent of B.C.'s water basins are experiencing level 4 or 5 drought conditions, with salmon in many parts of the province struggling to make it to their spawning grounds.

"I am concerned about high levels of PFAS contamination in the drinking water?"

Severe Vibrio vulnificus infections in the United States are associated with warming coastal waters, with an increase in infections in the Eastern United States and an expanded geographic range.

A "weed smackdown" at an Anchorage park is part of a long-running campaign to stop the spread of plants that are harming the natural ecosystem.

A decline in the population of sea otters, a well-known predator of urchins and other kelp-eating critters, led to the spread of “urchin barrens” along the Pacific coast, where urchins have mowed down entire kelp forests. Now, researchers are trying to figure out if, and how, other predators such as sunflower stars could play a complementary role in protecting the kelp forests.

Commercial fishing openers are only available to individuals registered as catcher/sellers. On the Kuskokwim, the only one registered is Fran Reich.

The most-expensive project in the nationwide initiative is $25 million for Alaska to replace a dozen culvert sites along the Parks Highway.

The R/V Sikuliaq is a familiar sight in the Port of Nome. The ice-breaking research vessel is owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This year, while the vessel is out at sea it will be collecting water that could signal whether a bloom is occurring.

The current outbreaks of avian influenza (also called “bird flu”) have caused devastation in animal populations, including poultry, wild birds, and some mammals, and harmed farmers’ livelihoods and the food trade. Although largely affecting animals, these outbreaks pose ongoing risks to humans.

As king salmon decline in the Bristol Bay region, changes to king salmon harvest include reduced bag limits, area closures, as well as the introduction of youth-only fisheries in the Naknek River.

Knik Tribe officials have found very high levels of the toxin which causes paralytic shellfish poisoning in samples from Southern Alaska mussels and clams — but they warn that parts of some fish, including king salmon, may also contain the toxin

This film is for young people and anyone in the Northwest Arctic who is curious about how (and why) to siifish, and how to process the fish after catching.

For close to four millennia, "clam gardens" on beaches on the west coast of B.C. have provided First Nations with a supply of not just clams but other types of seafood. Scientific experimentation by researchers from Simon Fraser University, in collaboration with Coastal Salish First Nations, indicates clam gardens help sea life stay cooler. The research aims to show how ancient Indigenous practices offer a modern-day solution to coping with climate change.

Following a thaw slump, the water becomes cloudy and full of sediment, potentially suffocating the eggs of spawning sheefish. Scientists are concerned that permafrost thaw could lead to declines in the sheefish population, a staple food for many Alaskans.

The Icelandic puffin population has shrunk by 70% in the last thirty years. The Managing Director of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association (SAF) has stated that this is bad news for the ecosystem and for companies within the tourist sector, who have marketed the puffin as a kind of national symbol. Decline much worse than […]

You could say Dave Jackson is Kodiak’s carrot kingpin. Carrots are one of the key vegetables in the gardening/farming practices in the archipelago's of Alaska

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Subsistence Management held the second public hearing on May 2 about the proposal to reduce the caribou harvest limit for resident hunters across the range of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd from five caribou per day to four caribou per year, only one of which may be a cow.

This summer, Kenai Peninsula beaches from Ninilchik to Kenai will be empty of setnets and buoys. Family-run commerial fishing businesses, a major economic force in the Cook Inlet region since territorial days, have been shut down and may not be coming back.