Background Articles

Vehicles accumulate dirt, which has minerals, and minerals are hard to come by in the environment during winter. Salt could certainly be one of the minerals they seek as sodium is a driver of appetite, but it is possible it could be another type of mineral they’re after—hard to say for sure without getting a profile of the dirt.

Bethel and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta experienced one of the mildest winters on record, with Bethel marking its sixth warmest winter in 101 years amid unusually low snowpack.

Scant snow is giving way to shaggy brown grass normally not seen until spring breakup, raising concerns now that conditions are increasingly ripe for a fast-moving fire at a time of year usually deep in the grip of winter.

On the last Sunday in April, I received a brief but exciting message. “Frogs are singing,” Barbara Carlson notified me.

An investigation into the death of roughly 100 fish near Alaska’s Kensington gold mine remains inconclusive months later, with both state regulators and Coeur Mining unable to pinpoint the cause despite extensive testing.