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Tag archives for Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Imagine if you could go out walking and easily pick up something that hasn’t been touched for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Conservation paleobiologist and National Geographic grantee Dr. Joshua Miller does bone surveys on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska to study why critical habitats for caribou and other species have changed over time. Miller says, “Anytime we do a survey, we’re finding scores and scores of bones.”
If a place on earth motivates a Bar-tailed Godwit to fly more than 9,000 miles from southern Australia, the Buff-breasted Sandpiper to fly 8,500 miles from the pampas of Argentina, and Arctic Terns to fly some 11,000 miles from Antarctic, well, that place must be something special. That special place is the coastal plain of Arctic Alaska, where these birds and millions of others come to breed in a still-remote nursery on top of the world.
By Jordan Schaul Today is the 50th anniversary of the largest, most remote and perhaps, most rustic protected wilderness area in the United States. Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the most well known refuge in the system, turns 50 on January 6 with celebrations throughout central and south central Alaska. A bull caribou in…