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Issues: Wildlife

Alaska

Alaska has long been known as a "last frontier," a wild, vast land roomy enough to accommodate any tinkering humans might do with no ill effect to its other inhabitants. And indeed, wilderness survives in Alaska on a scale that boggles the mind. But even in this proud land, the signs of strain are beginning to show. Alaskan wildlife faces threats from global warming, habitat loss, oil and gas development and other alterations to the environment that supports them. Click though the images above to learn about four species already on the brink.

Polar Bear
Spectacled Eider
Cook Inlet Beluga Whale
Yellow-Billed Loon

ACT NOW:
Preserve the Arctic Refuge

Protect the Western Arctic Reserve

Save the Tongass

IMPORTANT WILDLIFE AREAS

NORTH SLOPE: The rolling tundra that stretches from the glacier-capped Brooks Range down to the wetlands along the Beaufort Sea is a calving area for huge herds of caribou, and vital habitat for polar bears, wolves and millions of migratory birds.

TONGASS NATIONAL FOREST: Dominating Alaska's southeastern panhandle, the 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest is the world's largest intact temperate rainforest. It hosts the world's largest breeding concentration of bald eagles in its dense stands of ancient hemlock, spruce and cedar. These old-growth trees also provide critical nesting habitat for the marbled murrelet, a threatened sea bird.

BRISTOL BAY: In the crook between the Alaska Peninsula's northern coast and the mainland, Bristol Bay's marshy lowlands and riverine estuaries support the largest sockeye salmon run in the world, huge multitudes of waterfowl and other birds, and large numbers of brown bears.

PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND: Sea otters, orcas and gray whales, tidewater glaciers, rich fisheries, the world's northernmost rainforest—Prince William Sound is one of the world's most biologically productive and beautiful ecosystems, even as effects linger from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

RELATED NRDC PAGES
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Global Warming Puts the Arctic on Thin Ice (FAQ)

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Photos: Alaska © PhotoDisc; polar bear © Steve Amstrup, Alaska Image Library, USFWS; spectacled eider © Chris Dau, Alaska Image Library, USFWS; beluga whale © Corbis; yellow-billed loon © Getty Images