Alaska Ecosystem Changing

Pike from a few years ago

Our eco-system is changing in obvious ways.  Because we spend so much time outside, raising and foraging for food, cutting trees for firewood, and tending our bees and animals, I am certainly more attuned to it here than I ever was when living in, transporting by, and going to various air conditioned cocoons in Houston, TX. 

Perhaps the following examples at our home will be useful to people considering moving up here or anywhere new to them.  Advice:  call the Department of Natural Resources to confirm any long-distance assumptions about the location that interests you. 

a)  Wildfires:  Alaska's wildfires burn about 2 million acres per year.   Because of a multi-year drought, several named fires burned close enough to us that we  could smell them.  The brown haze obscured the mountains for a week.  One day, my husband wore a respirator when working outside while I hunkered down inside with all windows closed.  News reports depicted homes miraculously standing intact in a skeletal landscape, as well as heart wrenching scenes of twisted metal and cindered beams. 

Felling a beetle-infested Spruce

b) Spruce Beetles:  As a “double whammy”, spruce beetles are devastating the white (and even some black) spruce that are unaffected by the fires.  It is sobering to see these majestic trees reduced to brittle, needle-less corpses in two years.  We lose not only their beauty, shade and wind breaks, but also the plants, birds, and animals that lived here because of them.  Porcupines may be no great loss, but I dearly miss the spruce grouse, as they raised their families, taught them to forage and fly in my yard each summer.  Furthermore, the standing dead trees are torch-like fire hazards.  Imagine the fuel load of millions of trees!  Since we live in a remote location where we are responsible for our own fire safety, we cleared a trail in the woods two years ago so my husband could cut down 36 spindly dead black spruce.  This year, 15 large white ones succumbed to the beetles and subsequently to his Husqvarna chainsaw.  Fortunately, we can use the wood, to fuel our hot tub and to plane as planks for stairs, decks, docks and simple furniture.  All of our internal furniture was built (by a craftsman, not by us) with beetle killed spruce from the Kenai Peninsula (south of Anchorage) , which was affected before us.   The squiggly lines of the larvae are attractive but a lesson in the power of some of the smallest critters in the forest.  In addition, we are starting to see new plants emerging in the drier and sunnier spots opened up by the removal of previously shading spruce trees. 

Elodea (not on our lake)

c)           Elodea:  Elodea is the innocuous-looking plant sold at many aquarium shops. However, once flushed down toilets or dumped into a water way, it morphed into an aggressively invasive plant in Alaska!  The Department of Natural Resources and other entities have spent millions of dollars to eradicate it in 7-10 shallow lakes, including two in our watershed.  Where it gets established, it grows into an aquatic “forest” so thick that boats and float planes cannot maneuver, pets and water fowl drown, and beavers abandon even well-established dens.  We hope that it does not get a toe hold here.  Since my husband and I take an afternoon kayak every feasible day from May to October, we should be able to spot it early.

d)           Pike:  Northern Pike's natural habitat is north of the Brooks Range in Alaska and somehow, more than a decade ago, invaded certain watersheds (including ours) hundreds of miles south.  These aggressive, predatory fish eradicated all other sport fish in slow moving lakes and creeks, ruining the tourist businesses of many lodges and fishing guides.  Five years ago, we pulled out fighting fish 32-40 inches long - good for several meals (my favorite was eggrolls with cheese and jalapenos).  This year, though, the fish are so few and small that we have eaten only one. Biologists tell us that after they eat everything else, the pike start to cannibalize their young.  Might we be able to repopulate the lake with other fish?   Apparently not as long as one male and one female can reproduce.  We have hopes, though.

e)      Earthquakes:  Alaska is seismically active, recording dozens of earthquakes PER DAY.  We feel several shakes and shudders per year.  The 7.1 temblor on Nov. 30 crippled many homes and schools and smashed docks throughout the Anchorage region.   Our cabin and 8 other outbuildings suffered little damage, but that may be in part, because they are simple, rectangular structures with no internal walls and because of the soil structure.  Friends' homes on boggy soil experienced a vertiginous jelly like movement and those abutting rock outcrops were beaten up against it. 

f)  Warming temperatures:  News stories about the warming arctic region appear almost every day:  migrating birds and sea mammals are starving in mass numbers, polar bears are dumpster diving, ice roads are buckling over warming permafrost.  Historians and long term residents document a lengthening growing season.  Forest fires are expected to grow in acreage and strength.

 Conclusions:   

Anyone wanting to live “close to the land” in some way HAS to be adaptable because Mother Nature holds every trump card.  I must admit to mourning the death of beautiful spruce trees, worry about the fuel load that grows faster than we can cull it, and I hope for more edible fish in the lake. But I welcome the longer growing season.  We enjoyed a bountiful harvest of honey, berries, and vegetables during the warmest and driest summer on record.  No scurvy here.