June
7, 2002
British women reach pole
Two British women, Caroline
Hamilton, 35, and Ann Daniels, 37, reached the North Pole off Ellesmere Island
last Sunday.
The two are the first all-woman
team to trek to both the South and North Poles.
"We are ecstatic,"
Daniels said in a statement. "It has been worth everything we have endured
along the way."
They set off on their 81-day
journey from Resolute Bay on March 12.
One of their first telephone
calls after they reached the North Pole was to the U.K.’s Prince Charles,
who had supported their adventure.
A third member of the team
had to be airlifted off the ice with severe frostbite in April.
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June
7, 2002
Shooting walruses with
crossbows — for science
Scientists are planning
to use a new method to take samples from walruses that spend the summer eating,
belching and male bonding on the islands off Alaska’s coasts, the Anchorage
Daily News says.
They will try out a veterinary
crossbow as an alternative to drugging walruses – a procedure that too
often ends in death.
Scientists want to get
more accurate population numbers in an effort to determine if walrus stocks
are healthy. The study requires attaching transmitters to walruses.
The trick with the veterinary
crossbow will be adjusting it so that the anchor for the transmitter is delivered
to the right spot between the walrus’s thick, tough hide and blubber.
In past years, scientists
have anesthetized the walruses to attach transmitters to their tusks. The transmitters
provide dive data so counters can compensate for walruses that are underwater
and missed during the aerial surveys.
But drugging walruses comes
at a high price.
Of 112 walruses, 15 per
cent have died since 1995. Scientists believe the drugs may be interfering with
a complicated respiratory system that allows walruses to stay underwater for
nearly 10 minutes at a time.
The scientists also will
be using standard crossbows to collect tissue for DNA sampling to get more information
on whether there are walrus subgroups.
The samples will be collected
with arrows equipped with small cutting heads.
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June
7, 2002
Melting snow reveals caribou
disaster
Biologists in Alaska have
uncovered crushed antlers, mutilated carcasses and hoofs poking out of the melting
snow at the base of a slope in the Kenai Mountains, where at least 50 animals
died in a late December avalanche.
Much of what remains has
been pawed out of the snow and gnawed on or devoured by bears, wolves wolverines
and bald eagles, the Anchorage Daily News reports.
Avalanche experts concluded
that caribou began crossing the steep, snowy ridge late in December and their
hooves triggered an avalanche that swept the animals downhill at speeds approaching
120 kilometres an hour.
Judging by the mutilation,
experts say the caribou must have been near the top of the snow slide. Some
rolled and bounced about 1,900 feet to the bottom of the treeless slope.
In March, biologists flying
in the area picked up mortality signals from six of the 12 radio collar transmitters
attached to caribou.
They all came from the
base of the snow slide. The beacons are set off when a collar doesn’t move
for hours.
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June
7, 2002
Alaskan river closed to
fishing
Federal and state managers
have ordered Alaska’s Kuskokwim River closed to fishing for three days
starting Sunday, according to the Anchorage Daily News.
The closure is intended
to rebuild the declining salmon runs of Western Alaska. Native residents caught
the first King Salmon just last week.
The closure was imposed
for the first time last year, and was mired in conflict between the two levels
of government. This year, federal managers worked more closely with the state.
The decline in salmon runs
began about 10 years ago but biologists don’t know the exact cause.
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