Science writer Ned Rozell takes a closer look at how the recent rainstorm in Interior Alaska could negatively impact area wildlife unaccustomed to winter rain:
Ned Rozell holds a shard of ice crust, one-inch thick, that lurks in the middle of the Fairbanks snowpack. On Dec. 26, more than an inch of rain fell over a wide swath of the state. Much of the backcountry of Interior Alaska now has an ice sheet beneath a foot of fluffy snow.
“The current conditions are as bad or worse as those back in the mid-1960s,” said Dick Bishop, a retired Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist who has lived in Alaska since 1961. “I don’t remember when we ever had this kind of ice layer.” Moose are suffering in these conditions because they can’t move far without using a lot of energy, Bishop said. Postholing makes it harder to find food, as well as escape predators.In area of the Interior where wolves usually don’t venture, like the network of roads and houses near towns and villages, moose have congregated on roads and around houses.
“But at least their grub is above the crust ,” he said. “I feel bad for foxes, coyotes, and owls trying to get a meal now. I would think mousing through this crust is a nonstarter. Bishop once estimated that about half of the moose population in the Tanana Flats south of Fairbanks died during the deep-snow winters in 1965-1966 and 1970-1971. Biologists won’t know the fate of Interior moose until the winter ends.
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