14

Game and Fur Mammals

CONFLICT OVER ALASKAN LAND MAMMALS, LIKE THAT OVER SEA MAMMALS, CATAlyzed changes in thinking about natural resources. Treatment of “game” and predator species informed the national debate on wildlife management. Efforts to protect mammals motivated the creation or expansion of Mt. McKinley, Katmai, and Glacier Bay national parks. These lands in turn served as models for ecological concepts in natural resource policy. Utilitarian values predominated in Alaska, but wildlife management evolved slowly in the direction of ecosystem preservation.

Mammals, in various ways, ranked high in pre-statehood Alaskan affairs. For aboriginal Natives they provided spiritual sustenance as well as food, clothing, and other implements. Settlers also sought them for food. Russians, Natives, and Euro-Americans engaged in fur trade that at times amounted to a high portion of Alaska’s income. Around the beginning of the 20th Century, Native and white entrepreneurs killed for hides and horns, and commercial meat hunters supplied miners, railroad workers, and settlers. Sport hunters arrived to take advantage of some of the world’s finest remaining shooting grounds, and outfitting and guiding them boosted the local economy. But Alaska’s remoteness and the seeming abundance of wildlife invited excesses. Settlers and Native and non-Native trappers and hunters poisoned and gunned local populations of some species out of existence. Alarmed at the losses, conservationists in the States took action resulting in the game laws of 1902, 1908, and 1925. Prior to the emergence of ecological science, conservationists joined in the suppression of wolves as a means of conserving game. Different groups valued different mammal species for different purposes, and controversy often surrounded attempts at enforcement of wildlife laws.

TABLE 14.1. Estimated Harvests of Big Game Species in Alaska, 1945–1963

Source: Alan M. Courtright, Alaska Big Game Harvests Data (Juneau: Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, November 1964); Courtright, Game Harvest in Alaska (Juneau: Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, June 1968).

Note: Grizzly/brown bear figures in Table 12.1. Walrus figures do not include those struck and lost.

A turbulent 35 years passed between the implementation of the Game Law of 1925 and the assumption of wildlife management by the new state in 1960. For a combination of reasons all Alaskan land mammal species including predators survived the period, some restored in numbers. Relatively light hunting activity during the Depression and World War II affected mammal populations, as did fire and weather. Between 1945 and the early 1960s, harvests of most big game species rose moderately (Table 14.1). Observers agreed that the outlawing of commercial meat hunting by the 1925 law and the enforcement of hunting and trapping regulations by the Alaska Game Commission helped conserve several species. Caribou, moose, and deer populations rose in part as a result of wolf control. The Alaska Game Commission accomplished most of what it set out to do.

UNGULATE POPULATIONS

Ungulates, often thought of as “prey species” and generally referred to as “game,” supplied necessities of life for both Alaska Natives and terrestrial carnivores. In the near-absence of agriculture, Euro-Americans also relied on them for meat and skins, and some wanted their conspicuous horns and antlers. Human population grew and technology evolved, raising the rate of consumption of ungulate stocks. Disagreements over hunting rules, predator control, and access to game persisted throughout the 20th Century. Most of the debates focused on caribou, reindeer, Sitka black-tailed deer, Dall sheep, and moose.

Caribou

Game management officials made recurring efforts to understand the caribou, a migratory deer inhabiting Arctic and subarctic Alaska and Canada and including a few relict populations in the late 19th Century in several northern tier states. Alaskan herds waxed, waned, and wandered, for reasons not well understood by biologists. A staple resource for predators, Natives, miners, and settlers, caribou stirred anxiety and recrimination when they declined locally. One of the earliest disputes involved the herds of northwest Alaska. During the last quarter of the 19th Century and well into the next, few caribou appeared along the Arctic coast and in the Kobuk and Koyukuk river valleys. Sheldon Jackson and others found Eskimos in a condition of starvation and population loss and blamed the absence of caribou on meat hunting for the whaling industry. Caribou researcher Ronald Skoog determined that the herds had dwindled prior to the high demand for meat and the introduction of numerous guns among the Arctic coast Eskimos. Similarly, Skoog rejected the notion that caribou had been pushed out by reindeer, first introduced to northwest Alaska in 1892.¹ Scarcity of caribou along the northern and western coasts may at least have been exacerbated by excessive killing by Native hunters during the whaling era. Whaling crews each consumed an estimated 10,000 pounds of caribou annually while operating near Herschel Island.² In 1878 Eskimos bearing rifles exterminated the herd on Nunivak Island.³

Gold seekers, and commercial meat hunters catering to them, further reduced the caribou herds. Bureau of Biological Survey agent Wilfred Osgood, who surveyed the Alaska Peninsula at the turn of the century, addressed hunting’s impact on caribou:

Nearly the year round they are brought in regularly to all the mining camps along the peninsula, being hunted not only for their flesh, but also for their skins, which are in great demand. The mail steamer which runs along the south side of the peninsula takes on a supply of caribou meat on nearly every trip. The animals are usually killed in the Port Moller region, and the carcasses taken to the village of Unga, where the steamer makes regular stops. On the October run, when I was a passenger, caribou chops, roasts, and stews were a feature of the bill of fare. . . . In September, 1902, a trading post was established at Unangashik . . . for the express purpose of trading for caribou skins. . . . [A]pproximately 500 caribou were killed by the natives of Unangashik between October 1, 1902, and May 1, 1903, and the skins disposed of to the trader. . . . The trader pays about $1 in trade for a skin, which is worth to him $2 to $5. The skin of the body is widely used for clothing and bedding material. The short-haired skin of the legs is especially desired for making the tops of the skin boots which are very extensively used by natives and whites alike.

Osgood warned that “if the wholesale traffic in meat and hides . . . is not checked, the animals are surely doomed to speedy extinction.”⁴

As of the early 20th Century no caribou survived in the Kenai and Seward peninsulas, the Kuskokwim and Kilbuck mountains, or the Nulato Hills. But at least one large herd existed in the 1920s.⁵ Olaus Murie, the game biologist who attempted the first counts, estimated the Yukon-Tanana population at between 500,000 and 1 million.⁶ By the late 1940s this enormous assemblage had completely disappeared, but the Kobuk-Noatak herd not seen since the 19th Century now numbered about 100,000. The Yukon-Tanana caribou may have migrated northwestward in 1943.⁷

At the time of statehood biologists estimated the Arctic caribou total at 230,000, and the Nelchina herd south of the Alaska Range had swelled to 50,000. Smaller aggregations of caribou existed in most other regions. Roads, railroads, and airfields made them increasingly available to hunters. Grant’s caribou on the Alaska Peninsula had been greatly diminished in number and possibly diluted by interbreeding with reindeer. Assuming the herd had been under siege by wolves, the Game Commission cited its survival as one of the beneficial results of predator control.⁸

Ecologists A. Starker Leopold and Frank Fraser Darling, based largely on their 1952 survey, offered a broader perspective on the causes of caribou population trends. In their view, wolf predation played little or no part. They attributed the decline of the Alaska Peninsula herd to overgrazing of the range by reindeer. They cited fires as the primary cause of caribou losses. Fire destroyed the lichens on which caribou depended as a winter food source. Lichens grew at the rate of one-sixteenth of an inch per year, taking decades to reach even part of their full sixteen-inch height. Gold Rush era and settlement activity had accelerated the frequency of fires compared with the number set earlier by lightning and Natives. An estimated 80 percent of the white spruce forest, where lichens grew in abundance, had been burned in the first half of the 20th Century. A climatic warming trend over the same period aggravated the fire problem, and forest clearing and reindeer grazing further cut back the lichens. Hunting, accelerated by the availability of guns and access by roads, also shrank caribou populations. These combined pressures eradicated some herds, separated most remaining groups and, in general, concentrated the species in the Arctic tundra regions resistant to fire. The researchers saw no prospect of reversing the trend. They recommended fire suppression as a management tool for maintaining caribou populations.⁹

Skoog concluded in the 1960s that, aside from human activity,

Alaska’s caribou population has fluctuated widely during the past 100 years or more. . . . Individual herds have expanded and declined in size; few have remained stable for very long. As the herds increased, their movements have become increasingly complex, more erratic in timing, and more extensive in scope, with the opposite occurring as the herds declined. Major emigrations from one region to another have taken place when peak numbers were reached; other emigrations have occurred when animals from adjacent regions have intermingled during the winter.¹⁰

Uncertainty about the causes of caribou population shifts infused decades of controversy over predator control.

Moose

Moose protection emerged as one of the Alaska Game Commission’s qualified success stories. For flying wardens, the size of moose made them difficult to hide and relatively easy to count in winter. Kenai moose increased as a result of the extermination of wolves and from tightened law enforcement, but lost feed and population as the number of forest fires tapered off. In the wake of fire in a spruce forest, birches, willows, and aspen—crucial winter feed for moose—proliferated. Eventually, in the absence of additional fires, these trees would be succeeded by spruce and moose would decline.

Moose populations gradually increased in the interior for three reasons, according to Leopold and Darling. Since the turn of the century the warming trend had eased their movement northward, even to the Arctic coast, by stimulating the growth of willows. Second, fires usually generated moose browse. Third, on a lesser scale, the clearing of spruce forests for roads, settlements, and other purposes caused more deciduous tree growth. All of these factors, they argued, favored moose and hurt caribou.¹¹ Other wildlife managers contended that Leopold and Darling gave insufficient credit to the enforcement of bag limits and the prohibition on shooting cow moose as reasons for recovery.¹² Whatever the causes, and despite concerns about wolf predation and excessive hunting by burgeoning numbers of military personnel and civilians, a healthy and widespread moose population greeted the new state. Excepting temporary circumstances in a few locales, moose remained numerous throughout the rest of the century.

Dall Sheep

Mountain sheep, often considered the most desirable game for human consumption, experienced overexploitation by both Natives and non-Natives. Their visibility and herding behavior made them relatively easy to count and, given political will, to protect. Their localized nature allowed Native and Euro-American hunters to reduce or eradicate some of the herds. To supply miners, railroad workers, and other recent immigrants, commercial hunters decimated sheep herds on the Kenai Peninsula (Chapter 16) and in parts of the Alaska Range. Poachers killed them through the 1920s, even in Mt. McKinley Park. Governor Gruening explained the McKinley herd’s slow decline in the 1930s and 1940s as “due to predatory animals, and some type of disease may be a contributing factor.” Leopold and Darling considered weather, hard winters in particular, the main determinant.¹³ To some extent, sheep died from snowslides and predation by wolves, coyotes, and wolverines. Regardless of whether the park sheep benefited from predator control efforts, they gradually rebounded in the 1950s and generally maintained their numbers thereafter.

Mountain Goats

Unlike sheep, mountain goats did not hold wide appeal as a food supply. Neither did they gather in large bands in their steep and rocky mountain habitats along the coast from the Kenai Peninsula southward. Their dispersal made them difficult to count but also difficult to hunt. Except for local areas, particularly along the Southeast coast, they never became seriously threatened. Predation by wolves, coyotes, and wolverines claimed a few goats, and many died in snowslides. In the early 1950s sport hunters killed about 500 annually and Natives about 100, from an estimated statewide population of 11,150 to 13,550.¹⁴ Agents transplanted goats (Table 14.4) to Baranof Island in 1923 and to Kodiak Island in 1952–1953, places where they had not been known to exist. In the statehood period, formation of national and state parks, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas afforded protection to mountain goats as it did for sheep and other species.

Sitka Black-Tailed Deer

Sitka deer, a variety of mule deer located in the Southeast rainforest, suffered nearly uncontrolled carnage between the 1880s and the 1920s. Prohibition of hide export, and law enforcement generally, relieved pressure on them. Population levels rose and fell according to available food. Heavy winter snows forced them to the beaches where many starved in times of overpopulation. Mild winters allowed more to survive, and wolf control increased the number available to humans. They numbered an estimated 123,000 in 1958–1959 and may have been too numerous in some ranges.¹⁵ Over the second half of the century, logging depleted old-growth forests to the detriment of the deer. Bag limits and protective land designations helped keep the deer populations viable.

UNGULATE TRANSLOCATIONS

For several reasons, government officials and private entrepreneurs or experimenters attempted to introduce wildlife species into various corners of Alaska. Goals included food supply, sport hunting opportunity, commercial profit, and restoration of populations eradicated by humans. Two of the efforts, stocking of foxes (Chapter 13) and importing of reindeer, probably had the greatest environmental impact.

The Reindeer Experiment

Reindeer introduction, an economic, social, and incidentally ecological experiment, got its start when Sheldon Jackson first visited the Arctic in 1890. Jackson, a prominent and charismatic Presbyterian missionary then serving as general agent of education for Alaska, traveled to the northwest coast to set up schools at Cape Prince of Wales, Point Hope, and Barrow. He learned that Eskimo settlements had been depopulated, in some cases entirely, since the coming of whalers and traders. He attributed the losses principally to the commercial killing of whales and walruses and to the extermination of caribou herds by Eskimos using guns. Adopting an idea suggested by U.S. Fish Commission biologist Charles H. Townsend in an 1885 report, Jackson proposed that the government import reindeer from Siberia and establish an agricultural school to teach the Eskimos reindeer husbandry: “To reclaim and make valuable vast areas of land otherwise worthless; to introduce large, permanent and wealth-producing industries where none previously existed; to take a barbarian people on the verge of starvation and lift them up to a comfortable self-support and civilization, is certainly a work of national importance.” Jackson pointed out that in Lapland and Siberia, people depended on reindeer as a source of meat, milk, clothing, and other useful implements. Moreover, he argued, reindeer could draw sleds much more efficiently than dog teams could.¹⁶

Rev. Sheldon Jackson, ca. 1880. Portrait file PCA 01-3279, Alaska State Library. An assertive and charismatic figure, Jackson publicized Alaska and drew attention to the needs of the Native population.

Realizing no action from Congress on his request for funds to import reindeer, Jackson raised $2,146 from private sources. He went to the Siberian coast in 1891 on the revenue cutter Bear, made available by the Treasury secretary. To assess the feasibility of reindeer purchase and transport, he bought sixteen from Native herders. Upon return he released the reindeer on Amaknak and Unalaska islands. All the deer had survived the trip and, a year later, the total increased by two.

Anticipating congressional backing, Jackson made five 1892 trips to Siberia on the Bear, bringing back 175 reindeer and assembling a herd at Teller near Port Clarence on the Seward Peninsula. He also brought along four Siberian herdsmen and assigned a few young Alaskan Eskimos to learn herding. In his report to Congress Jackson expanded on his earlier appeals for rehabilitation of the Eskimos. Pointing out that whalers regularly wintered on the Arctic coast, he suggested a “reindeer express” to carry the mail to ice-free ports: “It would enable the owners of the whaling fleet to avail themselves of the latest commercial news and keep a more perfect control over their business.” He added that reindeer skins could be made into commercial products such as gloves, military trousers, book bindings, and carriage robes to replace those once derived from buffalo herds.¹⁷

Jackson’s project received funding from Congress after 1892, and he continued to ship reindeer. The additions and the natural increase swelled the Teller herd. Finding the Siberian herders too cruel and otherwise unreliable, Jackson brought in seven Lapps and their families from Norway to train the Eskimos. To improve management efficiency he placed mission stations in charge of herds. Eskimo apprentices received food, clothing, housing, and education and could earn up to 37 deer to start their own herds after five years’ training.

Reindeer loaded aboard revenue cutter Bear, Siberia, 1891. Bear 1891 Cruise Album 95-034-58, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives. Sheldon Jackson envisioned a large-scale reindeer industry to sustain Eskimos and develop Alaska’s economy.

Jackson enlarged his vision in the mid-1890s. Partly to replace the dying sea otter industry, he advocated stocking reindeer along the entire Aleutian chain. To meet the food and transportation needs of miners, “[R]eindeer should be widely distributed throughout all northern Alaska.”¹⁸ He pictured “400,000 square miles of territory” on which “9,200,000 head of reindeer will support a population of 287,500, living like the Lapps of Lapland.” Besides helping Eskimos, reindeer would assist the “opening up of . . . northern and central Alaska to white settlers and civilization.” A “vast commercial industry” of reindeer products would benefit all, and to spread herding skills, a “migration” of families from Lapland should be encouraged.¹⁹

Reindeer entered the 1897–1898 drama (Chapter 3) in which a fleet of whaling ships became trapped in the ice off Point Barrow. News of the event prompted an emergency cabinet meeting chaired by President McKinley. Jackson, invited to attend, suggested the revenue cutter Bear be sent to Cape Prince of Wales. A nearby reindeer herd could be driven overland as a food supply for the crew members. The cabinet agreed, and the Bear left Port Townsend, Washington, on November 29. Ice forced it into Cape Vancouver, 800 miles short of its goal.²⁰ Lts. David H. Jarvis and Ellsworth Bertholf and vessel surgeon Dr. Samuel J. Call made the overland trip by dogsled. On the way they borrowed 448 reindeer, including 292 from a herd managed by missionary W.T. Lopp and 133 owned by Eskimo herder Charlie Antissarlook. Written agreements promised repayment in reindeer in 1898 or as soon thereafter as possible. More would be added to compensate for expected natural increase. Call, Jarvis, Antissarlook, and seven other Eskimos drove the herd 750 miles north through the Arctic winter, reaching Barrow on March 29. Thanks to Charles Brower’s relief effort, the whalers slaughtered only 180 of the animals for food. About 382 reindeer had survived the trip, and new fawns left a total of 439 by fall 1898.²¹

Eskimo mail carrier, ca. 1905–1910. Lomen coll. 72-71-3557, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives. Reindeer served as transportation, but dogsleds proved more effective. The reindeer industry held the potential to massively alter the ecosystem of northern Alaska, but it peaked in the 1930s.

Antissarlook, the first Eskimo herd owner, had been lent 100 reindeer in 1895 by Sheldon Jackson. They increased, but Jackson recalled the loan in 1897, well before the contract deadline, to start another missionary herd. After the drive to Point Barrow in 1898, the surviving reindeer went to missions in Barrow and Point Hope. Left without their herd, the Antissarlook family experienced food scarcity. They received replacement animals in 1899.²² Such incidents reinforced an impression that Jackson placed the interests of missions ahead of the welfare of Eskimos.

Reports of starvation among miners in the upper Yukon in 1897–1898 induced Congress to appropriate $200,000 to transport reindeer from Lapland. Jackson traveled to Norway to convey the request to his agent William Kjellman, in the process of recruiting more Lapps for the reindeer service. They purchased 539 reindeer and shipped them to the East Coast, to Seattle by train, to Haines by boat, and overland to Circle. Only 114 survived the arduous journey ending on February 28, 1899.²³

Between 1891 and 1902, when the czar halted reindeer exports, 1,280 had been shipped from Siberia to Alaska. By 1905 natural increase had boosted the total to 12,828. Eskimos owned 38 percent of the herds, the federal government 30 percent, missions 21 percent, and Lapps 11 percent.²⁴ Critics of the program felt non-Native private parties should not own reindeer herds, and many objected to Jackson’s mixing religious instruction and herd maintenance. They suspected his top priority lay in supporting the missions. A 1905 investigation resulted in Jackson’s resignation.

Reindeer proliferated and herders found more uses for them. The animals supplied meat, mail service, and freight hauling in the turn-of-the-century Nome gold rush. Beginning in 1911 the Bureau of Education assisted Natives in sales of meat and antlers in Seattle. As a result of the change in government policy, Eskimos owned 66 percent of the 70,000 reindeer by 1916. Over the objections of officials who questioned its legality, the Lomen family of Nome commenced buying reindeer in 1914 from missions and other private owners. They amassed a large herd and sold more than 14,000 carcasses annually to stateside buyers in 1929 and 1930. Both Lomen and Eskimo herds multiplied rapidly, but neither realized much success in securing outside markets. When miners left the Nome goldfields in the 1910s, away went an important source of income for Eskimo herders. The 1918–1919 influenza epidemic dealt the Eskimos another blow by devastating western and northwestern Alaskan villages, claiming the lives of several leading herders and superintendent Walter Shields, who had advocated Native ownership of reindeer.²⁵

Participants and commentators carried on a vigorous debate over who should own reindeer herds and whether their purpose should be a means of subsistence for Eskimos or an economic resource for the development of Alaska. The Department of Agriculture attempted to achieve both goals. In 1920 its Bureau of Biological Survey (BBS) set up a reindeer experiment station at Unalakleet on Norton Sound. Dr. Seymour Hadwen, chief veterinarian, estimated in 1922 that Alaska had enough grazing land for 3 to 4 million reindeer but that care must be taken to avoid overgrazing or undergrazing. He believed that “it is evident that the development of the reindeer requires white supervision, with proper markets.” BBS and the Lomens jointly carried out breeding experiments for several years at Nunivak Island and Fairbanks.²⁶ In 1920, 98 caribou had been placed on Nunivak Island. Breeding by 10 caribou bulls conducted in 1925 apparently created hybrids larger than average reindeer.²⁷ But the experiments revealed no significant economic potential in crossbreeding.

Enthusiasm and optimism accompanied the growth of reindeer herds. One of Jackson’s successors declared in the early 1920s that

within less than a generation the reindeer industry has advanced through one entire stage of civilization, the Eskimo inhabiting the vast grazing lands from Point Barrow to the Aleutian Islands. It has raised them from the primitive to the pastoral stage, from nomadic hunters to civilized men, having in their herds of reindeer assured support for themselves and opportunity to acquire wealth.

It was the earliest and perhaps only government action providing, by the introduction of a new industry, practical vocational training adapted to community needs, and resulting in training a primitive race into independence and responsible citizenship.²⁸

Over the ensuing decades, experience would make this assessment appear more like an extravagant hope.

Bureau of Education officials and other critics continued to oppose private ownership of reindeer herds, the Lomen operation being by far the largest. Other problems beset the reindeer industry: weak markets, swelling herds, overgrazing, poor management, mixing of herds, confusion over ownership, and charges of theft.²⁹ Eskimos preferred to be near the ocean and found the work of tending herds boring in comparison to hunting. When Eskimo associations assumed ownership of herds, hired herders felt less responsibility toward herd maintenance. To take advantage of more far-flung, less depleted grazing ranges, the Reindeer Service advised a change from “close herding,” a method that called for constant watch on small herds, to “open herding” of large, free-ranging herds of mixed ownership. Open herding eased the way for predators to seize reindeer and for caribou to entice them to run away. Uncertainty over ownership and responsibility for reindeer in open herds worked to the disadvantage of individual Eskimo owners and generated tension between Natives and non-Natives.³⁰

Reindeer provided meat and skins for local and regional use, but this fell far short of the hopes of reindeer visionaries. They planned to sell meat in the States as well as in Alaska. Such a trade, however, would necessitate refrigeration facilities from regional stations to outlets in San Francisco and the East Coast. It needed docks near shipping stations, but no docks existed on the Bering Sea. Infrequent and seasonal boat schedules in the North added to the costs and instability of potential markets. And some states, possibly influenced by the beef industry, banned the sale of reindeer meat on grounds that it constituted wild game. Not least, the vast majority of Americans preferred beef.³¹

TABLE 14.2. Ownership, Size, and Locations of Reindeer Herds, 1949

Source: Margaret Lantis, “The Reindeer Industry in Alaska,” Arctic 3 (April 1950): 38.

A 1933 Interior Department report, one of several investigations in the 1930s, found that Eskimos lacked the facilities to operate a long-range marketing system, that they preferred hunting to herding, that the reindeer population had reached 600,000 to 800,000, that range damage had occurred, and that some herds had wandered out of reach into remote areas. It cited persistent claims that the Lomens had unfairly taken possession of Eskimo reindeer.³² A court decision had affirmed the Lomens’ right to own herds, but it did not stop the criticism. By 1934 the Lomens determined that their commercial venture would not work in the absence of outside markets. Three years later, Congress passed a bill transferring the Reindeer Service to the Interior Department’s Office of Indian Affairs. The act authorized the government to purchase all private herds and marketing facilities, a transaction completed in 1940.³³

World War II interrupted any possibility of immediate revival of the failing reindeer industry. But the Reindeer Service reinstated close herding, discouraged herd ownership by associations, and tried to develop market niches for hides, such as gloves, jackets, and boots. Government agencies continued research on parasites and range conditions and conducted vigorous predator control. But only a fraction of the reindeer survived the war years. Compared to 51 herds in 1932, 22 existed in 1949 totaling 27,920 reindeer (Table 14.2).³⁴

TABLE 14.3. Reindeer in Alaska, 1892–1977

Source: Richard O. Stern, Edward L. Arobio, Larry L. Naylor, and Wayne C. Thomas, Eskimos, Reindeer, and Land. University of Alaska Agricultural Experimental Station Bull. 59 (Fairbanks, December 1980), 103.

A highly optimistic projection by the Bureau of Land Management in 1952 foresaw a dramatic restoration of the reindeer industry. Grazing on 200,000 square miles of tundra, up to four million reindeer would supply meat and hides for the nation.³⁵ On the ground, reindeer herding increased somewhat in the 1950s but did not succeed in becoming more than a regional industry. Many of the same problems—lack of commitment to the arduous and isolated task of herding, lack of adequate winter range, and opportunities elsewhere—retarded the growth of the industry. From a high of 641,000 in 1932, the reindeer total stood at 40,000 in 1962 and 24,100 in 1977 (Table 14.3).³⁶

Shortly after statehood, resource economist Arthur D. Little analyzed the prospects for a viable commercial reindeer industry. In a summary issued in 1963 he identified several obstacles: (1) lack of interest in herding, (2) poor winter range, (3) lack of a range management plan, (4) poor animal husbandry, (5) the existence of caribou herds on potential reindeer range, (6) poor nutrition of existing reindeer, (7) the narrow market for reindeer meat, and (8) herder reliance on government grants. Little remarked, “We are not so presumptuous as to believe that we can suggest a program that will resolve all these difficulties. Persons have been working on these problems in Alaska for over sixty years, and the Government for at least thirty years without finding a solution.” Little recommended restricting operations to the few highly motivated herders and training them in animal husbandry and marketing.³⁷ Except for the sale of antlers, nothing more than local use emerged. Reindeer introduction ended in commercial failure, but, in Ernest Gruening’s judgment, by saving thousands of Eskimo lives it turned out to be “the most important single contribution made to the natives . . . in the first half-century of U.S. rule.”³⁸

Some environmental impact flowed from the reindeer experiment. BBS chief Edward Nelson, concerned that multiplying reindeer might threaten the existence of the caribou by appropriating their grazing lands or by interbreeding, had assigned Olaus Murie to survey the caribou in Alaska. Research demonstrated that overgrazing in the form of eating and trampling caused significant deterioration of the range. BBS range scientist Lawrence J. Palmer estimated from his 1920–1935 survey that recovery of lichens, the preferred food for reindeer and caribou, required 20 to 40 years if left undisturbed. He found the 1944 reindeer population on Nunivak Island to be 30,000, far above the sustainable level of 8,000.³⁹ Experimenters had placed reindeer on Nunivak and several other islands where no predators existed. On St. Matthew Island, devoid of wolves and caribou, the Coast Guard released 29 reindeer in 1944. They intended the animals as food for a U.S. Army weather station and a Coast Guard loran station that operated during the war. After the herd reached 6,000 in 1963, 99 percent died of starvation and cold the following winter, and none remained by 1985. A similar population on St. Paul Island crashed upon attaining a density of 49 per square mile. Palmer had recommended a maximum of 10 to 16 per square mile.⁴⁰

Other environmental impacts included the loss of predators and possible dilution of the caribou gene pool by escaped reindeer. To protect their stock, herders shot or trapped wolves, grizzly bears, coyotes, wolverines, and foxes. Federal predator control agents shot wolves from planes and, in some cases, dropped poisoned bait.⁴¹ Had the BBS expectation of three to four million reindeer (much less Jackson’s projection of nine million) eventuated, environmental disruption would have been widespread. Hundreds of square miles would have become pastureland, displacing caribou and altering their gene pool. Predator control would have greatly reduced carnivores and disrupted the ecosystem. Human population buildup, roads, and other facilities would have vastly degraded wilderness quality in Alaska.

The Reindeer Trek

An attempt to introduce reindeer into Canada begot an epic five-year struggle against the elements. Impressed by the seeming success of the Alaska experiment, Canada’s Department of the Interior investigated prospects for starting a reindeer industry in the Northwest Territories. The recent introduction of the rifle had heightened killing of wildlife by both Eskimos and whites. Increasingly reliant on goods from trading posts, the Eskimos nevertheless had only the Arctic fox as a source of income. Foxes, in turn, could easily fluctuate in population and market value. A Royal Commission on the Reindeer and Musk-ox instituted in 1919 sought to conserve wildlife and find a stable means of sustenance for the Eskimos. In 1926 the Dominion government decided to acquire reindeer from Alaska. It sent Erling Porsild and his brother Robert north in May to do feasibility surveys, purchase the animals, and oversee the transfer.

The Porsilds evaluated grazing conditions in the Mackenzie River Delta and dog-teamed thousands of miles through Alaska to examine reindeer herds. Primarily through the Lomen company they bought 3,515 reindeer and assembled them at Kotzebue Sound to be driven overland 1,600 miles through the Arctic by a crew of Eskimos and Lapps.⁴² To lead the expedition the Lomens called out of retirement a former employee and native of Lapland, Andrew Bahr. Bahr interpreted the project as a mission of mercy for the Canadian Eskimos. More than 60 years old and despite life-threatening illness during the trek, he endured throughout. Once, in the winter of 1931–1932, he spent five months backtracking to find lost reindeer, but by the time he returned to the main herd, as many more reindeer had been lost as he found.⁴³

Departing in November 1929, the trek ran into a host of daunting obstacles: deep winter snows in the Brooks Range, plagues of mosquitoes in summer, harsh living conditions causing crews to quit, bands of reindeer trying to return home or otherwise wandering off, and attacks by wolves that “continually harassed the herd, at times taking a great toll and compelling the herders to remain on watch day and night.” Calving and rutting season, dark nights, blizzards, and open rivers restricted travel to about four months per year. The herd reached the eastern Mackenzie Delta in February 1935 and put reindeer in the corrals at Kittigazuit on March 6. Only a minority of the original reindeer remained, but births had left the total at 2,370.⁴⁴ For reasons similar to those encountered in Alaska, however, reindeer herding did not spread in Canada.

Muskoxen

The muskox, a partial success story in the territorial period, originally resided on the Arctic tundra from northwest Alaska to Greenland as well as Siberia. Explorers, traders, and whalers found it relatively easy to subdue because of its habit of forming and holding a defensive arc. They valued the animal for food and for its exceedingly fine wool coat. Muskox hides from Canada served as warming robes on cutters when buffalo skins grew scarce. Hunters killed adults so the calves could be captured and sold to European zoos. Traders gave cheap guns to Eskimos in return for furs, causing more muskoxen to be killed for sale. As game grew less plentiful this practice made the Eskimos more dependent on the traders.⁴⁵ A Stefansson expedition to Melville Island slaughtered 400 muskoxen, and by 1930 only about 500 remained in mainland Canada. In 1927 Parliament created the Thelon Game Sanctuary in Northwest Territories for the muskoxen.⁴⁶

In Alaska, muskoxen appear to have been uncommon or rare at the time Euro-Americans arrived. Inuit hunters (Chapter 9) had apparently eliminated nearly all the scattered herds. Virtually none of the animals survived to the second half of the 19th Century. Barrow trader Charles Brower found muskox skulls at various sites on the North Slope and knew an old Eskimo who had killed the beasts with bow and arrow. Another of his Eskimo acquaintances told of a hard winter about 1858 when few seals appeared and people starved. His father took the family overland about nine miles southeast of Wainwright to Oo-Ming-Muc (“Muskox”), a tributary of the Kuk River. They discovered a band of muskoxen and killed, by one account, all thirteen.⁴⁷

In the eastern Brooks Range far from the coast, muskoxen probably hung on for several more decades. Irving McKinley Reed, a former member of the Alaska Game Commission, related that

the last two musk ox herds in Alaska had both been wiped out in the general area of the Chandalar River. One slaughter occurred in 1892 or 1893 when a band of Chandalar Kutchin and other Indians destroyed a herd of these animals on the height of land between the Christian and Sheenjek Rivers; the other took place in 1897 or 1898 when two French-Canadian trappers killed an entire herd of 18 muskoxen somewhere to the east of their cabin on Chandalar Lake (on North Fork of Chandalar River).

Whaling captain Hartson Bodfish, who wintered at Herschel and Baillie islands between 1890 and 1900, recalled, “While we wintered in the Arctic [Natives] killed all the musk oxen in an area of 150 miles.”⁴⁸ These may all have come from Canada, however.

Hunter-naturalist Andrew J. Stone made a point of inquiring about muskoxen during his travels in northern Alaska and northwestern Canada between 1897 and 1899. He noted that “specimens of Musk-Ox are reported to have been recently brought, by Camden Bay” from the Romanzof Mountains of northeastern Alaska. He interviewed Eskimos, Indians, whalers, traders, and others along the Arctic coast and in the upper Yukon drainage. But he could find no knowledge or evidence of surviving muskoxen in Alaska or even closer than 300 miles east of the Mackenzie River.⁴⁹

Some muskoxen may have lasted beyond the turn of the century. Hunter-explorer L.L. Bales wrote in 1908 that, based on information from Natives familiar with the region, the few remaining muskoxen lived in “that section north of the Endicott range of mountains, beginning at a point about 200 miles east of Point Barrow near the Colville River, and extending eastward to the boundary line. They do not range on the low, flat tundra near the Arctic sea coast, but are found on the moss-covered ridges and in the hilly country one hundred miles or more inland.”⁵⁰ Researchers found no physical evidence of muskoxen living in Alaska after the mid-19th Century.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Nome entrepreneur Jafet Lindeberg proposed to Governor Riggs in 1918 that muskoxen be imported from Greenland. Riggs responded positively, seeing an opportunity for economic development in the form of a wool and meat industry:

Muskoxen, College, early 1930s. Keys coll. 88-174-17, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives. Extirpated from Alaska in the 19th Century, muskoxen were successfully reintroduced.

Here is an animal which seems to be designed by nature to make a productive country out of barrens now serving no purpose. In the musk-ox are combined all the qualities most to be desired by a pioneer people of a desolate region. The northern portion of Alaska can never serve a better purpose than in becoming the grazing land of vast herds of reindeer and muskoxen, and when so utilized will become one of the great sources of meat supply for the United States.⁵¹

Edward Nelson and Charles Sheldon endorsed the idea of transplanting the animals, but it attained no action. In 1929 President Herbert Hoover designated Nunivak Island a reserve for reindeer breeding experiments. Bureau of Biological Survey officials used it for reestablishment of the muskox. A congressional appropriation enabled them to bring 34 from Greenland in 1930 and keep them at the reindeer experimental station at the University of Alaska. The Alaska Game Commission moved the remaining total of 31 to Nunivak Island in 1935 and 1936. By 1965 the band had grown to 500.⁵² Anticipating overpopulation at Nunivak, wildlife managers established several groups on the mainland between 1967 and 1970 (Table 14.4), and one group crossed on the ice. In 1975, following a 1972 agreement, 40 of the muskoxen went to Wrangel Island and the eastern Siberia mainland where they had been eradicated. Beginning in 1974, sport hunting by permit kept the Nunivak population at a sustainable level and gave Eskimos an opportunity to earn income by guiding or transporting hunters.⁵³

Muskoxen survived the Arctic winters in large part by the insulating quality of their wool, or qiviut. One of the finest, warmest, and most valuable hairs known, it gave rise to the idea of cottage industries producing fabrics from domesticated muskox herds. In Canada and Alaska the income could supplement the largely subsistence economies of Arctic and subarctic villages. As a result of urging by Stefansson, the Institute of Northern Agricultural Research brought 3 muskoxen from the Thelon sanctuary in Canada to Vermont in 1954. Satisfied that the animals could be successfully domesticated, the institute arranged for 33 to be captured on Nunivak Island in 1964 and 1965 to comprise a herd at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. In 1975–1977 the institute placed the herd in the Eskimo village of Unalakleet.⁵⁴ Small-scale commercial weaving proceeded at several locations.

Other Translocations

Bureau of Biological Survey agents conducted transplants of several species of game as early as 1917 (Table 14.4). In most cases they intended to introduce a species to a new area where it could be hunted rather than restore it to a location where it had become scarce. Agents successfully moved caribou to Adak Island in 1958–1959 and reintroduced them to the Kenai Peninsula in 1965. They released moose on the Copper River Delta between 1949 and 1957, at Berners Bay in 1958 and 1960, at the Chickamin River in 1963–1964, at Kodiak Island in 1966–1967, and at Kalgin Island in the late 1950s. The Chickamin and Kodiak efforts did not succeed. Dall sheep were taken to Kodiak Island without success in 1964–1965 and 1967 and mountain goats to Baranof Island in 1923, Kodiak Island in 1952–1953, and Chichagof Island in 1952–1954. They did not survive at Chichagof. Agents successfully moved Sitka deer to the islands and mainland of Prince William Sound between 1917 and 1923, to Kodiak Island in 1924 and 1934, to Yakutat Bay in 1934, and to Afognak Island, among other locations. Eight Roosevelt elk from Washington, placed on Afognak Island in 1929, prospered. Other attempts to relocate elk came to naught. Legal hunting on Afognak in most years between 1949 and 1963 yielded an average of 73 elk per season.⁵⁵

In the 1920s, when hunting pressure had cut back the moose population, interior Alaskans petitioned the Bureau of Biological Survey for game transplants. They suggested elk, white-tailed deer, and antelope. The bureau appeased them in 1928 by transporting plains bison from the National Bison Range at Moiese, Montana. They set nineteen free near Delta Junction.⁵⁶ One of the bulls injured its leg in transit. Frank Dufresne, who had charge of the relocation operation, returned with his wife, Klondy Nelson, to check on the bull’s status. Separated from Frank, Klondy came face-to-face with the emaciated and angry animal, which immediately began to chase her. As the bull bore down on his wife, Dufresne shot it.⁵⁷ The bison proliferated and became the source of herds at Copper River in 1950, Chitina in 1962, and Fairwell in 1965. Hunters filled permits for bison in the early 1950s and most years afterward. Severe winters and limited food supply kept a lid on population growth. Beginning in the 1950s and again in the 1970s, bison in the Delta herd ate and trampled crops on farms that had sprung up in their range. To mitigate the problem, game officials attempted to steer the bison away from farms and toward alternate food sources.⁵⁸

TABLE 14.4. Successful Transplants of Wild Terrestrial Mammals in Alaska, 1916–1970

Sources: Alaska Game Commission, 9th Annual Report to the Secretary of the Interior, July 1, 1947–June 30, 1948, 21–22; W.A. Elkins and Urban C. Nelson, “Wildlife Introductions and Transplants in Alaska” (Presented at Fifth Alaska Science Conf., Anchorage, September 7–10, 1954), 3–16; Oliver E. Burris and Donald E. McKnight, Game Transplants in Alaska (Juneau: Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, December 1973), 6–29; Albert W. Franzmann, Review of Alaskan Translocations, Appen. 1 (Juneau: Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, 1986).

Note: Does not include small-scale introductions not sanctioned by government. “Successful” denotes a viable remaining population.

Wood buffaloes, a separate subspecies, once inhabited Alaska in large numbers. Of many bones found, the most recent carbon-dated at 140 to 200 years. Elders in the upper Yukon River Valley described in detail buffalo hunts by their ancestors. Athabaskans prized the meat and skins and used the hair for thread or left it on the hide for warmth. Oral history consistently indicated that buffaloes had been numerous in the early 1800s and that a few had been seen or killed in the 1900s. In 1917 some buffaloes appeared near Eagle and became tangled in moose snares. They had likely come from remnant herds in Canada whose total population had been cut to a minute fraction of the original. Wildlife managers made no move to reinstate the wood bison in Alaska during the 20th Century.⁵⁹ Within the context of modern ecology and politics, such a move would be a lengthy process requiring research, interagency cooperation, and consultation of interest groups.

Mountain goat released at Hidden Basin, Kodiak Island, 1952. In Russell R. Hoffman, Refuge Narrative Report: Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, January to April 1952, Kodiak: Fish and Wildlife Service, 1952. Game officials tried to introduce several species into new localities. Goats survived on Baranof and Kodiak islands.

Many transplants happened before ecological perspectives had taken hold within the game management community, and they typically stemmed from demands by hunters or others seeking personal advantages. Single individuals or private groups released organisms without authorization from government, including raccoons on several islands in Southeast Alaska. The 1925 Alaska Game Law forbade such actions without a permit, although the Game Commission itself actively engaged in transplants it considered beneficial. So did the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Guidelines in the 1950s emphasized introduction of species to former habitat or across physical barriers to similar range and avoidance of injury to native species.⁶⁰

Unloading first buffalo, College, ca. 1928. Keys coll. 88-174-11, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska and Polar Regions Archives. Alaska Game Commission officials established plains buffaloes in Alaska. Wood buffaloes, a separate subspecies, had been native to the territory.

The disastrous consequences of fox introduction to seabird nesting islands (Chapter 13) suggested that serious ecological questions needed to be answered before executing transplants. One of the few to question the practice as it related to game mammals, Olaus Murie, urged caution. Reacting to a proposal to release elk in interior Alaska, he pointed out that elk would eat lichens and might compete for food and reduce populations of caribou, mountain sheep, and moose. Exotic species, said Murie, tended to proliferate beyond the habitat’s carrying capacity and then die out.⁶¹ Beyond biological considerations, introductions of exotic species involved questions of maintenance of wilderness integrity.

TERRESTRIAL FURBEARERS

Land furbearers in Alaska occupied for the most part a more modest position among political controversies than did ungulates, sea otters, and fur seals. Alaska Natives caught some for clothing and food. In the 18th Century or earlier, European demand for furs projected the trading routes across Siberia into Alaska and perhaps Arctic Canada. Eskimos relayed goods such as seal oil, baleen, tobacco, and copper or iron implements to more easterly Eskimos and interior Indians. In return, the skins of fox, marten, wolf, wolverine, beaver, and river otter moved westward.⁶²

The Russian Period

To supplement the profits from sea otters and fur seals, Russian fur traders directed attention toward land mammals. They forced Aleuts and Koniag Eskimos to trap foxes and river otters. Employing what coercion they deemed expedient, they acquired furs from the Tanaina Indians in the Cook Inlet vicinity and from other coastal Natives. The Tanainas, in turn, conveyed Russian trade goods to the Gwitch’in and other Athabaskan Indians in exchange for furs. Motivated in part by a desire to shut off the Eskimo-controlled flow of furs across Bering Strait, Russians erected forts in 1818 on the Nushagak River at Bristol Bay, in 1833 at St. Michael on the lower Yukon, and in 1839 at Nulato at the juncture of the Koyukuk and Yukon rivers. Construction of a trading post at Fort Yukon by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1847 posed a threat to Russian fur profits as well as their control of Alaska. Indians could acquire more guns, ammunition, sugar, tobacco, tea, and other desired trade goods in exchange for furs at Fort Yukon than from the Russians.⁶³ Moreover, the Russian hold on the interior proved tenuous. By one account, in a dispute among Native groups over control of fur territory, Koyukon Indians attacked the Nulato fort in 1851 and killed nearly all its inhabitants, including the manager.⁶⁴

During the 1860s the Russians sent the more valuable land furs—river otter, beaver, lynx, and red, silver, black, and blue fox—to Siberian trading centers for sale in Russia where buyers prized the silver and black foxes above the sea otter. Some beavers went to Shanghai and some to the United States, which also took white foxes. Aleut workers sewed mink, muskrat, and marten skins into parkas to be sold at Sitka. Bearskins, about 120 annually, went to St. Petersburg. Russians kept the few wolf and wolverine skins for use at St. Michael, their trading post on Norton Sound.⁶⁵ In all, they exported a large quantity of land mammal furs from Alaska (Table 14.5), but the total made up a small portion of profits.

Except locally and temporarily, and possibly excepting the beaver, trapping apparently did not endanger any species of land furbearer prior to the 20th Century. Russians considered the marten inferior to its Eurasian relative, the sable, so rather than ship it out, the Russian-American Company made the skins available to its higher-placed employees. Russians valued the river otter for trim on army officer uniforms as a substitute for the more prestigious sea otter. Beaver rose to the height of fashion in the mid-19th Century and then faded. Russians sold castoreum (beaver musk) in Asia for medicinal purposes. Some Indians and Eskimos considered the beaver’s flesh a delicacy and fashioned chisels and other tools from its teeth. Severe winters in the late 19th Century killed off many beavers. Alaska Natives used muskrat, mink, and wolverine for clothing trim; traders accepted few of these. Wolves comprised little of the fur trade, and traders bought lynx skins for carriage robes and clothing trim. Darker color phases of the red fox held higher value, the jet-black and silver far more prized than the cross and standard red varieties. Of the Arctic fox variations, traders much preferred the blue to the white. Alaska Natives, Asians, Europeans, and Americans all made fox fur into clothing.⁶⁶

TABLE 14.5. Selected Land Mammal Furs Shipped From Russian America and Alaska, 1745–1890

Source: Samuel Applegate, Report on Population and Resources of Alaska, Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington: GPO, 1893), 213–215.

Note: Does not include furs of less valued species, those lost in shipwrecks, those traded across Bering Strait by Natives, those smuggled into British Columbia, and those acquired by Northwest coast whalers and traders.

Post-1867 Trapping

In the American period, control of the Alaska fur trade by the Treasury Department passed to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Fisheries in 1903 and to the Agriculture Department’s Bureau of Biological Survey in 1920. Restriction of trapping rights between 1868 and 1899 to Alaska Natives, relatively conservative in their treatment of furbearer populations, limited the harvest. But many non-Natives came to prospect or trade during the Gold Rush era and supplemented their incomes through trapping.⁶⁷ Increasingly common forest fires lowered the numbers of foxes, lynx, ermine, and martens available to both Natives and non-Natives.⁶⁸

The Alaska Commercial Company and smaller independent traders took command of the fur business in the interior. Individual trappers could go directly to them, bypassing the Indian chiefs who had controlled the trading under British and Russian arrangements. Family-managed trapping territories thus evolved and spread to white trappers in the 20th Century. An influx of trade goods increased Natives’ material wants and dependence on outside industrial society. Prospectors took up trapping for extra income or as a way of remaining in the bush after giving up the full-time search for gold. They and Natives therefore competed in the fur trade, but trapping continued to be an important income source for Natives in the 20th Century.

Historian William Schneider described the trapping seasonal cycle of many Natives and non-Natives prior to midcentury:

Leaving the village in the fall before freeze-up with the winter’s “grub stake,” families headed up a tributary stream until they reached the main cabin. Before snowfall, wood had to be cut, and the winter supply of meat gotten. Soon after freeze-up the traps and snares would be set and from then until Christmas the trapper was moving, checking his trapline, then back to the cabin to skin and stretch fur. Some families traveled by dog team to the village at Christmas time to visit with friends, celebrate the holiday, and trade furs to the trader in exchange for store goods.

After the holiday the families returned to the trapline routine until spring when the orientation shifted from the major fur animals to beaver and muskrat. Most families stayed out on their trapline until spring breakup, then returned to the village by boat. After a short visit in the village the family had to go to fish camp where they remained until they had sufficient fish dried for their own needs and for dog feed. Then it was fall and time to resupply for trapping.⁶⁹

Trappers and their catch of furs. Core coll. 01-20-34, Alaska State Library. From left: ermine, mink, marten, lynx, wolf, river otter, and wolverine. Land furbearers, trapped throughout the Russian and American eras, did not suffer any species extinctions.

To get started, a lone trapper had to spend the summer transporting supplies into the interior, usually by poling a boat upriver. Then he would build a main cabin and several smaller ones along the trapline. Trapping commenced in mid-October. If the trapper had no dog team, he would check the traps twice a week on snowshoes, covering up to fifteen miles a day. Naturalist Lee R. Dice figured that in 1912 a hardworking trapper typically sold his seasonal fur catch for less than $500, barely enough for subsistence.⁷⁰

Besides the loneliness, cold, and other discomforts, a single trapper constantly risked accidents. In the Southeast around the turn of the century, a man stepped into a bear trap he had set. Despite crushed shinbones he managed to open the trap and free himself. He dragged himself to the shore, got into his boat, and rowed several miles to his cabin. A day or two later another man found him. The leg needed to be amputated and they had no prospect of reaching a doctor, 100 miles away, in time. They sterilized a hunting knife and an old saw, cut off the leg, and the trapper survived.⁷¹

As the 20th Century progressed, technological advances changed the trapping industry. Metal snares replaced the work-intensive deadfall; motorboats and eventually airplanes increased outreach. So did snowmobiles, succeeding dogsleds, which had replaced travel on snowshoes. A variety of related implements, such as chain saws and nylon fishing nets, boosted trapping efficiency. At the same time, trappers grew more dependent on outside sources for their supplies, and the desire for schooling and other services dampened families’ willingness to stay in remote locations.⁷²

Aircraft enabled trappers to operate great distances from home, and in the late 1930s whites from Fairbanks began to fly to better territory. In doing so, they encroached on Native traplines. To protect their rights and their prime source of income, the Chandalar Gwich’in Indians requested a reservation under the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, who had witnessed the success of the Metlakatla reservation and the degradation of other Alaska Native towns, favored reservations as bases for economic viability for Native Americans. In 1943 he approved a 1.8-million-acre Chandalar reservation.⁷³ The remote location, lack of known valuable mineral resources, and near-absence of white settlers enabled Native ownership of such a large block of land.

Fox Farming

Fox farming, an alternate means of acquiring furs, began when Russians introduced blue-phase Arctic foxes to various Aleutian islands. The rapidly reproducing creatures ran free and fed on native fauna, primarily seabirds (Chapter 13). They constituted a semicaptive population for trapping whenever convenient. Americans followed suit in the 1880s and learned to attract foxes to feeding pens for regular meals of fish and sea mammal meat. Having eliminated the wild birds, the foxes adapted to the pens. An attached trap house allowed the operators to sort out the foxes for breeding purposes or to be slaughtered for the market. On the mainland, fur farmers kept the animals permanently in pens to prevent escape. They also raised mink and martens on a minor scale.

American fox farmers obtained permits from the Treasury Department or, later, the Commerce, Agriculture, or Interior departments. The Forest Service leased islands under its jurisdiction, mainly in the Southeast. Until the 1940s or later the agencies viewed their objective as generating industry on otherwise useless islands. They lacked scientific data or concern for the ecological effects of fox introductions. Farmers stocked two species: Arctic (nearly always in the blue rather than the white color) and red (preferably in the silver or black rather than the red or cross varieties). Black and silver fox pelts reached high peaks of value at various times in the late 19th Century through the 1920s.

Well-publicized top prices for fox furs attracted numerous hopeful entrepreneurs to Alaska. The furs they produced tended to saturate the market and bring down prices, making it difficult for them to realize a profit. Success depended on a substantial capital investment for the license, breeding pairs, buildings, food, and other supplies. It called for knowledge of fox behavior and diligent attention to the details of operation. One also needed the patience to live in a distant location and wait several years before making any monetary gain. Island-raised blue foxes in particular presented a host of problems. Feeding them required money and work. Males often killed pups, and eagles occasionally did. Adults fought one another and sometimes killed and ate others. Breeding for quality could not be well controlled. On the rainy islands in the Southeast, fur became matted and less desirable. Pups died of pneumonia, and dampness aided internal and external parasites. Given the number of obstacles, few fox farmers made any money in Alaska. Licenses hit a high of 356 in 1929 and entered a continual slide accelerated by the Depression and World War II. By 1960 virtually no fox farms remained.⁷⁴

Like commercial fisheries and other enterprises controlled by white people, fox farming worked a hardship on Alaska Natives. In the Southeast, the Forest Service had leased 140 islands to fox farmers by 1923. In apparent violation of the 1884 Alaska Organic Act, the service issued leases without determining use of islands by Indians. In 1925 the Alaska Native Brotherhood, dedicated to improvement of the social and economic well-being of Natives, issued a complaint that fox farmers had “driven the Indians of southeastern Alaska from their homes on many islands. The home of at least one Indian widow with six children has been destroyed and her garden products actually used by the beneficiaries of the Forest Department officials in Alaska. Another Indian, a very old man, was forced out of his island and his home and smokehouse actually made to serve as fox pens.”⁷⁵ The Indians received little sympathy from the Forest Service and fought for decades more before winning recognition of their land claims.

Outside economic forces dictated the fortunes of fox farmers, trappers, and furbearer populations. Whereas a shift in fashion accelerated trapping of a species of furbearer, it could soon change course and remove the pressure. High prices induced periodic influxes of trappers (post–World War I, the mid-to late 1920s, the late 1930s, post–World War II), and then competition and falling prices would lower the number of trappers.⁷⁶ Fur prices plummeted in 1949, remained low through the 1950s, and revived in the 1960s and 1970s.

Snowmobiles appeared in interior villages in the 1960s and replaced dog teams by the end of the 1970s. They permitted trappers to cover far wider areas while living in the villages, but they necessitated increased cash income. Sales of trapping licenses peaked in the 1980s and fell off steadily. Protests by animal rights groups influenced fashion trends. Effective in the mid-1990s the European Union banned importation of pelts from a list of furbearer species originating in nations that permitted leg-hold traps or otherwise failed to adopt internationally recognized humane standards. Banned Alaskan species included beaver, ermine, coyote, fisher, lynx, marten, otter, and wolf.⁷⁷

Law Enforcement

Conservation measures, and the wide distribution and secretive nature of many species of terrestrial furbearers, protected all from extinction. Furbearer harvest (Table 14.6) could be controlled more readily than most hunting, in part because fur sales, unlike poached meat, left a paper trail. Methods of killing normally went unrecorded. The beaver, a prized animal easily located by its dams and houses, experienced the greatest abuse. Early white trappers caught beavers with dynamite, poison, netting, and shooting and by destroying dams and houses. Scarcity of beavers prompted a series of trapping bans. A 1927 regulation stipulated that all beaver and marten skins must be inspected and “sealed”—accompanied by signed statements that they had been legally caught.⁷⁸ Some trappers avoided regulations by smuggling beaver and marten pelts into Canada.⁷⁹

Flying wardens performed effectively in monitoring the take of beavers. According to writer Russell Annabel, Clarence Rhode told of a fearsome rogue trapper named 30-30 John who boasted that no warden dared interfere in his rascally operations. One day an exhausted, bedraggled man appeared at a warden station. The puzzled agent in charge investigated his case. Several weeks earlier a warden, while flying over a beaver pond, had spotted a man illegally setting nets. Finding no place to land, he scrawled on a piece of paper, “Turn yourself in to the nearest Fish and Wildlife Station,” then flew back over the pond and dropped it out the window. He expected no response.

TABLE 14.6. Reported Fur Exports From Alaska, 1912–1964

Source: Alan M. Courtright, Alaska Big Game Harvest Data (Juneau: Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, November 1964).

Note: Many or most foxes came from fox farms. Many wolf and wolverine pelts remained for use in Alaska.

The man had come to turn himself in. “Well, here I am,” he said. “I couldn’t git here no sooner, on account of I had to build a raft, an’ the damned raft hit a rock an’ busted up, an’ my outfit went down the river. I had to walk in, livin’ on squirrels an’ stuff, an’ the mosquitoes like to et me alive. Your airplanes are too much for me; I know when I’m licked,” lamented 30-30 John.⁸⁰

Martens grew scarce because they could be caught easily and because their pelts sold for high prices. Officials decreed closed seasons in the 1910s, the 1920s, and the 1940s.⁸¹ Mink, solitary and widely distributed creatures, never atrophied as a species. Neither did lynx or foxes, whose numbers paralleled the cycles of rabbits and ptarmigan. Coyote numbers climbed in the 1920s and fell off in the 1940s, possibly because of the increase in wolves. Wolves dwindled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from poisoning and again in the 1950s following the federal poisoning and aerial shooting campaign. Wolverines, secretive and wily, could not be easily counted, nor could they be greatly imperiled before the snowmobile era without a widespread suppression effort. Their durable fur served for parka ruffs but not fur coats in the fashion world. A brief period of predator control may have made inroads in their population. But their low density and nocturnal nature protected them except in open country.

Black bears existed throughout forested areas except for some islands in the Southeast. They have not been commonly taken for food, in part because dining on salmon gives their flesh an unpleasant taste. They have been less feared or sought after for furs or trophies than grizzly bears, and the commercial value of their pelts dropped precipitously in the 1920s and 1930s. They encountered no serious risk of depletion during the territorial period.

Wolverine in leg-hold trap, Anchorage vicinity, 1949. By Fred Humes. FWS 6674, Alaska Resources Library and Information Services. Trappers pursued this uncommon and secretive wilderness creature both for its fur and as a predator. Note patch of skin chewed off.

Grizzly or brown bears, less amenable to civilization, lived in wilder regions of forest, mountains, and tundra. Support in the States helped them survive the era of hide marketing and won them some protection in reserves and wildlife refuges. Their numbers increased after the 1925 Game Law prohibited the sale of their skins, and educational efforts by the Alaska Game Commission reduced the number killed by commercial fishers who regarded them as competition for salmon. But cattle interests, loggers, settlers, and others often treated them as a menace to human safety and enterprise. Conflicts recurred for decades after statehood.

VALUING WILDLIFE

From the onset of control by the United States to the time of statehood, management of Alaskan land mammals rested predominantly on utilitarian conservation values. Government attempted, often feebly, to assure an ongoing supply of each species to the extent that it provided desirable meat and fur. Division of jurisdiction among the Treasury, Commerce, and Agriculture departments hampered management efficiency before 1924. But the frontier mentality of salmon fishers, miners, settlers, and some Natives posed the greatest barrier. They operated on an assumption of unlimited natural resources or, if limits existed, on the principle that they should grab the resource before someone else did. Early whites in Alaska felt free to kill wildlife wherever and whenever they pleased, and Natives often slaughtered without any sense of conservation. Government, mainly through the Bureau of Biological Survey, strove to shift wildlife utility values from frontier exploitation to sustainable utilitarianism. While some officials appreciated wildlife for aesthetic or spiritual reasons, their public statements focused on sustainable consumptive use.

Alaskan wildlife represented much more than an amenity; it lay at the core of Alaska’s economy and identity. The territory, more than any of the 48 states, held relatively intact wildlife populations. But World War II and its aftermath accelerated the assault on wildlife through rising human population, more versatile transportation means, and other modern implements. If wildlife and wilderness were to be retained, greater recognition of their economic and social value would be necessary. John Buckley, research director at the University of Alaska, attempted a quantification of economic values of wildlife in the early 1950s (Table 14.7). He concluded that wildlife yielded nearly three times as much economic value as mining, agriculture, and forestry combined.⁸²

Resource analysts projected a 30 percent increase in Alaskan wildlife economic value by 1961, including a disproportionate rise in recreation. National Park Service planner Lowell Sumner expected a rapid increase of wilderness-oriented tourists and believed tourism could become the major industry. Alaskans, he thought, needed to adjust their attitudes toward wildlife accordingly:

Surely, greater ultimate prosperity and happiness will come to Alaska’s people through deliberately accepting and adjusting their way of life to their unique resources of climate, scenery, wildlife, and wild spaces. This is most likely to happen if they take pride in and consciously hold on to the best features of the frontier way of life for its own special values, rather than thinking of it as something to get rid of as rapidly as possible.

To be successful the future economy will have to use, without using up, all of Alaska’s renewable resources, from seal skins to scenery, under a program which will perpetuate these resources indefinitely and retain more of the income at home. It is within the framework of this picture of the future—in which the frontier remains a living background—that leading persons in Alaska believe the infant tourist industry may outstrip all others in its potentiality.⁸³

Sumner’s assumptions about tourism increase proved valid. But a year after his article appeared, Alaska entered an oil era that would last well over half a century and generate multiple impacts on Alaskan culture, wildlife, and wilderness.

TABLE 14.7. Values of Wildlife and Other Natural Resources in Alaska, 1952

Source: John L. Buckley, Wildlife in the Economy of Alaska. Biological Papers of the University of Alaska No. 1 (Fairbanks, February 1955), 33.

a= under Subsistence and Raw land fur

b= people may be in more than one category; figures are not additive

Partially excepting the grizzly bear, which enjoyed somewhat of a public following, the pre-statehood game laws did not protect species for nonconsumptive purposes. Yet a range of intangible values, while difficult to quantify, remained important to many people in Alaska as well as in the States. Sumner argued that if the time spent in wildlife recreation were converted into dollars, it might double the value of wildlife. In the absence of proper measuring sticks, he advised, it would be unwise to diminish wildlife resources. “Many, possibly most, permanent residents,” he thought, “would not care to make Alaska their home if the fighting trout and yearly salmon runs were gone except in old pictures, if the trails of bear and moose had faded from the river banks, if the bands of wandering caribou were only a legend handed down from a vanished frontier.”⁸⁴

Elements of ecosystem preservation as a valued goal appeared before statehood, as in parks and refuges and in Leopold and Darling’s work on caribou, moose, and wolves. Advocating the Arctic Refuge, Sumner pointed out that several wilderness species including caribou, muskoxen, grizzly bears, and wolverines needed large expanses of land not degraded by development: “Looking ahead 50 years, it is becoming clear that the only opportunity for maintaining a pure wilderness area large enough for the indefinite preservation of the caribou and other space-requiring animals, lies in northeast Arctic Alaska.”⁸⁵

Most ungulate transplants, carried out before statehood, violated principles of ecosystem sustainability. Reindeer in particular held the potential for vast ecological damage. The new ecological approach to research did not make its presence felt in the field much before the late 1950s. Biological science adequate for understanding population and ecosystem dynamics, especially for such mobile species as caribou, would take many additional years of work beyond statehood.