Kenai National Wildlife Refuge - Alaska

Every summer near its confluence with the Russian River, the Kenai River charges in a flurry of milky glacial blue while grizzly bears, bald eagles and humans with fishing poles gear up for a singular and spectacular event in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. It is the season when five species of Pacific salmon begin their arduous upstream journey.

Around this commotion, other wild inhabitants of this refuge go about the work of survival. Moose forage in the willow bogs and shrub lands of this nearly 2-million-acre refuge originally created for them. Today they reside along with caribou, Dall sheep, wolves, wolverines and 170 species of birds on one of the system's most popular refuges. Kenai is known as "Little Alaska" because it contains nearly every kind of geologic feature and wildlife habitat found in the immense state, from icefields to alpine tundra, rolling hills, meadows, forests and wetlands.

The Threat

From the air, the Kenai Peninsula displays many scars of rapid warming. Retreating glaciers expose churned-up rocky debris. Frequent forest fires transform the landscape to an ebony char. Insect infestations leave spruce forests toppled in gray defeated heaps. Yellowed rims encircle drying lakebeds.

While the global average temperature has risen 1 degree Fahrenheit, Alaska has warmed by an average of 4 degrees since the 1950s. Even on the ground, the effects of warming are obvious and everywhere. Spruce bark beetles, their life cycles accelerated by rising temperatures, have killed most of the mature white, Lutz and Sitka spruce on the peninsula - half of the peninsula's forested land - leaving the dry skeletons of these trees to fuel fast and furious forest fires. This major loss of forest cover has markedly changed wildlife habitat, including habitat for fish that require submerged woody debris to survive. In some areas, competition with invasive grasses makes it difficult for forests to come back.

The tree line at higher altitudes has risen about a meter per year over the last 50 years, encroaching on the alpine tundra so critical to Dall sheep and many other animals. Wetlands and ponds are drying up and lake levels are dropping. Black spruce forests are colonizing wetlands, degrading habitat for waterfowl and other wetland-dependent creatures.