Vermin vehicles — Rodents hitch homes in people’s cars, trucks

Photo courtesy of Rhonda McCormick. An unidentified rodent — perhaps a mouse, vole or squirrel — gnawed a hole into the wall of Rhonda McCormick’s vehicle and set up a nest inside, causing hundreds of dollars in damages.

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

Rodents, with their beady eyes, yellow teeth and long, leathery tails, are right up there with spiders and snakes in terms of the fear they can bring on in most people. It is a feeling Rhonda McCormick, of Soldotna, can relate to after she determined that an unknown vermin had taken up residence in her vehicle.

“Just knowing it was in the car with me, that I drove around with it for four days, it just grosses me out,” she said.

She realized the tiny, tailed stowaway after she left the grocery store March 30. She was loading her groceries into her still-new KIA Sorento, when she noticed something odd.

“There looked like there was a cookie or piece of wafer or something on the floor,” she said.

As she leaned to scoop it up, her eyes met with a small, nibbled hole in the interior wall.

Not only did it click in McCormick’s mind what the hole meant, but it also dawned on her that this might have something to do with why her rear window washing fluid suddenly stopped working just a few days earlier.

She called her insurance company, which agreed McCormick’s policy covered this sort of thing, so she brought her vehicle in for repairs to Driven Auto Body in Soldotna.

“I left the car there,” she said. “I wasn’t driving around with that thing any longer.”

In her life in Alaska, McCormick has never even heard of this kind of problem. She asked friends on Facebook, and no one else had ever had a similar incident. But Zach Strahan, an assistant manager at the repair shop, said that rodent-based repairs are more common than most people would think.

“We get at least a handful of these every year,” he said.

As to McCormick’s specific rodent, Strahan said he wasn’t sure exactly what type it was — mouse, vole, squirrel or something else. McCormick had set a trap in the car before bringing it in, and several others were set at the repair shop, but none yielded success.

Assuming the rodent fled the vehicle, Strahan said they began disassembling the damaged portions of McCormick’s car. While the mechanics still haven’t seen the rodent, they can attest to the damage it left behind.

“As we disassembled the inside, left-corner panel next to the spare tire, we found a nest. It had a lot of nesting material, and several pieces of food,” he said.

The rodent was somewhat clean, though, as Strahan said there was not much feces among the other debris. Still, the repairs began adding up.

“It can get expensive fast, as they get inside and cause mechanical or electrical issues. Right now, we’re at about $500 to $600 in repairs, but we’re still finding stuff,” he said.

McCormick’s rodent went for the inside of her vehicle, but others go for more external housing, as Kevin Hayes, of Kasilof, can confirm. He recently began seeing the elongated, white body of a weasel around his home.

“I think it’s living in the insulation of the garage walls because I can hear movement in there,” he said.

Hayes parks his pickup truck in the garage in winter, and also stores bags of garbage in there overnight until he can transport the trash to the dump the next day. He said that both of these things may need to stop soon, at least temporarily, due to the unwanted guest.

“The weasel had already begun getting into the trash. But about a week ago, we were getting ready to go to Anchorage so I went to check the oil. When I lifted the hood, it had four chicken bones in there. I think it was dragging trash in there to eat it when the engine was still warm,” he said.

Hayes said that he’s hoping to put a stop to this activity soon, before the weasel chews up a hose, belt or some other important part of the motor.

While Hayes knew the source of his rodent problem, McCormick is still wondering how hers got started.

“It’s a brand-new car. I just got it in October. And I park in the garage every night. So, the only thing I can think of is, I work at the Kenai Watershed Forum, and that’s in kind of a woodsy area, so maybe it got in there,” she said. “Either that or it was already in there when I bought it, but I hope not. I’m a clean freak and the idea of it being in there that long freaks me out.”

On the hunt — Game board loosens bear, wolf, moose restrictions

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Moose numbers may not be what they once were on the Kenai Peninsula, but hunting regulations moved a small, spiked step closer to what they have been in the past, as the Alaska Board of Game enacted measures liberalizing harvest opportunities for several species and extending predator control measures on the Kenai Peninsula, during its Southcentral Region meeting March 15 to 19 in Kenai.

Moose

The board passed several measures relating to moose hunting, meant to balance harvest opportunity while protecting the diminished population.

Moose numbers in Units 15A and 15C have fluctuated over the decades but have shown consistent decline since the 1980s, largely due to limited habitat availability — particularly in 15A in the northwestern central peninsula, and also predation, road kills and hunting pressure. Two years ago the board enacted strict hunting regulations to limit the moose harvest and improve the ratios of bulls and calves to cows, with only bulls with a 50-inch-or-greater antler spread or four brow tines on one side being eligible for harvest. According to ongoing studies done by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, moose are still struggling in 15A.

“To me the most telling statistic is the declining moose abundance trend we are seeing. Not only are we well below our intensive management objective, but our population is declining annually with no sign of stabilization or growth,” said Doug Vincent-Lang, director of the Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation.

There’s better news in Unit 15C, south of Tustumena Lake, where moose numbers are higher and the bull-to-cow ratio has improved since 2011.

“We have information that suggests habitat is not limiting moose production in this unit to the extent that it is in 15A. Bottom line is that we’re below harvest goals but within population goals,” Vincent-Lang said.

Proposal 143 suggested loosening the hunting restriction to bulls with a 50-inch or greater antler spread, or four brow tines or a spike on one side — essentially moving some of the wiggle room in the rebuilding moose population to potential harvest.

“It’s been stated that you can’t bank moose, and I think that’s very true, particularly in 15A,” said Jeff Selinger, Kenai area wildlife manager for Fish and Game. The department recommended adoption of the amended Proposal 143.

Not all hunters want the extra wiggle room in harvest, however. Several members of the public and representatives of area Fish and Game Advisory Committees requested that the board leave the 2011 restriction in place to help the moose population continue to rebound.

“An overwhelming majority of the moose-hunting public supports leaving the restriction as it is. They’ve seen it has had a positive impact. Let’s leave it in place a good four to five years to make a big impact,” said Bob Ermold, with the Kenai-Soldotna Advisory Committee.

Board members, rather, saw the population as stable enough to support additional harvest.

“There has been public testimony asking us to retain (the current regulation). That being said, I think it’s important to retain the structure but allow opportunity to harvest a few more moose. I think that’s an appropriate step for now,” said Nate Turner, vice chair.

Board seeks moose boost — Few solutions seen to declining browse habitat

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. A Kenai Peninsula hunter testifies Friday to the Alaska Board of Game during its Southcentral Region meeting held Friday through Tuesday in Kenai.

The Alaska Board of Game worked its way through the Kenai Peninsula portion of its agenda Tuesday, liberalizing hunting and trapping opportunities on moose, wolves and bears.

The following are measures regarding moose adopted at Tuesday’s meeting:

• Proposal 143 — Modify the bag limit for moose to one bull per year with an antler spread of 50 inches or greater, or a spike or four brow tines on one side in Game Management Units 7 and 15. The season will stay the same — Aug. 10 to 17 for bow hunting and Aug. 20 to Sept. 20 for the general hunt. The requirement that antlers be sealed by a department representative within 10 days also is retained, except in the Placer River/Placer Creek permit hunt, which is open to retention of any bulls. The proposal also adds a definition of a spike as “antlers of a bull moose with only one tine on at least one side; male calves are not spike bulls.”
• Proposal 147 was adopted, lowering the intensive management population objective for moose in Unit 15A from a range of 3,000 to 3,500 to a range of 2,000 to 2,900, and lowering the intensive management harvest objective for moose in 15A from a range of 180 to 350 to a range of 120 to 290. The proposal retains Fish and Game’s ability to conduct aerial shooting of wolves in Units 15A and 15C as a measure of predator control to benefit moose populations, although this has not been implemented since the board first OK’d aerial wolf kills at its meeting in 2011. This proposal also approves allowing Fish and Game to employ or contract with trappers to target wolves and increase their harvest within the established wolf-trapping season and related regulations, as another measure of predator control.
• Proposal 148 reauthorizes the antlerless moose season in a portion of Unit 15C — the roughly 100-square-mile bench area around Homer.
• Proposal 150 failed. It would have allowed the use of motorized vehicles to retrieve harvested moose meat during certain hours — 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and during the “dark of night” — in the Lower Kenai Controlled Use Area.
• Proposal 151 failed. It would have reinstituted a closure of the Palmer Creek/Lower Resurrection Creek areas in Unit 7 to moose hunting. The area, near Hope, will remain open to moose hunting.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Thirty years ago, moose on the Kenai Peninsula were legendary for their size and abundance. Now, however, it appears increasingly likely that those historic days are, indeed, history, as land and wildlife managers wrestle with measures to boost the dwindled ungulate population.

In the halcyon days, the peninsula’s moose population was estimated at around 4,000. Nowadays, it’s far less than that. A recent census, conducted just a few weeks ago by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, estimates 1,600 moose in Game Management Unit 15A, covering 1,300 square miles of the northwestern Kenai Peninsula. That’s down from about 2,000 in 2008, and that, in turn, is about 40 percent less than census estimates in the 1990s. Just four moose were harvested by hunters in 15A last year, and just four the previous year, down from the once-typical 350 to 360 a year. That’s in part due to the smaller population, and in part due to decreased hunter participation after the Alaska Board of Game enacted stepped-up hunting restrictions in 2011 to protect the population.

The Board of Game met in Kenai from Friday through Tuesday to consider proposals covering Game Management Units in Southeast, Cordova, Kodiak, the Anchorage area and the Kenai Peninsula. Nine proposals were submitted regarding moose on the peninsula, aimed at finding a balance between bolstering the population with the hope of increasing hunter opportunity.

The proposed changes are largely incremental — measured tweaks to conditions and regulations, which, if results come as intended, would effect incremental changes to the population. But the biggest contributing factor to the decline in moose population is far more substantial, than incremental, in scale.

Moose are not werewolves, yet there is believed to be a silver-bullet solution to the most significant problem of their decline. What’s needed, say land and wildlife managers, is fire, but not just any fire. This would be the Goldilocks of wildland fire — hot enough to burn down to mineral soil but not too hot so as to burn out of control, widespread enough to regenerate tens of thousands of acres of forest that has matured beyond the point of providing good moose browse, yet not so big that it poses too big a threat to human health, habitation, development and transportation, and occurring under just the right conditions and timing so as to not overtax available firefighting resources.

That solution is proving to be as mythical as werewolves.

“The Kenai has had harvest well in excess of 1,200 moose alone, historically, and you’re going to hear from a lot of folks who have been here a long time and remember the good old days and want those days back,” said Ted Spraker, chair of the Board of Game and retired Kenai-area Fish and Game wildlife biologist, in starting off the meeting Friday.

Bounty on sea otters? Legislation would offer $100 per pelt to shrink species numbers

Redoubt Reporter file photo. A sea otter bobs in the surf out of Seward.

By Naomi Klouda

Homer Tribune

A Republican from Sitka filed a bill proposing to place a $100 bounty on sea otters, a population deemed so out of control it could be responsible for millions of dollars lost to the seafood industry.

Sen. Bert Stedman sponsored Senate Bill 60, which, if passed, would be used as a management tool. The bill had its first hearing Wednesday in Juneau. Since the bill isn’t restricted to boundaries, it could impact other parts of Alaska, as well, like Kachemak Bay, where a healthy otter population thrives.

The senator writes in his sponsor statement that in Southeast, the growing sea otter population is devastating the shellfish biomass.

“Sea otters are the only marine mammals without blubber. As a result, the animals have a high metabolism and require large amounts of food to survive,” it states.

As justification, the focus is on the voracious appetites possessed by otters. The sponsor statement inventories the otter diet as consisting mainly of crabs, clams, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, shrimp and abalone. Sea otters can consume up to 25 percent of their body weight per day. One male otter can consume up to 7,300 pounds of food per year.

As of 2012, it is estimated that there are 21,500 sea otters in Southeast, up significantly from previous years. Using an average body weight of 65 pounds and a daily food intake of 25 percent of body weight, a sea otter population of 21,500 animals will consume over 127 million pounds of shellfish per year, he estimates.

“To put that into perspective, the entire 2010 Southeast Alaska harvest in the dive and dungeness crab fisheries was 5.9 million pounds,” Stedman said in his sponsor statement.

If unchecked, the population, “inevitably threatens the future of dive fisheries and crab fisheries in Southeast; jeopardizing hundreds of jobs and tens of millions of dollars in economic activity for the region,” he wrote.

One bear, two bears, more for you bears? Brown bear genetic hair sampling snares higher population estimate for Kenai Peninsula

By Joseph Robertia

Photos courtesy of John Morton, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. A brown bear boar leaves a hair-collecting station during a population census conducted during 2010. The resulting report pegs the Kenai Peninsula’s brown bear population at 624, the highest probability point in the range produced in the study.

Redoubt Reporter

For years many people have anecdotally suggested there are more brown bears on the Kenai Peninsula than the thrown-about estimate of 250 to 300. Last week the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge released findings from its DNA-based mark-recapture study that confirmed the sentiment, with a new estimate of 624 brown bears.

But, does this mean that there are more bears, much less, as some suggest, too many bears on the peninsula?

“Just because we have 624 now doesn’t necessarily mean there are more bears,” said John Morton, a supervisory biologist with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge who oversaw the project. Rather, he said that the 624 number may simply reflect a more accurate estimate for a population number that has been here for years.

“It’s still at the low end for coastal brown bears, and not really a lot for the entire peninsula when you consider its overall size and resources. But it is a more solid and scientifically based estimate compared to the 250 to 300, which was useful at the time, but was based on densities from the Susitna area.”

The new estimate — comprised of 200 males, 200 females and 224 cubs — was derived after refuge biologists spent more than a month collecting hair samples in 2010. Bear habitat across the peninsula was divided into cells forming a grid. Each cell had a lure station baited with a mixture of fermented fish oil and cow’s blood, surrounded by barbed wire. As the bruins passed the wire — stepping over or going under it — their hair got caught in the barbs.

Using two helicopters with two, four-person crews assigned to each one, the two crews leapfrogged each other from one sampling point to another, deploying and retrieving traps and collecting hair samples, from 16 to 20 hair stations each day. That equates to checking each station about every seven to 10 days. The number of hair samples retrieved varied depending on location. Some stations had zero and some stations have had up to 721, but 12 samples seems to be the average.

“We got more than 11,000 hair samples in the end,” Morton said. “It was a lot of work, and I’m thankful that — given the

A tired bear census crew member rests in front of a helicopter used to shuttle crews from lure station to lure station.

nature of what we were doing, landing helicopters in remote areas where we knew there were bears — I’m glad no one was hurt.”

Despite the arduous nature of collecting the hair samples, the real hard work began when the collection phase was over. The hair samples were sent to a lab in British Columbia and had to be separated — brown bears from blacks, which took months. Then the samples had to be analyzed further and the data reviewed for accuracy. It was these latter points that resulted in the two-year delay of releasing the final number of 624.

“We took months to crunch the numbers, but it was best to have it peer-reviewed by people outside the refuge and outside of Alaska,” Morton said.

Having a more accurate estimate will bring some changes related to the brown bear population, Morton said, but it’s tough to say for certain what those may be, since state and federal wildlife managers often have different ideas and directives about how to manage bruins.

“We manage game collaboratively with the state, but at the refuge, our mandate is to conserve wildlife. We’re not interested in artificially inflating or deflating a population, so for us, I don’t see anything being too different in the short run for how we manage brown bears.”

Dog owners snap over traps — Conflict brews in recreation areas of Cooper Landing

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

As Cooper Landing musher Robert Bear headed up to a major mid-distance sled dog race in the Interior last weekend, he did so without two of his best dogs. Back at home were his two leads, sitting out this race, and others to come, due to injuries sustained after being caught in the bone-crushing clamp of a leg-hold trap early last month.

“One of the dogs lost its front right leg and the other part of its front paw,” Bear said.

This is the second time in two years he’s had a dog caught in a trap, although he was able to quickly release the dog the last time, he said. This time, however, was not so fortunate.

He was hooking up for a training run off of Snug Harbor Road. The dogs were amped to go, Bear explained, and as he was attaching dogs to the lines as quickly as he could, it wasn’t quick enough for one of the dogs just behind the leaders. It chewed through the mainline and set the two leaders free.

“They took off sprinting,” he said. “I immediately went out looking for them, and nothing. I continued looking for them for 48 hours before I finally heard one of them howl as I was going by.”

Bear followed the sound a short distance through the forest and found the two dogs, cold, dehydrated and hungry, but alive. They were clamped in side-by-side traps.

“This was less than 50 feet from the road and between the senior center and the Girl Scout camp. Baited with meat and feathers, so I think any loose dog could have been caught in them,” he said.

Equally concerning to Bear is that, while trapping season for many species opened Nov. 10, lynx season wasn’t set to begin until Jan. 1. Bear’s dogs were caught Dec 13. From the trappers he’s described the setup to, it seemed the traps was either legally targeting coyote or illegally targeting lynx.

Despite the accident, Bear said that he’s not against trappers or responsible trapping.

“I use ruffs and other fur for mushing, so I’m not anti-trapping,” he said, “but I do want to create an awareness of the dangers within our community. It’s not safe right now. We can’t hardly recreate on trails they call multiuse, because once those traps are set, they kind of become single-use in the mind of most dog owners.”

Ken and Kate Green, of Cooper Landing, have had their Labradors caught on multiple occasions, as well.

“Since trapping in this area is a significant problem for hikers, skiers and dog walkers, it would be very nice to get the word out. We have had our dogs caught in foothold traps and snares over the past three years. All traps were within 25 to 50 feet of the lake or roads and, to the best of our knowledge, unmarked,” Kate said.

Her husband, Ken, remembers each of the events clearly, since he was with their dogs. The first time was while recreating with his three Labradors — two of the younger ones off-leash — at a popular picnic site referred to by the locals as Five-Mile Beach or Waikiki.

“About 20 feet from Snug Harbor Road — up the embankment, on the beach just at tree line — the loose puppy got caught in a snap trap — jaws, but without teeth. Other than the howling and whining, she was unhurt. I released her easily enough. The trap was rusted, the bait seemed to have long deteriorated, and the only marking was a small piece of surveyor’s tape, which was faded. The trap appeared to have been there for some time,” he said.

Green wasn’t sure if the trap was deliberately deserted or just forgotten about by whoever set it, but either way he said it shouldn’t have been left behind since it could only have made the intended species unduly suffer since no one ever came to check it, but also because it could have caught a nontarget animal or even a small child recreating in the area.

The second time one of Green’s dogs was caught, he said it was again at a common recreation site for Copper Landing residents. This time it was along the shore of Kenai Lake.

“I was walking the same three dogs the next early spring, this time along the Quartz Creek side. The road ends at a small turnaround and a path leads to the beach which is wide and walkable at that time of year,” he said. “I noticed a DVD disc hanging on a branch just off the beach, and figured that some kids were playing around. When I came across another in another tree, I realized what they were.”

Science of the Seasons: Arctic sea ice is nice for many mammals

By Dr. David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

My first introduction to seals came on a grainy, black-and-white TV when trained seals performed on some variety show. They were a strange animal when first seen, since they didn’t look anything like the all familiar dogs, cats, horses or cows. They were awkward on land and I never got to see their graceful swimming motions until underwater cameras became popular. It took many trips to Alaska and several years as a volunteer at the Alaska SeaLife Center before I really had any understanding about these amazing creatures.

However, many Alaskans learn the ways of seals as they grow up because seals are a normal part of the rural subsistence lifestyle. Seals are hunted on a regular basis in many Native communities as a nutrient-rich food source. Seals are not only hunted for their meat. Seal oil, which is rendered from seal blubber, can be used as an additive to other traditional foods, for waterproofing skin boats or as a traditional fuel for oil lamps. Additionally, seal furs are treasured for garments like boots, hats, gloves and coats.

Along Alaska’s north and western coasts, two of the most commonly hunted seals are the bearded and ringed seals. These are commonly referred to as ice seals because they spend most of their time on or around ice. These seals mate, give birth, raise their young, and rest on or under Arctic sea ice. Only rarely do these seals actually come to shore.

Juvenile otter rescued on road — Pup was likely looking for separated mother

By Naomi Klouda

Photo courtesy of Alaska Sea-Life Center. A baby sea otter is recovering at the Alaska SeaLife Center after being rescued from a road in Homer last week.

Homer Tribune

A baby female sea otter was rescued from Kachemak Drive on Oct. 17 after it crawled out of Mud Bay on a high tide and motorists found it on the road.

The otter, about 18 inches in length, had apparently become separated from its mother, said Debbie Boege-Tobin, an assistant professor of biology with Kenai Peninsula College’s Kachemak Bay Campus and a marine mammal stranding volunteer.

“Since otters are typically born in spring-summer, I assumed this would likely be a 4-plus-month-old, and therefore recruited Martin Renner, KBC ornithology adjunct instructor, to assist,” Boege-Tobin said. “When Martin and I arrived on the scene, Lisa Zatz was on site making sure the otter remained safe until someone arrived to assess its condition. I noticed it was quite small/young, likely 2 months old or so, didn’t appear to have any obvious injuries, but was very lethargic.”

Before placing the otter into a kennel, Boege-Tobin assessed her external condition for possible injuries, but didn’t find any apparent problem. She also didn’t get too much of a response. But by the end of the transition, the pup woke up fully and began calling loudly and repeatedly.

“We placed the kennel next to the water’s edge in Mud Bay for a while in hopes it would call in the mother.  Unfortunately, once again we did not observe or hear any sea otters whatsoever in the area,” Boege-Tobin said.

“It’s tough out there for an otter to survive without its mother. Otter mothers do a lot of intense training to prepare them for life at sea.” Since the mother couldn’t be located, it means the otter will have to grow up in aquariums.

Two stranding network volunteers, Mark Tanski, KBC student, and Jennifer Rasche, KBC registration specialist, drove the screaming pup to Soldotna where they met a rescue team from the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward.

“Other than being in a cold (you have to keep it cold for the otter) SUV with an otter pup who screamed the entire time, Mark and Jenny made it safely back to Homer and the otter pup made it to the ASLC,” Boege-Tobin said.

At the Alaska Sealife Center, the otter was placed in a new unit called the I.Sea.U, a play on Intensive Care Unit. The center reports the otter pup is doing well, “eating 35 percent of her body weight daily from a bottle, and interacting with enrichment items.”

The otter is between 6 and 8 weeks old and weighs a mere 8 pounds.

The I.Sea.U was designed for sea otters; however, its first residents were two walrus calves recently transported to their new homes at the New York Aquarium and the Indianapolis Zoo on Oct. 10. After a quick reconfiguration, the new animal care space was transformed into a sea otter nursery that can be viewed by visitors to the center through one-way windows. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will determine placement for the otter. Its stay at the center is expected to be short. Alaskans wishing to see the otter are encouraged to visit before the end of October, according to a report from the I.Sea.U.

“This truly was a community effort,” Boege-Tobin wrote in an e-mail.  Several came out to block or redirect traffic when the otter was in the road, many students, faculty and staff came out while we were at KBC to check on the pup and even airport safety came by on several occasions to ask if they needed help.

All’s fair view in love, war — Kasilof neighbors get up-close show of bull moose skirmish

By Jenny Neyman

Photos courtesy of Chelsea Ann Woolcock, http://www.chelseasconfidentcreations.com. Bull moose compete for the attention of a nearby cow in a neighborhood off of North Cohoe Loop Road in Kasilof on Sunday. The moose sparred for a half hour to 45 minutes in easy view of homes and the road.

Redoubt Reporter

Living in a high moose traffic area off North Cohoe Loop Road in Kasilof for the last two and a half years — and in Alaska for 17 — the thrill of seeing moose up close has lost a little of its excitement for Chelsea Ann Woolcock.

That’s bound to happen eventually, when most times she opens her deck door to let her dog out at night there’s a moose within 5 feet of her house.

“This last spring I think the same cow and baby (that are in the neighborhood this year) were in the road and I had to drive slowly while they were running right in front of me. It’s cute and cool but you get so used to it it’s like, ‘Really? I’ve got to get to town. Run in the woods, already,’” Woolcock said.

But Sunday, moose in her neighborhood gave her a renewed sense of awe as she witnessed two bulls spar with each other for a half hour to 45 minutes.

“It was really cool. I was really excited. I couldn’t hardly sleep last night, I kept thinking about it. I didn’t want to come home but I finally left them alone to do their thing,” she said.

Woolcock runs her own graphic design business, Chelsea’s Confident Creations, from home on Fairway off of Cohoe Loop. She was driving home about 6 p.m. Sunday when she saw two bulls, about 4 years old, she estimated, in a neighbor’s yard, slamming their antlers into each other. She figures they were competing for a cow in the area.

Eventually the jousting match broke up, one bull stopped for a snack, while the other headed into the woods in the direction the cow had gone, Woolcock said.

“We see a lot of moose around here, but you don’t get to see stuff like that a lot,” she said.

Common Ground: Hares snare populations of other animals

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. High hare years can mean low grouse numbers, which appears to be the case this hunting season.

The varying hare, more commonly known as the snowshoe rabbit, is an influential little bugger. Their peculiar cycle is noticeable, in their absence when they are in a low cycle of abundance, and eating of all your flowers and vegetables when they are in an up cycle.

Their cycle is commonly thought to run in seven-year increments, which is only generally true. Until three years ago the hares had not shown a traditional up cycle since the 1980s. A traditional up cycle means the hares are everywhere, when you can’t throw the proverbial dead cat without hitting one. After so many years of seemingly low numbers, they have been prolific for three seasons now.

Nature, in its remarkable way, quickly detects when the hares are cycling up, and the result is a proliferation of predators. Lynx populations on the Kenai the past two seasons have exploded, resulting in record numbers of catches by trappers. Lynx sightings are common even in areas that support human populations.

The astonishing increase in the number of hawks, falcons and owls on the Kenai in the past two years is no coincidence, either. Coyote numbers are clearly up, as well. Again, the hares are to blame, or to thank, depending on your perspective.

All of this abundance of predators is great for wildlife viewers, fur trappers and predator hunters. It isn’t so great for young hunters out learning the ropes on spruce grouse, big game hunters looking for camp meat or upland bird hunters and their dogs.

Critter camera — Refuge installs surveillance to catch sight of cougars

By Joseph Robertia

Photos courtesy of Todd Eskelin, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. A rainy spell in June brought this lynx on June 6 by one of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge trail cameras set in the Skilak area to try to capture photographic proof of a cougar to substantiate the sightings that have increased recently.

Redoubt Reporter

Sightings are very rare, but growing more common each year. Sometimes it is drivers in Sterling who see them, or sometimes hikers at the Russian River are getting a glimpse. The reports are the same — a feline flash of tawny gray-brown. That’s not necessarily out of the norm in a countryside covered by lynx, but what makes these descriptions unique is that, following behind these cats, is a long tail.

This can be only one animal, but is a species that goes by many names — mountain lion, cougar and puma. Regardless of what it’s called, these large felines for many years have been thought to not be present in Alaska, and especially not found on the Kenai Peninsula. Sightings were regarded as mistaken, or at least questionable, until recently.

“We have been receiving reports of mountain lions for as long as I have been here, but there was a real cluster of sightings in the Skilak Loop area for the past couple of summers. Some of the sightings were from very credible sources and the description provided left little doubt,” said Todd Eskelin, a biologist at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

Mountain lions range through 16 states in the Lower 48, as well as throughout western Canada, but they are not officially recognized as existing in Alaska. However, in December 1998, a wolf trapper reportedly snared a mountain lion on south Kupreanof Island, and in November 1989 a mountain lion was shot near Wrangell. There also are numerous sightings across the state annually.

“Yet, to my knowledge, there has yet to be a single irrefutable picture taken, and with cellphone cams you would think there would be at least one blurry one showing a long tail,” Eskelin said.

Law or not — Cub rescuer recognizes safety concern, would do it again anyway

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

The situation was precarious, to say the least. Three fishermen in a drift boat were drawn by the terrifying, teeth-rattling cries of a brown bear cub caught in an eddy in the upper Kenai River. The cub seemed to be tiring from fighting the current and not making any headway in breaking free of the whirlpool and getting to shore, where, somewhere in the brush, the cub’s mother lurked.

The fishermen — Dustin Klepacki, a Kenai River fishing guide, Mike Polocz, Klepacki’s father, of Soldotna, and friend Charlie Mettille — decided to help. After several tries to nudge the bear out of the current with a landing net, but ending up just spinning the boat in the eddy, too, the current swept the cub against the boat, and it was pinned there just long enough for Polocz to push it into slower-moving water. From there it swam to shore. After resting on shore it let out another screech, which was answered by the sow, the Polocz said.

Luckily, the rescue had a happy ending, but there are many, many ways in which it could have ended unhappily, even tragically. That’s why wildlife managers with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game can’t condone the fishermen’s actions. They can understand the visceral impact a cub’s cries can have, they can empathize with the urge to help when seeing an animal in distress, but they can’t recommend handling the situation as Polocz, Klepacki and Mettille did.

“We don’t try to encourage that type of behavior. We understand that people value our wildlife, but I would really discourage any attempts to try to save an animal or interact that closely, particularly with a brown bear cub with a sow nearby,” said Larry Lewis, a Soldotna-based wildlife technician for Fish and Game. “The fact is that we do have rules and regulations that govern human behavior around wildlife. I would rather see people adhere to the regulations and the reasons for those regulations than to take matters into their own hands.”

Mettille recorded part of the rescue on a cellphone camera and Polocz posted the footage on YouTube. The video has gone viral, nearing 250,000 views as of Monday, catapulting the fishermen into their proverbial 15 minutes of fame. Polocz opted to allow online advertising on the YouTube clip, to try to make the most of the attention. Whatever money the ads raise, the fishermen agreed to donate 100 percent to a charity in Alaska that benefits abused or abandoned animals. If the amount doesn’t get too high, Polocz said that his company, Alaska H2O Pros, will match the amount.

“I’ve just been running in circles with this stuff. I’m not an attention tramp or anything like that but we’re thrilled to share the story,” Polocz said. “I think I was up at 2 in morning to do an interview with ‘Fox and Friends’ on Sunday, after flying back and forth to Anchorage doing the other interviews.”