Wildlife in Alaska

Popping up on seals, dollars and signs, it’s fair to say that the USA is pretty fond of its national animal the bald eagle. And too right – this predator bird rules the skies, instantly recognisable as it coasts the air streams on its two-metre wingspan. Shamelessly opportunistic, bald eagles scavenge as much as they hunt, so you’ll see them flocking around fishing boats or lurking by rivers, waiting for bears to drop a salmon.

As for the secretive great grey owl, you’re more likely to hear it than see it: a hoo hoo hoo that booms over meadows and forests. But if you do see it, its flat, full-moon face and 1.5-metre wingspan make it pretty unmistakeable. The rest of Alaska’s birds represent the greatest hits of the aviary arctic: puffball grouse and ptarmigan, clifftop puffins, eider ducks and both black-footed and short-tailed albatrosses.

Herds of caribou roam the treeless tundra throughout summer, shifting to sheltered boreal forest in winter. Once they get going, caribou can hike 80km a day in the hoofprints of their ancestors. Many remote Alaska Native communities rely on this predictability, which in recent years has been impacted by warming temperatures turning powdery snow to impassable sheets of ice.

It sometimes seems that Alaskan animals come in two sizes: L and XL. The bison are built like quarterbacks and crowned with a pair of killer horns. There are only four herds of these, having been hunted to near extinction in the late 1800s. Muskox are just as impressive, huddled into woolly mammoth-style coats against the cool north-west corners of Alaska. Forget quarterbacks – mature muskox bulls are built more like the Incredible Hulk, standing up to 1.5m tall.

Although moose might be an iconic Canadian animal, they also know no borders and mooch freely into Alaska. These northern beasts are the biggest of their kind, weighing in at up to three quarters of a ton. The males have formidable battle antlers to boot – impressive for an animal that lives off birch twigs.

Of course, where there are caribou, bison and moose, there are predators. Wolves come in all hues, from grey and black to white and auburn. They’re pack animals, incredibly capable of bringing down moose, deer and caribou. But they’ll also branch out to beavers and aren’t averse to fishing, especially when a mother has pups on her heels.

Lynx are more partial to snowshoe hares, whose crashes and rises in population directly affect the lynx’s. They’ll also make do with caribou, Dall sheep, grouse and ptarmigan when times are hard. Lynx are so shy that little is known about their population, but their range covers the whole of Alaska’s forests.