{"id":34019,"date":"2016-12-01T20:11:55","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T04:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/researchers-examine-climate-change-impacts-on-alaska-hunters\/"},"modified":"2016-12-01T20:11:55","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T04:11:55","slug":"researchers-examine-climate-change-impacts-on-alaska-hunters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/researchers-examine-climate-change-impacts-on-alaska-hunters\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers examine climate change impacts on Alaska hunters"},"content":{"rendered":"

BETHEL \u2014<\/strong> <\/strong>A University of Alaska Fairbanks study says climate change is having significant impacts on subsistence hunting and travel in communities across Alaska.<\/p>\n

Assistant professor Todd Brinkman led a team of researchers who collected data and gathered information from residents in four Alaska villages: Fort Yukon, Venetie, Wainwright and Kaktovik. Brinkman said the residents reported challenges in accessing subsistence resources brought on by changing weather patterns starting in 2010, KYUK-AM reported.<\/p>\n

According to the study, 60 percent of the 47 relationships identified between the availability of subsistence resources and climate change focused on hunter access.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe often make the assumption that if there\u2019s plenty of fish and game in the area, that hunting opportunities are going to be good. But our research demonstrated that even if local populations are healthy and plentiful, if people can\u2019t get out there to them then the resource isn\u2019t available to them,\u201d said Brinkman.<\/p>\n

Brinkman said many families have struggled to adapt to the challenges, which include eroding riverbanks, less snow and river ice breaking up early. Many people are now using all-terrain vehicles instead of snow machines to get around due to the lack of snow.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was striking was that all the communities were in agreement that these changes are having a significant impact on their ability to travel across the land. So it wasn\u2019t isolated to any one community, it wasn\u2019t isolated to any one type of subsistence resource, it was affecting all of them,\u201d Brinkman said.<\/p>\n

Mark Leary, who lives in Napaimute along the northern bank of the Kuskokwim River, said the warmer weather in recent winters has made it difficult for hunters to catch goose and duck.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best hunting, in my experience, for birds has been when they first come and you could still go by snow machine. But it\u2019s been so thawed out all over, that the birds are more spread out and we can\u2019t go by snow machine,\u201d Leary said. \u201cLike last year the ice went out and the birds weren\u2019t even here. You know, it\u2019s like \u2018What do we do now?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Leary said he had to use a truck, snow machine and boat all \u201cin one month\u201d because of the rapid warming last spring.<\/p>\n

The UAF researchers heard from residents in the four communities who shared some of the same hunting and travel concerns.<\/p>\n

Brinkman\u2019s team is now working with NASA to get insight into how hunters\u2019 are being affected by limited access to resources. They are using GPS-equipped cameras to collect data and match it with imagery taken from space to better understand climate change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BETHEL \u2014 A University of Alaska Fairbanks study says climate change is having significant impacts on subsistence hunting and travel in communities across Alaska. Assistant professor Todd Brinkman led a team of researchers who collected data and gathered information from residents in four Alaska villages: Fort Yukon, Venetie, Wainwright and Kaktovik. Brinkman said the residents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-34019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34019"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=34019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}