LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 25 Since my retirement from The Nature Conservancy and NatureServe in 2007, at least once a year I grab my binoculars and camera gear and head out to some of our planet's stunning wildlife destinations, like Borneo, Madagascar, New Guinea, South Georgia, Tanzania, and the Arctic. Though each had its own magic, perhaps the most "epic" of these journeys took me to the Arctic where a pugilistic polar bear pumped my adrenaline. The eight participants in this trip joined our tour lead- er, Hugh Rose, in Fairbanks, Alaska in early September 2010. Hugh, a professional photographer, worked for Cheeseman's Ecology Safaris. Our adventure began the following day when, 100 miles north of Fairbanks, we drove the Dalton Highway, also called the "Haul Road," a 420 -mile gravel road completed in 1974 for trucks to take equipment and supplies to the newly discovered oil fields near Prudhoe Bay. Considered by some to be the most scenic highway in North America, the road revealed unending wild vistas of mountains, seas of spruce and fir, pristine streams, and tundra. We crossed the Yukon River and entered the snow- capped mountains of the Brooks Range, one of the world's great, unspoiled wildernesses. This range had a profound influence on Bob Marshall, an Adirondack native considered the father of the conservation move- ment in the United States. In 1929, 28-year-old Marshall took the first of several trips to the remote town of Wiseman, a turn-of-the-20th century gold mining town approximately 60 miles north of the Arctic Circle in the heart of the spectacular Brooks Range. Marshall later wrote essays about his travels in Alaska that are consid- ered seminal in the fight for wilderness preservation. Just as Marshall had done 70 years earlier – though not on a highway – we headed for Wiseman, 200 miles north of Fairbanks on the Dalton Highway. With almost no traffic and frequent sightings of wildlife as we drove in the northern edge of the boreal forest, we spent hours looking successfully for moose, spruce grouse, Canada jays, and other species that live here with us in the Adirondacks near the southeastern end of their continental ranges. We also spotted two species extir- pated from the Adirondacks in the past two centuries: wolves and lynx. Seeing wolves and moose in a wilder- ness setting can thrill even the most seasoned adven- turer, but even greater wonder was in store during our two evenings in Wiseman. The Polar Bears of Kaktovik Article and Photos by Larry Master

• Cover