LOCALadk Magazine
Issue link: https://localadkmagazine.uberflip.com/i/1526221
LOCALadk 27 including bulls, cows, and calves, the muskox is a large member of the Bovidae family, which includes sheep, goats, and bison. They resemble the latter but have longer, thicker coats that adapt them for life in the Arctic. Extirpated from Alaska more than a hundred years ago, the muskox was reintroduced from surviv- ing populations in Canada into several areas in Alaska in the past 90 years. Their prized underfur, known as qiviut, is reportedly eight times warmer than sheep's wool and softer and finer than cashmere. Two years later during a June trip to Nome, Alaska, I found the muskoxen intensely shedding their winter coats, so qi- viut hung everywhere from willows and other bushes where they had rubbed. I should have collected some! Late in the afternoon in Prudhoe Bay, we boarded a small commercial aircraft for a 40 -minute flight along the Beaufort Sea coast to the Inupiat village of Kakto- vik. Kaktovik, with a total area of only a square mile, is located on Barter Island, a small island on the coast on the northern edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is a traditional fishing spot, but lacked per- manent residents until the construction of a runway and Distant Early Warning Line station in the 1950s. Now some 270 Inupiat depend on subsistence hunting of caribou and whales. In the past 20 years, Kaktovik has emerged as a tourist destination for viewing polar bears. Here's how that came about: The circumpolar indigenous peoples of the world, including the Inupiat of Alaska, have hunted marine mammals, including whales, for thousands of years. Now in a tightly controlled hunt, with the whale quota determined by the number of residents of each village, the Inupiat of Kaktovik are permitted by the International and Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commissions to "strike" three bowhead whales annually in a fall hunting season. If any struck whale escapes, the vil- lagers may only hunt two other whales that year. They remove the blubber, meat, and skin, and hunters leave the whale carcasses on the beach at the edge of town. These serve as a magnet for polar bears, gulls, and the occasional grizzly bear. When we arrived at the airstrip on the outskirts of Kaktovik, the owner of the Waldo Arms Hotel met our plane and escorted us to this basic but charming hotel. Built from modular oil field buildings, this was to be our home for the next three days. One requires a vehicle to safely photograph the polar bears in Kak-