Alaska
Beaver expansion into Alaska’s Arctic tundra presents problems for people – and opportunities • Arkansas Advocate
When Cyrus Harris first saw a beaver during a camping trip in the tundra territory in the far northwest of Alaska in 1988, the discovery created a stir in his hometown of Kotzebue.
“That made big news then,” he said. He and his companions removed the beaver, which was near Cape Krusenstern just north of the Bering Strait, above the Arctic Circle and, until recently, far north of the Alaska tree line. When they heard about the beaver, Harris said, local Inupiat elders issued a warning that more would appear: “They’re coming, and that’s what’s going to be happening.”
The presence of beavers in the Arctic landscape around Kotzebue is no longer news. The beaver population, previously not an Arctic feature, has exploded in that region – and quickly transformed the landscape.
That transformation was summarized at a workshop in late February at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where scientists and community residents shared research findings and observations.
In a 100-square-kilometer area near Kotzebue — just under 40 square miles — the number of beaver dams jumped from two in 2002 to 98 in 2019, according to UAF research presented at the beginning of the three-day workshop. The workshop was part of a National Science Foundation-funded program called the Arctic Beaver Observation Network, or A-BON. On a wider area of the Baldwin Peninsula, the number went from 94 in 2010 to 409 in 2019. Across a wider area of Arctic Northwest Alaska, their presence went from nothing in the 1950s, as shown in aerial photos, to more than 11,300 beaver ponds identified through satellite imagery by 2019, according to the UAF scientists. The presence of beaver ponds in that region more than doubled between 2004 and 2017, the scientists found.
Satellite images that have tracked beaver expansion over time clearly show not just the number of dams but their drastic impacts, said Ken Tape, the UAF ecology professor who is leading the A-BON program. He pointed to one site as an example. “It basically changes from a little stream into a sprawling wetlands,” he said.
The proliferation of beavers is attributed to the northward spread of woody plants that they eat and use for their dams and lodges.
While climate change has enabled beavers to live farther north, the animals are exacerbating the effects of Arctic climate change. Through their dam and lodge engineering, they are inundating some areas with water, speeding up permafrost thaw. Elsewhere, they are drying out areas.
Effects of climate change were already underway on the tundra landscape, with permafrost warming and lakes expanding or draining and woody shrubs growing bigger and farther north, but those were relatively gradual – until the new arrivals began engineering the landscape, Tape said.
“All of a sudden, the beaver shows up. It’s like, wham, just night and day, completely different,” he said.
‘Tundra Be Dammed’
Tape, who got into beaver studies when he and UAF permafrost expert Ben Jones were tracking climate change effects on the tundra, has now become a leading authority on the animals’ northward expansion. A famous study that he led, published in 2018, described the phenomenon in Northwest Alaska and bore a catchy title: Tundra Be Dammed.
Beavers can be as disruptive to the tundra ecosystem as wildfires are, Tape and his colleagues have concluded.
Beaver presence in Arctic Alaska largely stops at the Continental Divide in the Brooks Range, leaving the North Slope largely beaver-free – for now. There are some exceptions discovered recently: a beaver pond complex that was found on the Kongakut River, which flows through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge near the Canadian border, and some chew marks and tracks left by beavers on the Killik River, which flows from a point in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve into the bigger Colville River.
But that North Slope situation is expected to change, Tape said. Projections are that if the climate continues its current warming trend and shrubs continue spreading north, beavers will follow, moving down the northern side of the divide to establish themselves across the entire North Slope by century’s end, he said. “They’re poised to swim downstream,” he said.
For many residents, their animals’ new presence is a serious problem.
“We’re surrounded by beaver lodges,” said Ralph Ramoth of Selawik, an Inupiat village about 90 miles east of Kotzebue.
Beaver structures have blocked access to traditional areas for duck hunting and berry-picking, and they’ve created barriers on creeks where fish used to spawn, Ramoth said. They have affected water quality as well, he said.
“When I was young, you used to be able to drink the water out of the river. Nowadays you don’t,” he said. Those who try, he said, get stomach distress. “People call it ‘beaver fever,’” he said, referring to the unpleasant intestinal infection caused by the parasite giardia.
Beaver sins
There is a long litany of observed or suspected beaver sins in their new Arctic territory that were discussed at the workshop.
Their dams can be insurmountable barriers to fish, particularly to the whitefish that are important subsistence foods but not particularly strong swimmers. That affects people who depend on those fish for their diets – and reverberates through the food web in ways that might seem surprising. Belugas in Arctic waters, for example, depend on whitefish populations that might be harmed by new beaver presence.
As articulated by Ramoth and by residents of Canada’s Northwest Territories who attended the workshop, beaver structures can impede travel, blocking boat routes long used in the summer and turning once-dependable winter ice-travel routes into danger zones.
Deteriorated water quality is a widespread concern; Harris noted that beaver complexes are plentiful just upstream of the reservoir that is the drinking-water source for Kotzebue.
There are potentially longer-term and wider-ranging effects as well.
By speeding permafrost thaw, they are hastening the release of carbon into the atmosphere, scientists said. That is because permafrost holds organic material accumulated over thousands of years that, through freeze, is resistant to decomposition, said Michael Loranty, an associate professor of geography at Colgate University in New York.
“But when you start thawing that out, it starts decomposing,” he said at the workshop. “And if, you know, you’re kind of putting all that permafrost carbon in the bank slowly over tens of thousands of years and then you thaw it out very quickly, it’s kind of a big pulse, potentially, into the atmosphere.”
There is evidence that such pulses are already underway. Work led by UAF researcher Jason Clark detected hotspots of methane emissions from Northwest Alaska beaver ponds. Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas and is known to be produced from permafrost thaw. The discovery of “is an example of a new disturbance regime, wrought by an ecosystem engineer, accelerating the effects of climate change in the Arctic,” said the 2023 study, which was coauthored by Tape, Jones and others at UAF, along with scientists from the National Park Service and the California Institute of Technology.
There are related effects. Though studies are preliminary, there is evidence that beavers are contributing to higher mercury levels in the water systems – and thus in fish populations. Permafrost thaw releases natural elemental mercury that is stored in frozen peat, and beavers stimulate that thaw.. Additionally, the beavers may be inadvertently helping to convert that elemental mercury into methylmercury, the form that is most dangerous to people and animals.
“Beavers bring a lot of wood to streams,” Matthew Mervyn, a graduate student who is studying the question in Canada’s Northwest Territories, said at the workshop. “Since the water slows down, it introduces more bacteria to methyl-ize the mercury.”
Mervyn, with Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier University, is part of a Canadian-British program called Beavers and Socio-ecological Resilience in Inuit Nunangat, or BARIN. It focuses on the Arctic region of the Northwest Territories. There, Indigenous hunters were the first to document colonization of the Beaufort Sea coast by beavers, with the animals spotted in 2008 and 2009.
The benefits of beavers
But there is another side of beavers in the Arctic.
“If I had a T-shirt, it would say, ‘I love beavers.’ I love them. They’re the best things in the world,” Lance Kramer, one of only about three Kotzebue residents who regularly trap beavers, said at the workshop.
He acknowledged that many of his Kotzebue neighbors greeted the news of beaver presence with the expression “Aiee,” a somewhat untranslatable Inupiaq expression of alarm and annoyance.
Kramer, in contrast, has taken advantage of the new arrivals. When he traps a fat beaver, he can use it for meat. The meat from skinny beavers goes to his dog, he said. He is making money selling the pelts. He has created his own detailed map of beaver lodges in the area, with names like “Faceplant Place Lodge” “About Time Lodge” and “Mad Snowman Lake Lodge,” the latter so named because his son became so annoyed about waiting for him to show up there that he built a snowman with an angry face.
He has even taken his love of beavers to show business, albeit subtly. He was an actor in the Alaska-based HBO series True Detective: The Night Country, and in a tense scene where his character brandishes a gun at law enforcement officers, he is wearing a beaver hat made by his mother-in-law.
Kramer brought up other beaver benefits. Aside from supplying meat, fur and income, beavers make it easier for him to hunt or trap other animals that gather at the structures, like wolverines and minks. “You can get everything at a beaver lodge. It’s a one-stop shop,” he said.
Evidence, mostly from outside of Alaska, shows that beaver lodges and dams can create habitat for other species, from insects to birds to predators. Research into that is continuing through the A-BON program; one project, explained by UAF graduate student Sebastian Zavoico, is using sound recorders to track bird diversity at recently established Alaska beaver sites.
While many Arctic residents are leery about the impacts of beaver dams and lodges to fish, evidence gathered to date paints a mixed picture.
In the Lower 48, where many riparian systems have been damaged by development, beavers are often considered restorers. Numerous studies there have found that beaver colonization is good for fish.
In Alaska, where study of the beaver-fish relationship is just starting, the evidence is that the animals have been positive influences in some spots and negative in others, according to information presented at the conference by UAF graduate student William Samuel. He has been tracking the relationship between beavers and Arctic grayling – and the relationship between beavers, grayling and wildfire. Within Interior Alaska, he found strong evidence that beaver densities increased in burned areas and that the combination of beavers and fires could be bad for grayling.
But the presence of beavers can make forested areas resistant to fires, too. Dammed areas can serve as fire breaks and help speed ecosystem recovery after wildfires, research in the Lower 48 has found.
The “beaver fever” name notwithstanding, beavers may not be as responsible as people think for giardia infections, said Glynnis Hood, an environmental science professor at the University of Alberta. “Beavers always get the rap, but humans carry giardia, too, and they don’t always clean up after themselves,” she said at the workshop.
Entrenched in the tundra landscape?
Future action on beavers might address both negative and positive aspects, suggested Andy Bassich of Eagle, an Interior community near the Canadian border.
“I don’t want, really, to use the word ‘infestation,’ but in some people’s minds that’s the appropriate word,” he said. In his region, where beavers have long been established, the animals have become a good source of food that substitutes for traditional food sources like salmon that are in short supply, he said.
If people want to get rid of “nuisance beavers” that might be blocking fish passage or creating other problems, perhaps there should be some kind of combined economic and cultural program that trains young people to hunt and trap them, process them, tan the hides, providing both meat and income, Bassich said.
Whatever Alaskans and Arctic residents decide to do about them, beavers may be in the far north for good.
That was a lesson imparted by Lennie Emaghok, an elder from Tuktoyaktuk, a Northwest Territories Inupiat community on the Beaufort Sea coast.
He recounted how in 2020, along a relatively short stretch of creek, he and others found 10 beaver structures and quickly removed most of them, including one that was particularly towering.
“When we returned three days later, the dam was built back, as if we had never touched it,” he said.
Hood summarized the power of the wood-chomping rodent. “Never underestimate a beaver,” she said.
Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: [email protected]. Follow Alaska Beacon on Facebook and Twitter.
Alaska already has glaciers, whales, old gold-rush towns, wild seafood, and mountains. But Princess Cruises is taking the year by storm with something bigger than a standard summer schedule. The line is sending eight ships to Alaska, adding new North-to-Alaska programming, and giving travelers more ways to turn their trip into a full land-and-sea adventure.
Princess Is Going Bigger Than Ever
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The 2026 Alaska season gives Princess its largest presence in the region to date, with eight ships, 180 departures, and visits to 19 destinations. Travelers are not boxed into a narrow route or one small batch of dates. The ship lineup includes Star Princess, Coral Princess, Royal Princess, Ruby Princess, Grand Princess, Emerald Princess, Discovery Princess, and Island Princess. For anyone comparing Alaska cruise options, that much capacity means more itinerary choices.
Star Princess Gives The Season A New Headliner
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Star Princess is the newest ship in the Princess fleet. This matters because Alaska cruising can easily feel like a trade-off between destination and ship experience. Princess is putting one of its newest vessels into one of its most important regions. Star Princess also hosts the new Après Sea experience inside The Dome, a high-positioned venue designed around big views.
Glacier Days Get The Full Main-Event Treatment
Credit: Getty Images
Glacier viewing has always been one of Alaska cruising’s biggest draws, but Princess is giving it extra structure through “The Glacier Experience: A Signature Princess Day.” On select Glacier Bay sailings, guests get close-up glacier views, live narration, and Park Ranger commentary from the bridge and open decks. There are also theater presentations and Junior and Teen Ranger programming. VIP viewing areas and bowfront access add another layer for guests who want the best possible look at the ice.
The Trip Can Extend Deep Into Alaska By Land
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Princess has long built part of its reputation around cruisetours that combine time at sea with inland travel. A seven-night sailing can deliver a strong Alaska trip in itself. However, inland travel opens the door to scenic train journeys, Princess Wilderness Lodges, and routes to places such as Denali, Kenai, and the Mt. McKinley lodge area. The 2026 season continues to lean into sea-and-land travel.
North To Alaska Makes The Ship Feel Local
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Princess first introduced its North to Alaska program in 2015, and in 2026, every Princess ship sailing in Alaska will carry the new programming. The whole idea is to bring local culture, food, personalities, and storytelling on board so guests learn something about Alaska between ports. This includes Native Alaskan speakers, naturalists, enrichment presenters, and destination-focused events that connect the trip to the place outside the ship. Names in the speaker series include Tlingit voices, Alaska Native educators, writers, and photographers.
Alaska Seafood Gets A Bigger Seat At The Table
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Princess is leaning into Alaska’s food identity with “A Taste of The Great Land.” The 2026 specialty restaurant offerings feature sustainably sourced, wild-caught Alaskan seafood created with regional suppliers. Crown Grill offers dishes such as Wild King Salmon, Alaskan Jumbo Lump Crab Cake, and Jumbo Lump Crab paired with Butter-Broiled Lobster Tail. Sabatini’s Italian Trattoria also brings Alaskan fish into an Italian-style setting.
The Entertainment Has Alaska In Its Bones
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
This season also features “Candlelight Concert Series: Fire & Ice,” with Alaska singer-songwriters performing in a candlelit setting twice per voyage. This gives the onboard entertainment a stronger sense of place than a generic music night. Returning favorites add a livelier side, including Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show elements with axe-throwing recruits, trivia, and timber-sports storytelling tied to Ketchikan. Select sailings also feature Deadliest Catch captains and crew members sharing Bering Sea crab-fishing stories. The lineup draws from Alaska’s labor, music, weather, and folklore.
Families Get More Than A Pretty View
Credit: Tripadvisor
Younger travelers are getting special attention, not a watered-down version of the adult trip. Glacier Bay Junior Rangers let kids complete activity books, attend presentations, and earn a badge and certificate through a partnership with the National Park Service. Gold Rush Adventures pulls families into a shipwide Klondike-style search, while Great Alaskan Expedition offers youth and teens a three-hour team-based experience across land, sea, and air. As puppies in the Piazza also return on ships visiting Skagway, guests get to see Alaskan Huskies and sled-dog culture.
Après Sea Gives Alaska A Stylish Cooldown
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
After a long day outside, Princess is adding a dedicated wind-down ritual through Après Sea. The setup is inspired by après-ski culture. Guests can expect warm drinks, happy hour, and panoramic views after they return from exploring. On Star Princess, the experience is in The Dome, and it provides a strong visual setting at the top of the ship. A relaxed lounge concept gives the evening its own personality, and guests don’t have to jump straight from adventure into dinner.
MedallionClass Keeps The Whole Trip Moving Smoothly
Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Alaska days can get busy fast, with early excursions, glacier viewing, dinner plans, family meetups, and plenty of time spent moving around the ship. The Princess Medallion Class setup helps cut down on small hassles. The wearable Medallion supports contactless boarding, keyless stateroom entry, onboard ordering, contactless payment, ship navigation, and locating travel companions through the app. When the day already includes ports, wildlife, ice, and dinner reservations, fewer friction points onboard can make a real difference.
Rachel Feltman: Happy Monday, listeners! For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Let’s kick off the week with a quick roundup of some science news you may have missed.
First, you may have seen some headlines last week about an outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship. Here to tell us more about what happened is Tanya Lewis, SciAm’s senior desk editor for health and medicine.
Tanya, thanks so much for coming on to walk us through this.
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Tanya Lewis: Yeah, no, thanks so much for having me.
Feltman: Why are we talking about hantavirus and this cruise ship? What happened?
Lewis: Just to catch people up, this outbreak was first noticed about a week ago on a ship called the MV Hondius, which was a cruise ship departing from South America, Argentina. And the people that were sickened and unfortunately passed away, two of those individuals were a married couple who had been traveling—it was a Dutch couple—we think were infected in Argentina and then boarded the ship. And then subsequently, multiple other people have been infected. As of May 7 the number of people on this cruise ship who had been infected with hantavirus was eight people. So that probably could still change.
But you might not have heard of hantavirus before, but it is a virus family that people have been sickened with before, and it’s generally spread by rodents, like rats or mice. And this commonly happens in places where people are exposed to the feces of these animals.
And it causes pretty severe disease. It can cause anything from respiratory distress and fluid in the lungs to some forms of it can be more of, like, a hemorrhagic fever, kind of like Ebola. But the kind that we’re seeing on this cruise ship is more the respiratory kind.
But yeah, this is a virus that, while it is fairly rare to be infected with it, it’s quite lethal. The estimates of its lethality vary, but anywhere from, like, 30 percent to even 50 percent of people infected have died of it.
Feltman: Right, well, and like you said, it, it’s usually spread through rodent feces. But unfortunately, the specific virus we’re talking about, with regard to this cruise ship, is one of the rare instances where it is technically possible to spread from human to human. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Lewis: Basically, these individuals on the ship were thought to be infected by human-to-human transmission. At least, that’s the working hypothesis right now. And the reason has to do with the exposure routes.
As I mentioned two of the people were a married couple, so we’re talking about, like, very close contact. This is not something like SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, where it’s, like, in the air and wafting around for hours or something. This is something that you would probably need to be, like, breathing very closely, in the same space. And of course, cruise ships are, like, kind of the perfect petri dish for that.
Feltman: Yeah.
So I think there are two things to talk about. There’s, one, why experts are not immediately super concerned about pandemic potential from this specific thing, but also why it is reasonable that I think so many of us, when seeing this news, went, “Uh-oh. We’re—this is a reminder of public-health paradigms I do not wanna be reminded of.”
So let’s start with the good news: Why are experts not freaking out about this?
Lewis: Yeah, so we have to remember that this is a virus that is very different than a lot of the pathogens that have caused respiratory pandemics in the past. In order for a pathogen to be a major pandemic concern, it needs to be very transmissible, and that is something that we have not yet seen with this hantavirus.
I should say, this particular strain is the only strain that has been shown to transmit human to human; it’s called the Andes strain. Most hantaviruses are not thought to spread that way. So the good news is, it’s kind of rare. The bad news, maybe, is that it does appear to have spread, at least, you know, in a limited way, between people.
But yeah, in terms of why experts are not, like, immediately concerned that this will spark a larger epidemic, I think the reason is just that this type of virus and the way it spreads is not conducive, as far as we know, to that type of outbreak. And it’s also happening in a very contained space, so although there have been reports that several of the people on board the ship have disembarked and we are still following that closely, at this point there is no indication of wider community spread, which is what we call it when people are getting infected who have not had direct exposure to the infected individuals.
Feltman: Is there any concern that the time that this virus spent, you know, in such a perfect petri dish may have given it the opportunity to mutate and be better at jumping from person to person?
Lewis: I think what virologists would tell you is, like, the more opportunities a virus has to jump between people, the higher the risk of it developing, like, a concerning mutation that makes it more transmissible.
That said, we’re still talking about a relatively small number of individuals. I mean, eight people sounds like a lot, but, you know, when you’re talking about this being very close quarters on a ship, this is not like, oh, you’re walking into a giant city like New York City and infecting everyone around you or something. So I think that is a little bit reassuring, perhaps, at this point.
But that said, we’ve been humbled before, and I think if there’s one lesson we can take from the COVID pandemic, it’s that we shouldn’t panic, but we should definitely pay attention. And at least scientists wanna know and learn more about this virus and understand it better.
Feltman: I think a lot of people are getting a little freaked out by this news. [Laughs.]
Lewis: Yeah, and I mean, I would be the first to say, like, something like this you hear about, it’s, like, instantly puts you back in that fearful space of 2020. And of course, there was the famous cruise ship, the Diamond Princess, where some of the early COVID cases happened. So that is always concerning.
On the other hand, you know, we have to sort of put it in perspective and remember this is a rare virus and it is something that people have been infected with in the past, so it’s not a completely new virus, unlike SARS-CoV-2, which we had never seen before. So we do have some idea of how this virus works, and while we don’t have any specific treatments for it, we do at least have experts who study it. So that should hopefully give some reassurance that, like, this is not a complete unknown. We are not starting from square one.
Feltman: Thanks for that, Tanya.
Now, listeners, keep in mind we had this conversation on Thursday, May 7. But you can always go to ScientificAmerican.com for more up-to-date science news.
Now for new research on micro- and nanoplastics—but this isn’t the health story you might be expecting. According to a study published last Monday in Nature Climate Change, these tiny bits of broken-down plastic could be contributing to our planet’s warming temperatures.
For starters, just in case you are blissfully unaware: yes, there are, unfortunately, microplastics in the sky. According to a study published in 2021, some of these particles swirl up into the air from the road, where tires and brakes frequently shed small pieces of plastic.
Now, the idea of microplastics permeating the air and even seeding clouds into existence is creepy enough, in my opinion. But this new study suggests they can also have a warming effect on the atmosphere.
Here’s how that would work: if you’ve ever spent time on a patch of blacktop on a sunny summer day, you know that black material absorbs heat. Conversely, white material reflects heat. The same thing happens when you scatter bits of dark and light plastic into the atmosphere, which is what humanity has inadvertently done quite a bit over the past few decades.
Unfortunately, according to this new study, any cooling effects we might get from light microplastics are probably vastly outweighed by the warming effects of dark microplastics. While the estimated effect is a small percentage of the warming fueled by soot from coal power plants, the results are still worrying.
As Jackie Flynn Mogenson reported for SciAm last week, we don’t actually know the concentration of micro- and nanoplastics currently in our atmosphere. But the authors of the new study argue that global climate assessments should do more to factor in these tiny plastic bits. And their findings serve as a great reminder that when we talk about the downsides of plastic, we should recognize that there may be impacts far less concrete and obvious than creating growing piles of trash in landfills.
Now I’ll turn the mic over briefly to SciAm’s chief newsletter editor, Andrea Gawrylewski. She’s gonna tell us about the science behind a tsunami that caught Alaska by surprise.
Andrea Gawrylewski: Thanks, Rachel.
Last summer, in August, a small cruise boat called the David B spent the night in an inlet about 50 miles from Juneau, Alaska. They were supposed to be at anchor nearer to Juneau in this beautiful fjord called Tracy Arm, but bad weather had forced them to pick another place to stay. And it turns out that detour may have saved their lives.
In the morning, from where they were anchored, the boat’s owners noticed seawater rolling over the nearby [sandbar] and shoreline. It was weird because the tide was supposed to be out at that time, and they had no idea why the water was so high.
When scientists heard about the strange sea-level rise, they began examining seismic data, they looked at aerial footage and satellite images, and determined that a massive landslide had occurred at the top of the Tracy Arm fjord.
So what had happened?
The South Sawyer Glacier at the top of Tracy Arm has been steadily shrinking and retreating for the last 25 years. In the spring and summer of last year the ice retreated inland several hundred feet, exposing so much bare rock that it ultimately caused a landslide.
That big slide hit the water and sent a tsunami racing through the fjord—like, so much water that the tsunami surged more than 1,500 feet up the sides of the fjord and sloshed back and forth, like in a bathtub.
That event also produced a seismic signal equivalent to a magnitude 5.4 earthquake. Scientists found smaller seismic events in the data that had occurred at least 24 hours before the big one, and they were increasing exponentially in intensity in the six hours before the landslide.
So now the question is: Could these early seismic signals be used as a warning system? One scientist at the Alaska Earthquake Center has been testing a landslide detection algorithm, and so far it’s detected 35 landslides in near real time. Sending out warnings within three to four minutes of big events could make all the difference to people who live in the area, so scientists are working to improve tools like these.
If you want more updates like this, sign up for my free daily newsletter, Today in Science, at SciAm.com/#newsletter.
Feltman: That’s all for this week’s science news roundup. We’ll be back on Wednesday to talk all about protein. Why is it everywhere all of a sudden? We’ll cut through the hype so you can just enjoy your tofu in peace.
Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact-check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Subscribe to Scientific American for more up-to-date and in-depth science news.
For Scientific American, this is Rachel Feltman. Have a great week!
As former mayors of Anchorage, we each had the responsibility of leading Alaska’s largest city through moments of challenge and opportunity. While our administrations differed in time and approach, one priority remained constant: ensuring that Anchorage and Alaska have access to reliable, affordable energy.
Energy keeps our homes warm through long winters, powers our schools and hospitals, and fuels the businesses that employ our neighbors. It literally fuels every aspect of our economy and our quality of life. When energy becomes uncertain or unaffordable, the consequences are felt immediately by families, employers and communities across the state.
Today, Alaska faces a generational energy challenge. Cook Inlet natural gas production has been declining for decades. Like the frog in a pot on the stove, the problem around us has slowly grown but is about to reach a raging boil. Declining supplies of inexpensive Cook Inlet gas, rising demand and a lack of long-term certainty jeopardize the stability we rely on. Without action — right now — we will lose control over energy costs and availability.
We have faced moments like this before. During his tenure as mayor, Dan Sullivan recognized early the urgency created by declining Cook Inlet gas production. He convened an Energy Task Force that brought together industry leaders, policymakers and stakeholders to confront the issue directly. That work helped lay the foundation for the Cook Inlet Recovery Act, which the Legislature passed quickly to spur new investment and extend the life of the basin. It showed what is possible when Alaska acts with focus and urgency. It also showed the legislature can move fast when aligned on policy.
This is not a new conversation. For years, studies commissioned by both the Alaska Legislature and multiple administrations have identified the need to modernize Alaska’s tax structure and energy policies to remain competitive for large-scale investment and infrastructure projects. Again and again, those reviews reached the same conclusion: If Alaska wants to attract and keep transformational projects, the state must provide a stable, competitive framework that reflects the realities of modern energy development.
The Alaska LNG project is the only viable path to meet that need. It would deliver a stable, long-term supply of natural gas to Southcentral Alaska, helping ensure that homes, schools and businesses have dependable energy at predictable prices. It would also create jobs, strengthen the economy and generate revenue that supports essential public services.
For Anchorage and the entire Southcentral region, the stakes could not be higher. As the economic center of the state, Anchorage depends on dependable energy to sustain growth and opportunity. Utilities, employers and families all need certainty to plan ahead.
If the Legislature fails to pass meaningful property tax reform for Alaska LNG, this opportunity will slip away like other projects have done. Alaska’s property tax system was not designed for a megaproject like Alaska LNG. Because of that, tax reform legislation was introduced in March that will lower our energy bills and speed the delivery of natural gas from the North Slope. Our legislators must act quickly on a targeted solution and avoid making changes that raise energy costs or slow this project. Otherwise, Anchorage and all Southcentral Alaska will be forced to rely on imported gas for decades.
That outcome exposes us to higher and more volatile costs, shrinks our economy, prevents job growth and sends billions of dollars out of state.
Every day of delay increases that risk. As our electric and gas bills made clear this winter, costs are already rising. Without fast action, consumers should be prepared for increases of 30% to 40% or more. Our state will become an even harder place to start a family or a business.
A project of this scale requires careful consideration and responsible decision-making. But waiting carries its own consequences. The longer Alaska delays, the fewer options remain and the more expensive those options become.
As former mayors of Anchorage, we each had unique approaches to problem-solving. But now we speak with one voice: State leaders and legislators must act with urgency and purpose to enact tax changes that propel this project and unlock the revenue, economic, energy security and other benefits from our North Slope natural gas. Decisions now will shape the state’s economic future for generations.
George Wuerch (Anchorage mayor from 2000-2003) previously served as governmental affairs manager for the Northwest Alaskan Gasline, was founder/president of Fluor Daniel Alaska Engineering and served as vice president of corporate affairs for Alyeska Pipeline Service Co.
Mark Begich (Anchorage mayor from 2003-2009 and U.S. senator from 2009-2015) is a strategic consulting adviser hired by Gov. Dunleavy’s office to help advance the Alaska LNG project.
Dan Sullivan (Anchorage mayor from 2009-2015) previously served on the Regulatory Commission of Alaska and the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority board.
Dave Bronson (Anchorage mayor from 2021-2024) is a candidate for governor of Alaska.
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