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It's not just Fat Bear Week in Alaska. Trail cameras are also capturing wolves, moose and more

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It's not just Fat Bear Week in Alaska. Trail cameras are also capturing wolves, moose and more


ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Millions of people worldwide tuned in for a remote Alaska national park’s “Fat Bear Week” celebration this month, as captivating livestream camera footage caught the chubby predators chomping on salmon and fattening up for the winter.

But in the vast state known for its abundant wildlife, the magical and sometimes violent world of wild animals can be found close to home.

Within half a mile of a well-populated neighborhood in Anchorage, the state’s biggest city, several trail cameras regularly capture animals ranging in size from wolverines to moose. And a Facebook group that features the animals caught on webcams has seen its number of followers grow nearly six-fold since September, when it posted footage of a wolf pack taking down a moose yearling.

But it’s not all doom-and-gloom videos on the page, and the actual death of the moose calf was not shown. The group, named Muldoon Area Trail Photos and Videos, also features light-hearted moments such as two brown bear cubs standing on their hind legs and enthusiastically rubbing their backs against either side of a tree to mark it.

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Ten cameras capture lynx, wolves, foxes, coyotes, eagles, and black and brown bears — “just whatever is out here,” said Donna Gail Shaw, a co-administrator of the Facebook group.

In addition to the 290,000 or so human residents of Anchorage, nearly 350 black bears, 65 brown bears and 1,600 moose also call it home.

This image made from video provided by Donna Gail Shaw shows a view from a trail camera of a coyote on March 15, 2022, in Anchorage, Alaska. (Donna Gail Shaw via AP)
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This image made from video provided by Donna Gail Shaw shows a view from a trail camera of wolves attacking moose on Sept. 12, 2024, in Anchorage, Alaska. (Donna Gail Shaw via AP)
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Joe Cantil, a retired tribal health worker, said the idea for the page started when looking down at the vast open lands of Alaska from an airplane on a hunting trip near Fairbanks.

“You’re out in the middle of nowhere, so you see animals acting however they act whenever we’re not around,” he said.

He later met wildlife officials in the Anchorage park conducting an inventory of predators. He saw them set up a trap and three webcams where a moose had been killed.

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“When I saw that, I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do that,’” he said.

Cantilset up a low-tech camera, and caught his first animal on it, a wolverine, fueling a passion that led to the creation of the Facebook page in 2017.

Then, while hiking, he met Shaw, a retired science education professor and associate dean of the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Shaw was intrigued by his game cameras and began bugging him to see the footage.

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This image made from video provided by Donna Gail Shaw shows a view from a trail camera of a brown bear and a black bear on Aug. 29, 2019, in Anchorage, Alaska. (Donna Gail Shaw via AP)
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This image made from video provided by Donna Gail Shaw shows a view from a trail camera of a brown bear and cub on July 18, 2024, in Anchorage, Alaska. (Donna Gail Shaw via AP)

“Well, he finally got tired of me pestering him and one day he said, ‘You know, you can get your own camera,’ and so that started my hobby,” said Shaw, a native of Texas.

She started by strapping a single $60 camera to a tree. Now she has nine cameras, seven of which are active in Far North Bicentennial Park, a 4,000-acre (1,619-hectare) park stretching for miles along the front range of the Chugach Mountains on the east side of Anchorage.

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Her cameras are set up anywhere between a quarter-mile to a half-mile (402 meters to 804 meters) of the Chugach Foothills neighborhood and she frequently posts to the Facebook group page. Cantil also posts videos from his three cameras.

“I knew there was wildlife out here because I would occasionally run into a moose or a bear on the trail, but I didn’t know how much wildlife was out here until I put the cameras on it,” Shaw said.

She replaces batteries and storage cards about once a week, walking into the woods to do so armed with an air horn to announce her presence, two cans of bear spray and a .44 caliber handgun for protection.

Many of the page’s followers are Anchorage residents looking for information about which animals may currently be roaming around the popular trail system. Other users join to see what the cameras capture, including people from other states who “enjoy looking at the wildlife that we have here,” she said.

Shaw said that every few weeks, her cameras catch a wolf or two — and sometimes even a pack. This year she was surprised when a pack of five wolves came by, walking quietly in a single file.

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Last month, while she collected memory cards, she saw moose fur on the ground across the creek from two of her cameras. After she spotted what looked like a roughed-up patch of dirt where a bear might bury its kill, she assumed it was another moose attacked by a black bear, similar to what happened earlier not too far away.

But when she checked the memory card, it instead showed the wolves taking down the moose yearling as the moose’s mother attempted to protect her offspring by trying to kick the wolves away with her long legs.

Now, the demand for the page is growing, but Shaw said she’s done adding cameras.

“I think I’m at my camera max,” she said. “Nine is enough!”

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‘Just-add-water living at its finest’: An Alaska bike journey rolls along

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‘Just-add-water living at its finest’: An Alaska bike journey rolls along


Forest Wagner pushes his fat bike on a drifted-in section of trail in Minto Flats National Wildlife Refuge on March 25, 2026.(Photo by Ned Rozell)

MANLEY HOT SPRINGS — It’s so quiet in these spruce hills and tamarack swamps that 27 hours and 50 miles passed between when Forest Wagner and I said goodbye to one human being at Old Minto and hello to the next near Baker.

Space is in ample supply here on these pressed-in snow trails between towns and villages of Interior Alaska.

Forest and I are out here riding these ephemeral ribbons of blue-white moving westward, with a goal of reaching Nome.

Last Saturday, when it warmed to minus 12 degrees Fahrenheit, I lurched my loaded fat bike out of my home in Fairbanks. Saying goodbye to my wife and dogs, I rumbled eastward on a boot-packed trail that after a mile led to a plowed bike path. I then rolled through the familiar University of Alaska Fairbanks campus and onward 8 miles to Forest’s cabin.

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He handed me a mug of coffee and an egg sandwich. Then we started pedaling our fat bikes down Chena Pump Road until we reached the Tanana River.

Forest Wagner, left, and Ned Rozell pause in front of the tripod on the ice of the Tanana River at the town of Nenana. When river ice breaks up, whoever guesses the exact time the tripod falls and pulls a cable will be the winner of the Nenana Ice Classic. (Photo by Ned Rozell)

We found a trail groomed for a multi-sport winter race, turned right, and headed downstream on our home river, there half a mile wide. It was a day when the weather finally nodded toward spring. Fair-a-dise showed up with bluebird skies as the day warmed to 8 degrees Fahrenheit.

After a month of pillowy snows and crazy cold temperatures and re-telling people our new takeoff days to semi-suppressed eye rolls, we were finally unstuck from the glue of town.

If an object wasn’t hanging off our bikes, we didn’t need it. No more fiddling with the load or obsessing on the 7-day weather forecast. Just big ol’ tires humming on dry snow.

Now, five days and 145 miles later, Forest and I are digesting French toast and bacon our friend Steve O’Brien cooked for us as we wait on the dryer in the Manley washeteria. When we get a few dollar bills we will take showers.

The Tolovana Roadhouse at the mouth of the Tolovana River is open for travelers to rent a bunk in the original structure from the 1925 Serum Run lifesaving dog team mission. Ned and Forest slept here. (Photo by Ned Rozell)

It’s a good life here on the trail, just-add-water living at its finest. Eat everything in front of you, apply some sunblock and keep mashing on the pedals.

Steve O’Brien is one of the many people helping us move westward. In one of the most clutch moments, my wife Kristen and our friend Jen Wenrick appeared wearing headlamps on the packed snow ramp off the Tanana River in Nenana. They handed us burgers and fries from the Monderosa.

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After a surprise tough day due to soft trail that had us working real hard, those burgers and Cokes were like oxygen.

There have been many other acts of kindness from Jenna and David Jonas, Steve Ketzler, Forest’s dad Joe Wagner and others. Tonic for the body and soul.

Jenna Jonas holds her daughter Juniper while her other daughter Celia looks on. Jenna and David Jonas hosted Ned and Forest at their Tanana River homestead on the first night of the bikers’ trip. (Photo by Ned Rozell)

We will meet more excellent people, including some old friends, as we ratchet toward Nome.

When my satellite tracker is on, you can see our arrow creeping across the landscape here: https://share.garmin.com/NedRozell.





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This Day in Alaska History-March 27th, 1964

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This Day in Alaska History-March 27th, 1964


 

The largest landslide in Anchorage occurred along Knik Arm between Point Woronzof and Fish Creek, causing substantial damage to numerous homes in the Turnagain-By-The-Sea subdivision. Courtesy of Wikipedia
The largest landslide in Anchorage occurred along Knik Arm between Point Woronzof and Fish Creek, causing substantial damage to numerous homes in the Turnagain-By-The-Sea subdivision. Courtesy of Wikipedia

J.C. Penney Department Store at Fifth Avenue and D Street, Anchorage District, Cook Inlet Region, Alaska, 1964. Courtesy of USGS
J.C. Penney Department Store at Fifth Avenue and D Street, Anchorage District, Cook Inlet Region, Alaska, 1964. Courtesy of USGS

It was on this day in 1964 that a massive 9.2 earthquake in Southcentral Alaska.

The massive quake at 5:36 pm on March 27th caused much devastation throughout the region and generated a huge tsunami that inundated many communities in the region.

The quake was the largest in the history of the United States and initially killed 15 people while the resulting tsunami killed an additional 100 people in the new state and another 13 in California as well as five in Oregon.

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The megathrust earthquake endured for four minutes and thirty-eight seconds and ruptured over 600 miles of fault and moved up to 60 feet in places.

The deadly quake occurred 15 and a half miles deep 40 miles west of Valdez and generated a ocean floor shift that created a wave 220 feet high.

As many as 20 other smaller tsunamis were generated by submarine landslides.



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Opinion: Alaska’s public schools were once incredible. They can be that way again.

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Opinion: Alaska’s public schools were once incredible. They can be that way again.


(iStock / Getty Images)

I grew up greeting friends and neighbors on my walk to my neighborhood Anchorage public school, just as my kids do now. It’s an essential, and value-added, part of living in our community.

In the late 1990s, when I attended Service High School, I had amazing teachers. My AP chemistry teacher left the oil and gas industry to teach. He could have earned significantly more money in another field, but teaching was competitive enough, given pensions and compensation, that he stayed in the job he loved and gave a generation of students a solid foundation in chemistry.

Now, my kids, who are in first, third and fifth grade, face a different reality. Teachers across our state are leaving in droves. Neighborhood schools across Alaska are closing. Art and music are being combined, which is nonsensical — they are not the same and they are both valuable independently. When he was in second grade, my oldest had a cohort of more than 60 students in his grade — split between two teachers. When he enters sixth grade next year, there will be no middle school sports and he will lose out on electives. Support systems and specialists to help when kids are falling behind have been cut. I’m lucky that my children have had amazing teachers, but many excellent teachers are nearing retirement age or don’t have a pension and are pursuing other careers. What happens then?

Despite skyrocketing inflation, last year was the first time in years that our schools received a significant increase in the Base Student Allocation — and that money doesn’t begin to make up for what they have lost over the years. Even that increase had to overcome two vetoes from what a recent teacher of the year calls “possibly the most anti-public education governor in the history of Alaska.” Shockingly, my own representative, Mia Costello, despite voting for the increase, failed to join the override to support education. She has failed to explain that decision when asked.

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State spending on corrections is up 54% since 2019; meanwhile, spending on education is up only 12% in the same timeframe. Schools are now working with 77% of the funding they had 15 years ago when accounting for inflation.

When we starve our public schools of funding, Alaska families leave. No one wants their child to suffer from a subpar education and the lower test scores and opportunities that come with it. A significant number of people are working in Alaska but choosing not to raise their families here.

To the elected officials who preach school “choice” but starve public schools: our family’s choice is our neighborhood school. It’s our community. It’s where our friends are. Neighborhood public schools, which are required to accept all children, should be the best option out there. Public schools should be a good, strong, viable option for communities and neighborhoods across our great state. Once, they were.

I am thankful for those in the Legislature working to solve these problems. This includes HB 374, which raises the BSA by $630, and HB 261, which would make education funding less volatile.

It breaks my heart that across the state, dedicated teachers keep showing up for our kids while being underpaid and undervalued. Underfunding our schools is also a violation of Alaska’s constitution, which requires “adequate funding so as to accord to schools the ability to provide instruction in the standards.”

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Not so long ago, Alaska’s public schools were adequately funded, and they produced well-educated students and retained excellent teachers. It’s up to all of us to reach out to our elected officials and urge them to make that the case once again.

Colleen Bolling is a lifelong Alaskan and mother of three who cares deeply about Alaska’s schools.

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