(Mike Campbell/Anchorage Daily News via Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, 1 November 2009) -- ANCHORAGE, Alaska - They're slow-footed and bullheaded. When threatened, they huddle up. During breeding season, males charge one another and crack heads with such force the sound can sometimes be heard up to a mile away. But the musk oxen of the Seward Peninsula in northwest Alaska love sex. How else to explain how one of the biggest success stories among large Alaska wildlife—particularly a species that produces just one calf a year? In 1980, just 104 musk oxen roamed the peninsula, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Today, after 25 years of very restricted hunting, that number is nearly 3,000 animals.

"It's phenomenal," said wildlife biologist Brad Shults of the National Park Service, who is studying them as part of a project to compare the population and ecology of musk oxen on and adjacent to Bering Land Bridge National Preserve to those around Cape Krusenstern National Monument along the Chukchi Sea near Kotzebue. "It was averaging around 16 percent a year, although once we starting clipping the population with hunting, it leveled off." Ken Adkisson, subsistence program manager for the National Park Service in Nome, agreed. "Basically, the animals have done very, very well on the Seward Peninsula," he said, particularly herds on the northern portion of the peninsula. ...

"We're still experiencing growth," said Fish and Game area biologist Tony Gorn of Nome. "It fits into one of these models of an animal moving into previous unoccupied habitat." ... "The big criticism I've heard is musk oxen stomping areas where people want to pick greens," Gorn said. But the musk oxen's stubbornness, while frustrating at times, may have a redeeming aspect: Wildlife watchers couldn't ask for a more cooperative animal. Visitors increasingly are venturing out from Nome seeking wild musk oxen, a rare sight in North America. "It's great. I think it's world class viewing," Adkisson said. "I've had people say that's one of the reasons they've come to Nome."

Tagged: Arctic, News, Research