Yale university on kenai nwr and climate change

Interesting piece put together by Yale University about Alaska’s famed Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, which was featured on the Discovery Channel’s reality series Into Alaska.

Yale’s School of Forestry & Environmental Studies broke down what climate change effects could have on Kenai NWR, which boasts some of the most diverse amounts of flora and fauna anywhere.

This is a really good read and here’s a little bit from Alaska-based writer Miranda Weiss:

For land managers and scientists such as John Morton, who served as the Kenai refuge’s supervisory biologist from 2002 to 2019, these ecological shifts raise tough questions. Chief among them: What does conservation mean in the face of rapid change?

As Morton witnessed the transformation of the Kenai reserve and realized that profound ecological change was inevitable, he began to see that scientists and managers might need to play an active role in directing change to meet conservation goals. “We know we’re going to experience mass extinction,” he says. “We have to do something different.”

It’s a really interesting read overall.