Alaska Students Capture Footage To Study Tongass National Forest Bears

The following is courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service:

Alaska students broadcast the bears of the Anan Wildlife Observatory 

Livestreaming pink salmon, black and brown bears from a remote creek in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest 

Sally Hertz

Alaska Region

December 9, 2024

Pink salmon fill the creek each summer at the Anan Wildlife Observatory near Wrangell, Alaska, returning to their ancestral spawning grounds after a year and a half at sea. Here on the Tongass National Forest, both black and brown bears wade into the creek and perch on rocks to pluck fish from the water, tolerating one another in a rare interspecies truce brought on by sheer abundance.

The annual salmon run has made this Southeast Alaska creek a popular destination for more than the bears. Human visitors — eager to catch a glimpse of the increasingly rotund bears, eagles and other wildlife — embark on a journey by boat or float plane to reach the remote site. According to the Anan Wildlife Observatory, up to 60 people a day purchase permits to visit — a cap set to avoid impacts to the wildlife they’ve come to witness.  

This past summer, the number of people able to appreciate the dynamic banquet jumped dramatically when two bear-viewing livecams began broadcasting on Explore.org, a nonprofit live nature cam network. More than 200,000 people tuned in from every state and around the globe between late July when the cameras went live, and September, when the cameras were turned off for the season.

Explore.org Director of New Media Candice Rusch reported that fans quickly took to the Tongass National Forest cams, featured at the top of the organization’s website. “Right away, people were investigating the bear book to identify individual bears, asking questions, and falling in love with the beautiful canyon views.”  

An extraordinary alliance

The groundwork for broadcasting these unique wildlife views — including installing cameras, solar panels and satellite internet— took seven months of intense planning and ingenuity, which Rusch says is typical for Explore.org’s off-grid locations. What was out of the ordinary about Anan, however, was that the team researching and installing the system was comprised of students from Wrangell High School.  

The students were part of the T3 Alliance (Teaching Through Technology), an organization that engages rural Alaska students with science, technology, engineering and mathematics in their communities. An agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, funded through the Great American Outdoors Act, covered the costs of the camera system components, design and installation, including small stipends for the students and their mentors working on the project.

Wrangell District Ranger Tory Houser explained that the partnership developed over the years as students accomplished smaller “missions” for the agency such as surveying cabins and creating three-dimensional trail maps.  

Andrei Bardin-Siekawitch, a sophomore at Wrangell High School, had been part of some of these smaller missions. When he first learned about the livecams project — a mission on an unprecedented scale — he knew he wanted to be a part of it. “It was an opportunity to help our community and make the biggest impact of any T3 project yet.”

Hands-on learning, real world impact

Each of the fourteen students had a domain of responsibility, with Bardin-Siekawitch taking on the power system. He created an energy budget to determine how many solar panels would be needed to power the cameras and satellite internet. During installation, it would be up to him to wire together the batteries and related components on the observation deck.

The remote location posed several challenges, starting with transporting bulky equipment to the site. Team problem solving and community support proved to be critical assets as the students embarked on installation.  

The journey to the observatory began with an hour and 15-minute boat ride from Wrangell. When the boat arrived at Anan, the students waded through the shallow water to transfer materials, including large batteries, to a dolly, which they pushed along the narrow trail to the observatory.

It takes a community

As the students set to work installing the solar panels, they realized that they needed customized brackets to complete the task. Fortunately, they knew who to call. Wrangell community member and T3 parent James Edens got to work right away making the brackets and arranged for them to be flown in by float plane.  

Other community members, like John and Artha DeRuyter, stepped up to host the students on their boat when they needed a place to stay on site during the first week of work.  

On the second trip to the site, the students were the first to stay in the newly rebuilt Anan Bay Cabin, a Forest Service public-use cabin. District Ranger Houser spent a day there with the group, as both a Forest Service employee and a parent to one of the students.  

Houser recalled working alongside Bardin-Siekawitch to wire together the batteries, distributor, inverter and other components of the power system. “We had a few iterations on our battery project. As we experimented, we asked questions, consulted Google and YouTube, and used the T3 growth mindset to ultimately wire the batteries successfully.”

“That kind of hands-on learning is what T3 excels in,” said Bardin-Siekawitch. “My favorite part was the sheer amount of problem-solving we did throughout this project, bouncing ideas off each other every time a problem came up. We had a lot of fun along the way!”

“That’s what you’re feeling — that love.”

Esther Aaltséen Reese is a tribal administrator for the Wrangell Cooperative Association, and a parent of one of the students. Reese said that Anan has always been an incredibly special place to the people of the Shtax?héen ?wáan, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial. “Beautiful white sandy beach, waterways teeming with fish, the bears — it’s a magical place.”  

Anan is usually translated from the Tlingit language as “resting town,” but the actual meaning is deeper, explained Reese. “It means to sit, watch, and observe — almost meditative — watching the sun, moon, stars, the way the animals are moving — all of it.” She appreciated the livestreams as a means to share that way of knowing and learning with the world.  

Jen Kardiak, an in-field manager at Anan, added, “There’s a sense of peace you feel here that I am excited for people to experience.”

Reese knows that sense of peace as well, and says it is there because Anan has been a place of bounty and well loved for many centuries. “That’s what you’re feeling — that love.”

Watching nature livestreams can reduce anxiety and stress, said Kardiak, but the deeper connection to nature can impact more than viewers’ wellbeing. “Engaging with the natural world, even just through a livestream, can inspire a sense of stewardship, reminding people we are not separate from nature but rather a part of it, and our actions have consequences. It can inspire people to protect the ecosystem.”

A mission for the next generation of stewards

The site is filled with potential. In future years, viewers might have the opportunity to turn their love for the place into research through citizen science on Explore.org. Viewers who have already been helping identify individual bears may help figure out how many total individuals use the site. Kardiak hopes that additional cameras may help them learn more about the impact of in-person visitation, for example, if days with more people on the observation deck result in more bears re-routing to more hidden upper falls.  

The T3 students hope that installing an underwater camera next year might enable viewers to catch a glimpse of the schooled-up salmon at the base of the falls, and the moment fish are snatched from the water by bears like Scuba Sue, a brown bear with an affinity for diving. Another potential camera location is a half mile upstream at the upper falls, which they hope might pick up on different bears, including more brown bears.  

Bardin-Siekawitch said that the opportunity for the T3 Alliance to conduct “missions” for the agency has been life-changing — sparking his interest in electricity, confirming engineering as a career path and kickstarting,?“…so many unbelievable opportunities in our little Alaskan backwater.”  

Most recently, T3 students designed a system to water the roots of the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree as it travels the length of the country from Wrangell to Washington, D.C.  

Brian Reggiani, associate director and community engagement lead of T3 Alaska says that the collaborations provided a scaffolding for learning with benefits that extend to the broader community and the forest itself. “All the missions we have been able to complete for the Forest Service have provided awesome learning moments for our students. With each mission we are able to level up our skills and help with bigger and bigger projects. I think it is an incredible way to build the next generation of stewards of the Tongass.”

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Read about the new viewing platform with a spiral staircase at Anan Wildlife Observatory in Seeing Eye to Eye with Alaskan Bears.