Don't look for the frontier in Alaska

  • Tim Lydon


Alaska. The word tumbles out like a wild stream, carrying a cascade of images: grizzly bears, glaciers, vast mountains, Native villages. It’s the Alaska we believe in, an American Eden for lovers of wilderness. But as change sweeps the state, the veneer is cracking.

In the southeastern panhandle, the famed Inside Passage bordering British Columbia, cruise-ship traffic now brings a million visitors annually. All summer, big ships dwarf small downtowns in Juneau and other communities, while throngs of visitors cram the narrow streets. And it’s not just the economic engine that revs at a frantic pace. In all directions, buses, helicopters, planes and boats race from town, bringing thousands on increasingly compact “adventures of a lifetime.” By ocean, they seek out whales or salmon; by road, they tour the sights; by air, they fly low sorties over mountains and glaciers -- and their noise destroys the serenity of the once-quiet hiking trails.



Meanwhile, big multinationals want to tear into south-central Alaska’s Chuitna and Matanuska valleys to mine coal for Chinese power plants. Already, pollution from the Asian coal rush puts mercury into our wild salmon, and our diets. In southwest Alaska, Bristol Bay’s salmon are threatened by the mammoth Pebble Mine proposal. Networks of roads and gold, copper and molybdenum mines are planned across the state, and Shell will pierce the Arctic Ocean’s floor for more oil.


I’m not the only one with map problems. In Gates of the Arctic National Park in the Brooks Range, rapidly thawing permafrost is unleashing immense landslides, reshaping mountainsides. Similarly, hotter, bigger fires re-write the vegetative maps of Alaska’s interior. The stories only hint at the upheaval across the north.



In the interior’s boreal forest, caribou struggle against warmer winters, which bring more freezing rain and autumn thaws than anyone can remember. Ground lichens, the caribou’s winter staple, become inaccessible, encased in ice, and starvation and lower birthrates shrink the iconic herds.

Alaska Natives also have worries. Accelerated erosion from disappearing sea ice and melting permafrost threatens scores of coastal villages. It’s not just homes, traditions and livelihoods sinking into the sea. Collapsing shores disgorge a wealth of artifacts. As they disappear, so do connections with the past and discoveries about the continent’s early people.

In Alaska, we eat and breathe the changes. This is still a great place to live, but as the wildness fades, it’s getting harder to call it a frontier.
