Northwest History. Alaska. Science. United States.

• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 1936
• Subjects: Alaska; Wild Life; Northwest; Pacific > History > 20th Century; United States. > Alaska > 20th Century; Arctic; Bering Sea; Canada; Fairbanks; Norway; Pacific; St Michael; Stefansson; Barrow; eskimo*; muskox; Nome; Nunivak; Nunivak Island; Point Barrow; Siberia
• Online Access: http://content.libraries.wsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/clipping/id/102469

Report Muskox Gaining Ground REPORT MUSKOX GAINING GROUND Imported to Alaska After Natives Killed All—Cost Congress $550 Each. ST. MICHAEL, Alaska, Feb. 15. OP) —Frank Williams, game commissioner here, said today the four muskox he transported to lonely, primitive Nunivak island last fall are thriving, and the island's reindeer herd is multiplying rapidly. The island was stocked with, the animals as an experiment in Bering sea "live stock raising" and to replace the mysteriously extinct caribou which once roamed the island. Nunivak is about 30 miles off Cape Vancouver and 300 miles south of Nome. It is a noted wildfowl breeding place and Williams said Nunivak "raised a large crop" of ducks and geese last season—mostly Pintails, Emperor, white and Canadians. The muskox came from the Uni versity of Alaka's herd at Fairbanks. Their 34 ancestors, caught as yearlings by Johs. Lund of Aalesund, Norway, cost congress $550 each, delivered in New York city in 1930. They are valuable for wool and meat. Muskox were imported into Alaska at the suggestion of the explorer, Stefansson, and after a seven-year campaign by Irving McK. Reed, President Charles Bunnell of the territorial university and others. They replaced the native muskox which became extinct through Eskimos' heedless slaughters years ago. The last recorded native oxen were exterminated by Point Barrow Eskimo in 1865, although there are traditions along the arctic slope that two French-Canadians slaughtered 15 or 20 at Chandalar lake, head of Col- ville river, in 1897. Alaska's 1,000,000 reindeer and the 3000 delivered in Canada after a four and a half year trek ending last spring, are descendants of the 1280 imported from Siberia between 1891 and 1902 when Siberia put an embargo on exporting females. The reindeer were brought to Alaska to replenish meat supplies and in an effort to transform the Eskimos from nomadic hunters into herders. The same experiment is now under way in Canada.