Climate change creates concern over subsistence food safety

Caribou graze on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with the Brooks Range as a backdrop. (USFWS)
Caribou graze on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with the Brooks Range as a backdrop. (USFWS)

Wild foods are important to Alaskans, and especially to rural residents, but subsistence users and scientists say climate change is affecting wildlife populations, access to subsistence resources, and food preservation.

Mike Williams of the Native village of Akiak says access to subsistence foods is changing in western Alaska. For instance, when the Kuskokwim River froze, and then thawed in November, Williams said fishermen were left with no way to empty their fish traps, and his were damaged.

“They busted open,” Williams says. “It’s just not regular checking every day. We just had to wait for a freeze so it could be safe enough to get to our traps.”

Williams said hunters report walrus with empty stomachs at a time of year when they need to be piling on the blubber, and salmon runs that don’t meet escapement goals for spawning. He adds that some years when they did catch fish, wet and warm spring weather interfered with food preservation.

“We can’t even dry our fish when it’s raining all the time and it’s moist,” said Williams. “The fish can’t dry after we cut them up, and they spoil.”

Mike Brubaker, director for the ANTHC Center for Climate Change and Health, is launching a program to give hunters in the Bering Strait region test strips to check for germs, viruses and parasites that cause disease in humans. He said one of the pathogens they’re checking for is the parasite toxoplasmosis, which can cause birth defects, and eye and brain damage in vulnerable populations. He said it once occurred only in land mammals, including domestic cats, but that’s changing.

“It’s in about ten percent of caribou that’s been sampled and also in about 50 percent of harbor seals that have been sampled,” said Brubaker. “So somehow these pathogens are moving around the wildlife population and they’re moving into new sectors of wildlife, like from land mammals to sea mammals.”

Brubaker’s says health assessments in 20 Northern and Northwest Alaska communities have been completed. He said the reports document the effects of thawing permafrost, melting sea ice, and changing river and lake conditions on wildlife populations, access to subsistence resources, and food preservation throughout those regions.

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