USFWS
Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge
Alaska Region

Icon of Blue Goose Compass. Click on the compass to view a map of the refuge (pdf)

 

Biological Projects

Uliaga Island from Kagamil. Credit: Greg Thomson/USFWS

Uliaga Island from Kagamil. Credit: Greg Thomson/USFWS

In the 1980 establishing act forming the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, the U.S. Congress mandated that this refuge conduct national and international scientific research on marine resources.

There is no better place in the entire National Wildlife Refuge System to do just that . . .

Wildlife in trust

Seabirds
Marine mammals
Island endemics (found only here)

for example
Pribilof shrew
Aleutian Cackling goose
McKay's bunting

Programs related to those trust species

Baseline inventory and monitoring
Invasive species management
Research and special studies
Technical assistance

We inventory to know what resources are here on the far-flung islands and coastal lands of the refuge.

We monitor representative species annually or periodically to allow us to see trends and detect conservation problems.

We use information from inventorying and monitoring to pose questions such as "what is causing an observed change?" Thus we can direct our research and special studies to learn more about marine and island ecosystem processes, the interaction among species, and the ecology of little-known species that are found only here (endemics).

We also use the tools above to bring back some islands to their natural biodiversity in our invasive species management program.

We collaborate with other researchers from other agencies and universities so that, in cooperation, we can discover more pieces of the marine environment’s puzzle.

Examples of special studies

    Rat predation on auklets
    Responses of birds to fox removal
    Seabird Tissue Archival and Monitoring Project (STAMP)
    Southeastern Bering Sea carrying capacity
    Regime forcing in the Bering Sea
    Aleutian Canada goose, follow-up to removal from the Endangered Species List
    Aleutian shield fern, an endangered species

Learn More:

Publications - Breeding Status, Population Trends and Diet Reports available for download.

Seabird Monitoring 2011 - Black-legged Kittiwakes

Rat Island Habitat Restoration

Invasive Species Eradication for Habitat Restoration on Tangik, Poa and Sud Islands
Murrelet Mysteries Revealed; Kittlitz's Murrelet Nests Discovered in the Aleutians

2007 Field Season Projects
2008 Field Season June Report (pdf)

 

Last updated: May 1, 2012