Year of Award
2023
Document Type
Professional Paper
Degree Type
Master of Arts (MA)
Degree Name
Environmental Science and Natural Resource Journalism
Department or School/College
Journalism
Committee Chair
Nadia White
Committee Co-chair
Ray Fanning
Commitee Members
Chad Bishop
Keywords
Musk oxen, Alaska, Conservation, Nome, musk ox, sled dogs
Publisher
University of Montana
Subject Categories
Journalism Studies
Abstract
You’d be hard-pressed to find a town with more sled dogs and mushers per capita than Nome, the finish line of the 938-mile Iditarod sled dog race.
It is also home to a growing herd of musk oxen, massive ungulates that Congress reintroduced to the Seward Peninsula in 1970. These icons of the far north have changed little over their 1.8 million years of existence and more closely related to sheep and goats than actual oxen.
While musk oxen pose a risk to dogs and people, they are also a major tourist attraction that helps inject much needed outside cash into the local economy. But that tolerance quickly frayed after a large bull gored and killed an Alaska State Trooper in December 2022—the first recorded instance of a musk ox killing a person in North America.
With a subsistence hunting season already in place for these animals, the Alaska Board of Game responded by more than tripling musk oxen harvest numbers to 30 for the upcoming season in Nome in an attempt to instill a fear of humans back into the animals. However, some residents worry that it is not enough to turn the tide or that killing so many more animals may cause a cascade of other issues.
More than 50 years after Congress restored musk oxen to Alaska’s Seward Peninsula, residents of Nome are struggling to agree on how best to manage what have become one of the largest nuisance animals in the global north.
Recommended Citation
Hale, Gentry, "Municipal Musk Oxen" (2023). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 12131.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/12131
© Copyright 2023 Gentry Hale