Junior Iditarod champ meets a trail hazard

Anchorage Daily News ^ | October 22, 2007 | Beth Bragg

[skeptoid]

Dog team in training tangles with musk ox on the move

Seventeen-year-old musher Melissa Owens was a mile into a training run last week in Nome when she saw a musk ox standing on the left side of the road. She stopped her dogs so the woolly beast could cross to the other side.

"Then all of a sudden the bushes come alive, and I think, ohhh, this can't be good," Owens said. "There's more musk ox in there, isn't there?"

Sixteen more, to be precise. Just yards away from 23 huskies, including two young and curious leaders.

[skeptoid]

HEATHER WILLIAMS / AlaskaStock.com

Melissa Owens' dog team tangled with a herd of musk oxen on the outskirts of Nome last week.
Heather Williams was with her in the truck they were using to train the team and took this picture.
"It's my home page on my laptop," said Owens of the photo.
No dogs were injured, nor, apparently, were any musk oxen.

[Hegemony Cricket]

That’s a rumble in the frozen jungle, right there...

[B4Ranch]

ping

[ASOC]

Thanks for the ping! Neat pic as well.

I doubt the dogs would do more than annoy the musk ox.

For non-Alaskans, this is a success story of the 1st srripe. A little bit of seed money, protection via the law and now the oxen are back.

From the Park Service
(http://www.nps.gov/archive/bela/html/moremusk.htm)
A little-known conservation success story is unfolding in western Alaska where the muskox is reclaiming some of the ranges it inhabited over a century ago. Muskoxen disappeared from their last remaining strongholds in northern Alaska during the late 1800’s. Hunting by humans contributed to their decline.

In 1930, the U.S. Congress provided funds to ship 34 muskoxen from Greenland to Alaska. From the first herd established on Nunivak Island, 71 animals were transplanted to the Seward Peninsula, during 1970 and 1981. So far, people have not hunted the reintroduced muskoxen, allowing them to increase at a rate of 15-20% annually.

This rate slowed during the harsh winters of 1989-1991. In April of 1992 the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service jointly conducted an aerial survey and found 706 muskox on the Seward Peninsula. If present rate of increase continues, this population could double in six years.

However, in other places where muskoxen live, such as the Canadian High Arctic, the North Slope of Alaska, and Greenland, muskox populations usually “level off,” and do not expand to form vast herds like caribou.

Muskoxen have also moved into new locations on the Seward Peninsula, distant from the transplant sites. Wide geographical distribution affords protection of the species from locally devastating events, such as winters with severe icing, deep snow, or disease.