Come join us and learn more about refuges and wildlife at our 7 meetings per year held from 5-6 pm, on the 3rd Tuesday of January, February, March, April, September, October and November of 2022. We take the summer and holiday months off. Presenters share first-hand experiences, current issues, conservation threats and great stories.
Upcoming Presenters:
January 18: Bridging the Gap/Manigtengnaqsaraq: Native Alaskans employed as Refuge Information Technicians are the connection between villages and refuge management; presented by Christopher Tulik from Yukon Delta Refuge and Jacki Cleveland from Togiak Refuge.
February 15: An Eye to the Future: How the Kenai Refuge is preparing for climate and landscape change with supervisory biologist Kristine Inman.
March 15: Kodiak Refuge Bears
April 19: Bird Camp! Alone on an Aleutian Island with 100,000 seabirds with Sarah Youngren and Daniel Rapp of the Alaska Maritime Refuge
You can always hop on the Friends website to view any presentation that you miss: recordings here
Presentation recorded on Tuesday, November 16, 2021
Fran Mauer, Arctic Refuge Senior Biologist, retired
Fran Mauer started his career in Alaska 50 years ago at a pivotal point in wildlife conservation. He worked on some of the most high-profile projects such as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) andevaluating the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge 1002 area for likely impacts of oil development. After that exciting and controversial work, Fran got off the hot seat in 1988 to spend the next 14 years surveying Peregrine Falcons on the Porcupine River. This annual survey of nesting falcons was necessitated by their endangered status as a result of DDT exposure in the lower 48, as well as in Central and South America. Fran will tell us the story of this bird’s recovery and what he learned from this work about the interconnectedness of the Porcupine country with the rest of the Arctic Refuge, adjacent Canada and beyond. He will also describe some of the interesting geological history that created the Peregrine habitat and share human stories of the Porcupine River region including some unexpected discoveries.
Porcupine River by Callie Gesmundo
Fran Mauer has a BS degree in Wildlife biology from South Dakota State University and a MS degree in Zoology from the University of Alaska – Fairbanks. He served two years in the US Army as a med lab technician during the VietNam war, before arriving in Alaska.
He started with the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) as a seasonal bio-tech in 1974 to help identify salmon habitat that may be affected by the Chena River Flood Control Project but quickly landed his first permanent position with the Service working for the Western Alaska Ecological Service office in Anchorage. One of his earliest assignments was to identify potential effects of the proposed Bradley Lake hydropower project. In 1976, Fran joined the FWS Alaska planning team which provided resource information to guide the Congressional process underway to establish new National Wildlife Refuges, National Parks, Wild Rivers and Wilderness designations in Alaska. Fran covered the northwest and arctic areas of Alaska which got him involved with the prospect of expanding the Arctic National Wildlife Range, as well as the controversy over potential oil development on the coastal plain and wilderness protection.
Following passage of ANILCA in 1980, Fran joined the staff of the Arctic Refuge as a field biologist and became involved with the Congressionally mandated “1002” studies of the coastal plain. His primary work involved an inter-agency baseline study of neonatal calf mortality on the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd for the purpose of predicting what impact oil development might have on the caribou. During 1988 to 2001 his work expanded to include Dall Sheep, moose, peregrine falcons and other birds of prey. Fran served as a senior biologist at the Arctic Refuge for 21years.
Fran has authored several scientific papers, governmental reports and essays for books and magazines. Fran’s essay “Our Geography of Hope ” about an imaginary walk across the Arctic Refuge from north to south was featured in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land: A Photographic Portrait by Subhankar Banerjee. This 2003 book may have been instrumental in holding off the leasing threat to the refuge at that time. A just published book, Defending the Arctic Refuge by Finis Dunaway, devotes a chapter entitled “Science and Skulduggery” to Fran’s and also co-worker Pam Miller’s experiences in getting the correct data on expected oil development impacts on wildlife to Congress in spite of data suppression and the doctoring of Fran’s caribou calving information at high levels. The data doctoring led to a new role for Fran – whistleblower!
Following retirement in 2002, Fran has served on the board of Wilderness Watch and represented its Alaska chapter. He lives in Fairbanks and continues to advocate for maintaining the ecological integrity and the wilderness character of our Alaska National Wildlife Refuges and National Parks.
Suggested reading:
Ambrose, S., C. Florian, R.J. Ritchie, D. Payer, and R.M. O’Brien. 2016. Recovery of American peregrine falcons along the upper Yukon River, Alaska. Journal of Wildlife Management.
Thorson, R.M. and E.J. Dixon. 1983. Alluvial history of the Porcupine River, Alaska: role of glacial-lake overflow from northwest Canada. Geological Society of America. Vol.94: 576-589.
Carson, R. 1962. Silent Spring. Fawcett Publications Inc. Greenwich, Conn.
Murie, Margaret E. 1997. Two in the Far North (part three: The Old Crow River pages 209-255). Alaska Northwest Books, Portland, OR.
Richard Martin. 1993. Kaiiroondak (Behind the Willows). Publications Center, Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks.
People of the Lakes, Stories of Our Van Tat Gwich’n Elders. 2009. Univ. of Alberta Press, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Join us to discover the rich cultural and historic legacy of Alaska’s Refuges. Jeremy Karchut will provide an overview of the refuges’ vast array of cultural resources representing 14,000 years of human history. Sites range from those associated with the earliest humans to set foot in North America to mid-20th century aircraft hangars. Prehistoric archaeological sites in the Arctic, rock art on the Kodiak coast, historic cabins on the Kenai Peninsula, WWII battlefield sites in the Aleutians, and historic Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) facilities critical to the agency’s Alaska mission are some of the cultural resources to be highlighted in this talk.
The FWS recognizes cultural resources as fragile, irreplaceable assets with potential public and scientific uses, representing an important and integral part of the heritage of our Nation and descendant communities. It is FWS policy to identify, protect, and manage cultural resources located on refuge lands. Jeremy will consider some of the challenges and rewards of managing these nonrenewable resources in an era of rapid environmental change and include highlights of key federal historic preservation legislation.
B-24D Liberator Bomber that crashed in 1942 on Atka Island, in what is now part of the Alaska Maritime NWR. Photo by Steve Hillebrand, USFWS.
Jeremy is the FWS Regional Archaeologist in Anchorage. He is interested in high altitude and high latitude archaeology and for more than 20 years he’s been involved with projects focusing on the effects of climate change on archaeological resources and what archaeology can teach us about how humans adapted to environmental change in the past. Jeremy is a native of Colorado, having earned a BA in Anthropology from Fort Lewis College, Durango in 1998, and a MA in Archaeology and Ancient History from University of Leicester, UK in 2003. He has served as a federal archaeologist since 1995, including with the US Forest Service and the National Park Service in the US Southwest, Central and Southern Rocky Mountains, Great Plains, and 12 years in Alaska.
