The Nature Conservancy

On Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska, Conservancy scientists are researching whether the harvest of young growth forests could actually benefit wolves – potentially helping to keep them off the Endangered Species list. Read more

Sure, all natural habitats are important. But some have a special power – for both nature and people. That’s the case for the estuary, that place where the world’s three most dominant natural realms meet. Read more.

This fish was caught on the Kanektok River during a rainbow trout project. It wound up being a mortality capture (it didn't survive), so it was cut open to see what it had been feeding on. Surprise! The answer was shrews, and a whole lot of them. By my count, this trout ate twenty shrews. Twenty. Read more.

Flying squirrels glide through the trees with the greatest of ease — but only if they have a big enough patch of forest. But just how much forest does a flying squirrel need? Read more.

Students at Sitka High School are building furniture that’s truly Alaska grown. The wood in their furniture projects has come from red alder trees harvested in young-growth forest in the Tongass National Forest. A new guide published by the Sitka Conservation Society profiles a variety of projects – including two at the Sitka High School – that are testing the limits of how young-growth can be used. Learn more.

On a September morning, a coastal lagoon in Alaska glistens like smooth glass. The Tlingit village on the shore is still quiet. But a delectable aroma in the air reveals something at work: salmon were hung in the smokehouse with care. Read more.

A Volvo 480 crawler excavator is a big yellow machine. Weighing in at well over 50 tons, it will move just about anything, such as a 17,000-pound log. Massive logs like these are key ingredients in restoring salmon streams but only if they’re put in the right place. Read more.

At Salmon Camp in Bristol Bay, young people from across the region gather for a fantastic summer experience. Here's a simple lesson in how to make a salmon print — with non-toxic ink — before you prepare your salmon for the table. Click for more.

A scientist named Melanie Smith recently drew up a map of a particular tract of public land in Alaska’s far north. Look closely and you’ll see villages: Nuiqsut, Wainwright, and Atqasuk. You may notice, too, that though this map covers an area the size of Maine, there are no roads that criss-cross it. The roads and pipelines of oil developments at Prudhoe Bay lie to the east, far beyond the flat horizon of the coastal plain. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is even farther east, more than 100 miles from here. Read more.

This spring a crew of carpenters will sweep the last of the winter snows from their sawhorses, ready for Alaska’s building season to begin. Though days are long, the summer is short – there’s no time to waste. Bill and Carolyn Thomason, who own a small sawmill in the rainforest of Prince of Wales Island in the Alaska panhandle, are resuming work on a log cabin in a picturesque little town in Alaska. Read more.

A Haida elder named Viola Burgess made history on this day. We were on the banks of a newly restored salmon stream in Alaska, where dozens of people had come from near and far to celebrate as wild salmon splashed their way upstream in crystalline water. Viola had renamed the stream, once so damaged it was thought to be beyond repair. Learn more.