Environmental Change, Subsistence, and Sharing
There is a striking degree of agreement and overlap in participants’ responses to interview questions about changes in the landscape, and in general musings about environmental issues that have arisen in recent decades. Participants indicate that weather patterns have altered significantly, and that conditions on the tundra and along shorelines show the effects. These comments by Lewis Brower, an experienced and respected hunter in his mid-forties, about the temperature changes he has recorded at his cabin on the Chipp River, are a typical example of remarks made about weather in nearly every interview:
Over the years and over the summers there, say 10, 15 years ago, 75 to 80 degrees was normal warm weather . . .. Nowadays it gets into the 90s . . . so there’s a large increase in temperature. When you’re there at the right time, you can record those.
Participants also report an increase in storms and severe weather, unusually warm winters, and changes in animal migration patterns, or disorientation in animals, due to earlier spring thaw and unusual weather events. Discussion of travel across the tundra is dominated by descriptions of increased erosion and thermokarst (areas where ice-rich permafrost has melted, leaving mounds, depressions, and ridges), and reduced consistency and predictability of weather patterns, all of which are serious matters of safety in the demanding and difficult environment of the Arctic. Arnold Brower Sr., a prominent whaling captain and businessman in his mid-eighties, has noticed some dramatic changes in conditions on the tundra:
In October the thickness of the ice was about . . . maybe eight inches . . . we could even cross this by dog team, this area. You can’t do that in October now because it doesn’t freeze up that way. So, these changes are there.
Participants have identified areas where permafrost thaw has been extreme, creeks have dried up, and erosion has occurred along the seacoast and river bluffs. They report that normal landscape changes, such as erosion and river migration, are now alarming because they are occurring at unusually rapid rates. The implications for North Slope residents are very serious, as homes and cabins are threatened, and overland travel, necessary for subsistence hunting and fishing, has become less predictable and therefore more hazardous. Like others with cabins and land allotments near the Chipp River, Evelyn Donovan, a hunter in her mid-fifties, had to move her family cabin due to erosion:
The deep permafrost is melting . . . I had to move our camp . . . about eight feet from the bluff because the permafrost melted . . .. We took four four-wheelers, tied it up, and we literally moved it because of the permafrost melting.
Pointing out several locations on what used to be an excellent lake for catching whitefish, she describes how warmer temperatures result in uneven effects:
We normally would put our net in the middle [of the lake]. So I can’t even put a net out over here cause it’s drier and it’s not deep enough to put a net out. This is completely dry . . .. And I’m seeing more ponds on this end while [pointing elsewhere] this side is drying up a little more.
