This week, just in time for Thanksgiving, we talk with Adam Kolton, the Executive Director of the Alaska Wilderness League about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Arctic Indigenous Communities, and conserving Alaskan wilderness.  Watch the entire interview.  Here are a few highlights:

On the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

“This is the area where hundreds of thousands of caribou end the longest land migration of any mammal on the planet come to give birth to their young each and every summer. It is the area where polar bears come onshore to build their winter maternity dens.  It’s where you can find rare musk oxen, and millions of migratory birds that nest or stage before traveling to or through all 50 states and 6 continents. It is rightly called America’s Serengeti and really, truly our last unspoiled wilderness.”

On Arctic Indigenous Communities Being Impacted by Climate Change:

They are all seeing huge impacts.  And that is sometimes affecting the hunters who have always gone out on the ice and they are having falling out from under them.  They are seeing changes in the way the wildlife is migrating and they don’t understand it. They don’t understand why the salmon are not coming up the Yukon River.

Thanks, Adam!  Keep fighting to conserve the communities, the beauty, and the wildlife of Alaska!  We are thankful that unspoiled wilderness still exists in America.

You can buy the ODP original Polar Bear T-Shirts that benefit the Alaska Wilderness League, by clicking here.