Alaska Village Ponders Next Steps as Walrus Harvests Decline Drastically. As recently as a few years ago, the village of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island could expect to harvest 600 or more walruses during the spring hunt. This year, the community hauled in just 30, the third year in a row that the harvest fell well short of expectations. With a vital source of food and a key to the local economy in continued decline, residents increasingly point to climate change as the underlying cause of a problem with no easy remedies and are wondering what their next steps might be. The Native Village of Gambell, the city and Kawerak Inc., the local Native corporation, are drafting a proposal seeking disaster relief. In 2013, a total of only 340 walruses were harvested by the Bering Sea villages of Gambell and Savoonga, and in 2014 only 299 were harvested. Alaska Dispatch News
  

Ocean Acidification Threatens Shellfish Hatcheries. New research paints an unsettling picture of the future of shellfish in coastal Alaska. The effects of ocean acidification are worsening and could mean the end of hatcheries in the next 25 years if costly mitigation efforts aren't put in place. Two-thousand forty - that's the year put forward by researchers in the ongoing study. "It is dire," says Wiley Evans, a research associate at the NOAA Pacific Marine Environment Lab in Seattle and the University of Alaska Fairbanks Ocean Acidification Research Center. He led the project, based at the Alutiiq Pride Hatchery on the Kenai Peninsula. Right now, the hatchery has only a 5-month window where ocean conditions are right for production. Alaska Public Radio

Previous Claims of Interbreeding Due to Climate Change Exaggerated. One of the questions raised by the prospect of climate change is whether it could cause more species of animals to interbreed. Two species of flying squirrel have already produced mixed offspring and those have somehow been blamed on climate change, along with a hybrid polar bear and grizzly bear cub (known as a grolar bear, or a pizzly). A paper in Nature Climate Change tallies the potential number of such pairings and across North and South America it estimates that only about 6 percent of closely related species whose ranges do not currently overlap are likely to come into contact by the end of this century. Science 2.0

UA System President Candidate Promises to Listen and Share. Jim Johnsen has a professional background in organized labor, academia and, most recently, in corporate business as a senior manager for Alaska Communications and Doyon Limited, the Alaska Native corporation for the interior. In June, the University of Alaska Board of Regents selected him as its single finalist to lead the system. The candidate is tall, energetic and quick with a smile. He highlighted two areas he wants to work on, remedial education and Arctic research. He says over half of the university system's students require remedial education, a major challenge. KTOO

Federal and Provincial Governments Fund New Research Facility in Churchill. The Manitoba government will be investing nearly $9.7 million over four years to help build the research facility that will be located in the Port of Churchill. The federal Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) is also giving $12.4 million. This conservatory is going to bring researchers from the universities of Manitoba, Calgary, Victoria, Laval, Dalhousie and even Washington, as well as government department workers together, where they will research what to do when oil spills happen. C.J. Mundy, co-leader of the project, says it's happening in Churchill because of the changing climate, and the ice cover being open for longer, which could open a new passageway through the Arctic Ocean and Hudson Bay and the Port of Churchill. Mundy says since there could be more shipping, there could be a greater risk of accidents and pollution. "We have this responsibility, I would think, to try to meet this, by researching if there is a spill, how can we detect it, how can we mitigate the impacts of the spill. That's basically what we're going to be focusing on." Thompson Citizen