Trail cams document the magnificent and violent world of Alaska’s wildlife.

Trail cams document the magnificent and violent world of Alaska’s wildlife.

Millions of people across the world watched a remote Alaska national park’s “Fat Bear Week” celebration this month, as compelling livestream camera footage captured the chubby carnivores gorging on salmon and fattening up for the winter.

However, in this large state noted for its abundance of biodiversity, the fascinating and often dangerous world of wild creatures is close at hand.

Several trail cameras often film creatures ranging in size from wolverines to moose within half a mile of a densely populated neighbourhood in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest metropolis. And a Facebook group that promotes the creatures filmed on webcams has seen its number of followers increase nearly sixfold since September, when it first footage of a wolf pack hunting a moose yearling.

However, the page does not feature only doom-and-gloom movies, and the moose calf’s real demise is not displayed. Muldoon Area Trail Photos and Videos also includes some light-hearted moments, such as two brown bear cubs standing on their hind legs and eagerly rubbing their backs against either side of a tree to mark it.

Ten cameras record lynx, wolves, foxes, coyotes, eagles, and black and brown bears — “just whatever is out here,” said Donna Gail Shaw, a co-administrator of the Facebook page.

Anchorage is home to over 290,000 people, as well as nearly 350 black bears, 65 brown bears, and 1,600 moose.

Joe Cantil, the retired tribal According to a health worker, the inspiration for the website came to him while flying over Alaska’s huge open fields on a hunting trip near Fairbanks.

“You’re out in the middle of nowhere, so you see animals acting however they act whenever we’re not around,” he told you.

He later visited with wildlife officials in the Anchorage park who were performing a predator inventory. He watched them put up a trap and three webcams near a moose carcass.

“When I saw that, I thought, ‘Yeah, I can do that,'” he was saying.

Cantil set up a low-tech camera and captured his first animal, a wolverine, sparking a love that led to the establishment of the Facebook page in 2017.

Then, while trekking, He met Shaw, a former science education professor and associate dean of the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Shaw was intrigued by his game cameras and pestered him to examine the film.

“Well, he finally got tired of me pestering him and one day he said, ‘You know, you can get your own camera,’ and so that started my hobby,” Shaw, who is from Texas, told me.

She began by strapping a single $60 camera to a tree. She now has nine cameras, seven of which are operational in Far North Bicentennial Park, a 4,000-acre park that stretches for miles along the front range of the Chugach Mountains on Anchorage’s east side.

Her cameras are situated anywhere between a She lives within a quarter to a half mile of the Chugach Foothills neighbourhood and frequently posts to the Facebook group page. Cantil also shares videos from his three cameras.

“I knew there was wildlife out here because I would occasionally run into a moose or a bear on the trail, but I didn’t know how much wildlife was out here until I put the cameras on it,” Shaw told me.

She swaps batteries and storage cards approximately once a week, heading into the woods armed with an air horn to signal her presence, two cans of bear spray, and a.44-caliber handgun for protection.
Many of the page’s followers are Anchorage residents eager for information on whatever animals may now be roaming around the renowned route.

neighbouring users join in to watch what the cameras catch, including visitors from neighbouring states who “enjoy looking at the wildlife that we have here,” she added.

Shaw claims that every few years, her cameras capture a wolf or two, and sometimes even a pack. This year, she was shocked to see a pack of five wolves travelling silently in a single file.

Last month, while collecting memory cards, she noticed moose fur on the ground across the creek from her two cameras. When she saw what appeared to be a roughed-up area of ground where a bear might bury its victim, she concluded it was another moose attacked by a black bear, as had happened before not far away.

But when She reviewed the memory card, and it showed the wolves killing the moose yearling while the moose’s mother tried to protect her child by kicking the wolves away with her long legs.

The page’s popularity is increasing, but Shaw has decided to stop adding cameras.

“I think I’m at my camera limit,” she explained. “Nine is enough!”