SNOW GOOSE BIOLOGIST

On remote Wrangel Island, in the Russian Arctic, Vasilily Baranyuk has spent every summer for more than thirty years studying breeding snow geese. When he began his research, the population had declined by more than half, and there were no new goslings.

Baranyuk's long term study has been critical in determining how weather affects this migratory species and the fragile arctic ecosystem on which it depends.

CONSERVATION BIOLOGIST

Joel Berger studies muskoxen, one of the least known mammals in the Arctic. On Wrangel Island in Russia and on the Seward Peninsula in Alaska, he is trying to determine why some populations thrive and others decline. His research is aimed at understanding how a warming climate will affect wildlife worldwide.

REINDEER HERDER

At his summer camp in the Gylmemyel River Valley in the Russian Far East, Chukchi elder Ivan Tanko lives a subsistence life, harvesting salmon, seal, walrus, mushrooms and berries. He grew up in a family of nomadic reindeer herders in Chukotka.

IVORY CARVER

Jerome Saclamana was born in 1963 on King Island. He learned to carve from his father and grandfather. He combines traditional subjects with his own style, using human and animal features together in both whalebone and ivory.

COACH

Growing up in Chevak, Alaska, Casey Ferguson recalls jumping back and forth on chunks of ice, practicing for native games. The self esteem and leadership he learned in his village, led to a coaching position at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, where he teaches the strength, skills and traditions of each individual game.

MARINE MAMMAL BIOLOGIST

For seven years, more than a hundred scientists have been studying the Bering Sea, one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the world. 

The eastern Bering Sea shelf, has undergone significant change in recent decades and is likely to shift further as the climate continues to warm.

As part of the study, a team focused on the Northern fur seals, thick billed murres and black legged kittiwakes of the Priblof Islands. Their populations have been in decline on the Islands of St. Paul and St.George, while they have flourished 150 miles south on Bogoslof Island.

PALEONTOLOGIST

Dr. Daniel Fisher has been studying mastadons and mammoths in North America and Siberia for decades.  A professor at the University of MIchigan, Fisher is currently researching the paleobiology and extinction of these mammals by studying their tusks and teeth. 

Fisher has made many important discoveries, among them evidence of human association, but it all began with an idea formed in a Michigan backyard.

ATHLETE

A granddaughter carries on the traditions that have meant survival for generations. Autumn Ridley, part Inupiaq Eskimo, part Tlingit Indian, is a world champion athlete.

Since elementary school, she has competed in the Native Youth Olympics, Arctic Winter Games and World Eskimo-Indian Olympics. 

These games celebrate the contests of strength, skill and knowledge that were held throughout Beringia. Although the world has changed considerably, the values the games teach continue to endure.

FRIENDSHIP FLIGHT

On June 13,1988, a single plane left Nome, Alaska, headed to the eastern Siberian port of Provideniya. The 45 minute flight was the first step toward opening a border closed for 40 years. Siberian Yupik people once freely crossed the Bering Strait to visit and trade with relatives, but passage was cut off in 1948, amid Cold War tensions.