July 16, 2001|By Marego Athans | Marego Athans,SUN NATIONAL STAFF
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska's largest city may be a booming urban center with a performing arts complex and upper-crust subdivisions, but Rick Sinnott's life is a tale of a very different place. A bear in the living room, a moose calf in a soccer net, wolves eating dogs - such are the matters that keep his cell phone ringing at all hours.
At 4 a.m. Thursday, he was hunting two beavers whose dam-building handiwork was threatening to flood a downtown neighborhood. By 6 a.m., his phone was vibrating with calls about a black bear that had eluded him for a week as it raided trash cans and garages in a west-side neighborhood - the same bear, Sinnott says, that he tagged and moved 50 miles away several weeks ago.
FOR THE RECORD - A headline in yesterday's national news section implied that Anchorage is the capital of Alaska. In fact, Juneau is the capital.
The Sun regrets the error.
"He blew his one chance; he has to go to bear heaven," said Sinnott, a wildlife biologist for Alaska's Department of Fish and Game who answers the public's nuisance calls about wild things loose in the city - a man at the center of an escalating conflict between humans and the critters that share their environs.
"I like to call myself the referee," he said. "It's like this big football game between the humans and the wildlife, and neither side knows the rules. ... I just try to make sure at least the people understand the rules. And the wildlife - if they break a major rule, we have to deal with them. If it's just a minor infraction, then we just live with them."
As the population swells in this city of 260,000 and subdivisions encroach on wildlife habitat in the surrounding mountains and hills, moose, bears, geese, Dall sheep and other wild creatures are increasingly familiar sights in front yards, parks, streets, hiking trails and even highways - attracted, in many cases, by human trash, dog food and birdseed.
Much as Baltimore residents know to lock their cars, Anchorage residents know to wait in the house until the 1,200-pound bull moose in the driveway decides to leave, even if it means being late for work.
People here take pride in this way of life, according to surveys, but human encounters with wild animals at times have been deadly.
In 1995, a flock of geese caused an airplane crash that killed 24 people. Moose charge more than 100 people each year, injure five to 10, and have killed two since 1993, including an elderly man who was stomped to death on a university campus by a moose cow protecting her young. Two people were killed by a brown bear in Chugach State Park, adjacent to Anchorage, in 1996.
More often, wild animals annoy homeowners by raiding garbage, eating ornamental gardens and attacking pets. Occasionally, bears and moose are shot by residents defending themselves or their property. Along the dark, slick winter roads, 156 moose have been killed by cars in the Anchorage area since 1994-1995.
In response to an increasing number of conflicts, several state, local and federal agencies joined forces in 1997 to study the issue and come up with a plan to help humans and wildlife coexist more peacefully.
The ensuing report, "Living with Wildlife," offers recommendations ranging from teaching residents how to keep wild animals from getting into trash and pet food to setting aside land to keep wildlife populations steady (except for geese, whose proliferation has proved dangerous to aircraft). In the Anchorage area, the report states, there are 250 black bears and 60 brown bears in the summer, 1,900 moose, 2,400 Dall sheep, 750 mountain goats, four to five wolf packs, 4,600 Canada geese and many other wild animals.
"People brag about the moose walking through their yards - it's fun," said Jonne Slemons, the former Fish and Game coordinator who was charge of the program until recently. "We knew there were some inherent problems, but a good solution was not going to be, run them all out and put up a fence around the city."
The plan has come into dispute since its release last year. The Chamber of Commerce opposed its inclusion in the city's comprehensive plan, arguing that it didn't receive the appropriate level of public input and that no one had investigated the associated costs. Some said the plan was unfriendly to development interests because it locked up land.
"They talk about making corridors for animals. I'm not sure how you do that and educate animals to stay in corridors," said Rick Morrison, chairman of the Chamber of Commerce and a local car dealer, speaking for himself, not the chamber.
"I love seeing moose in my front yard, but I don't want them stomping my dog or my kids. ... I think we're heading for a disaster in the city, and we're not going to see anything done about it until somebody gets seriously hurt."
