Avian flu has decimated the marine creatures on the country’s Pacific coastline and scientists fear it could be jumping from mammal to mammal

Given the rarity of similar incidents, the whales have attracted a large crowd since Christmas Eve. On Boxing Day, the Coastguard confirmed that patrols have been taking place to ensure the safety of the public in the days since the animals were stranded.

EnviroNews Exclusive: Warmer, shorter winters due to climate change are a boon for the ticks that harm people, their pets and wildlife, scientists told EnviroNews in a series of exclusive interviews for this report. A walk in the woods can be refreshing, fun and good exercise.

Biologists are trying to determine what's ailing ringed seals that live off Alaska's Arctic coast. Scores of seals stranded on beaches this summer appeared to have skin lesions, and dozens have died.

Two hundred walruses surprised residents on an Alaskan peninsula after arriving en masse on a beach.

Carcasses examined so far have shown no indication of disease, and tests are pending for harmful algal toxins. Seabirds have been found emaciated and starved, and changed ocean conditions may have affected prey.

Frigid north winds blow down from the Arctic Ocean, freeze saltwater and push sea ice south. The ice normally prevents waves from forming and locks onto beaches, walling off villages. But not this year.

The closures of the campgrounds, facing the threat of falling trees, likely will last through summer, the state parks division said.

Walruses over the last decade have come to shore on the Alaska and Russia sides of the Chukchi Sea as sea ice diminishes because of global warming.

"It is unusual for bears with youngsters to wake up so early and it is difficult to say why these have come out. The bears may have been disturbed by humans or other animals."

The Arctic’s like an air conditioner or refrigerator for the global climate...And as the Arctic warms, partly because the sea ice is going away, it’s like you’re opening that refrigerator door.

Sea ice in the Chukchi Sea disappeared far earlier than normal this spring as a result of exceptionally warm ocean temperatures.

This November in Utqiaġvik was the hottest on record, averaging 17.2°F. It was so warm that NOAA's quality control algorithms flagged the data. “When we look out on the ocean right now we see a few icebergs,” Thomas said. “Normally we would see white to the horizon in the past, and in this case we’re seeing dark water to the horizon.”

The country's 3,300 miles of ice roads are a lifeline for marooned communities during frigid winters, but climate change is making the roads unsafe much earlier.

“It’s an area that I and some other colleagues have started thinking about: can you get methane forming in terrestrial environments? But it’s a very new area of science,” carbon scientist Katey Walter Anthony said.

"Currently we don't have any studies specifically looking at what factors are affecting those demographics," said Jason Caikoski, a wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Listen now

"These ridges that we’re standing on, there would have been more of them, and they would have been bigger," ice researcher Andy Mahoney said. "The features that we now see, they’re something of a shadow from the past." Listen now

There has been an outbreak in Fairbanks of the amber-marked birch leaf miner (Profenusa thomsoni), an insect that came to North America in the early 1900s and arrived in Fairbanks by about 2002.

"For our grandchildren and their children, now the devastation has left them nothing": Shackan First Nation Chief Arnold Lampreau.