Josh, a Bucktails and Ursids alumni, writes this three part series about his recent trip to Denali National Park in Alaska. He tells us all about the amazing wildlife he spotted, his beautiful pictures capturing special moments with the wildlife. Josh also talks about wildlife-human interactions at the park, so stay tuned through the next couple of weeks to read the entire story of his trip!
It has now been exactly 100 years that the national park service has been protecting our wildlife and certain parts of the environment and of all the national parks that my family and I visited, Denali National Park from Alaska is one of my favorites. People call Alaska bear and moose country, and for a good reason because we would see bears and moose almost every day every time we are on the road. Not only that, but we would also see a lot of caribou, foxes, Dall sheep, bald eagles, otters, and even humpback whales when we went whale watching. Alaska is full of wildlife and we saw most of it in Denali National Park which why it was one of our most memorable moments during our trip.
We would spend two days at Denali National Park, and on our first day we went to the park’s visitor center and hiked to Horseshoe Lake from there. It was an all day hike front and back and when we reached Horseshoe Lake, we found a female moose just at the edge of the lake drinking water and grazing on water pants. She would be constantly looking over towards the island on the middle of the lake and that was when we found out she was mother because there were two fawns grazing on that island grazing and keeping their distance from the people.
The moose would graze at the edge of the lake and constantly check on her fawns on the island as she eats.The two fawns would keep their distance from the people and graze on the island at the edge of the lake. Sometimes they would hide in the trees but they would always be where their mother could see them.
We would then continue on our trail around the lake and when we looked back, we saw the fawns swimming towards their mother and calling to her as they got closer. They had figured that it was safe to leave their hiding spot since all the people had moved on. We would then see all three of the moose graze together and soon disappear into the woods.
The two fawns would come out of hiding and swim towards their mother once all the people were gone.
The three moose would continue grazing and soon disappear into the woods.
That was only a small part of Denali National Park….
Stay tuned next week for Part 2 of Josh’s adventures!
Wildlife of Denali National Park, Part 1
Posted: September 13, 2016 by Katie Cassidy
Josh, a Bucktails and Ursids alumni, writes this three part series about his recent trip to Denali National Park in Alaska. He tells us all about the amazing wildlife he spotted, his beautiful pictures capturing special moments with the wildlife. Josh also talks about wildlife-human interactions at the park, so stay tuned through the next couple of weeks to read the entire story of his trip!
It has now been exactly 100 years that the national park service has been protecting our wildlife and certain parts of the environment and of all the national parks that my family and I visited, Denali National Park from Alaska is one of my favorites. People call Alaska bear and moose country, and for a good reason because we would see bears and moose almost every day every time we are on the road. Not only that, but we would also see a lot of caribou, foxes, Dall sheep, bald eagles, otters, and even humpback whales when we went whale watching. Alaska is full of wildlife and we saw most of it in Denali National Park which why it was one of our most memorable moments during our trip.
We would spend two days at Denali National Park, and on our first day we went to the park’s visitor center and hiked to Horseshoe Lake from there. It was an all day hike front and back and when we reached Horseshoe Lake, we found a female moose just at the edge of the lake drinking water and grazing on water pants. She would be constantly looking over towards the island on the middle of the lake and that was when we found out she was mother because there were two fawns grazing on that island grazing and keeping their distance from the people.
We would then continue on our trail around the lake and when we looked back, we saw the fawns swimming towards their mother and calling to her as they got closer. They had figured that it was safe to leave their hiding spot since all the people had moved on. We would then see all three of the moose graze together and soon disappear into the woods.
That was only a small part of Denali National Park….
Stay tuned next week for Part 2 of Josh’s adventures!
Category: Youth Blog Tags: animal tracks, Bucktails, national park, nature observation, photography, reports from the field, Ursids, wildlife, youth