Meet the Project Participants

Thank you to our project participants who kindly shared their time and observations.

Skagway

Betsy Albecker

Betsy's family ties to Skagway go back to her grandparents who arrived during the 1898 Gold Rush and ran a number of local businesses. She grew up in Washington and Skagway, and spent every summer gardening at the family homestead at Nahku Bay. Betsy has been living in Skagway full-time since 2005 and has operated a number of gift shops. She is an avid gardener and has been active outdoors since childhood, so is a keen observer of the environment and landscape around Skagway.

Andrew "Andy" Beierly

Andy grew up in Skagway, Alaska, and worked for the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad from 1957 to 1982, when the railroad shut down. He then worked as a building restoration carpenter for Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park until his retirement in 2003. Andy is vice-president of the Skagway Traditional Council, is an avid photographer and birder, and is a member of the Skagway Bird Club. He and his wife, Joanne, walk Skagway's beach everyday observing the birds, the changing seasons, and the weather patterns. Andy has a vast collection of photographs of the Skagway area that document the shrinking glaciers on the surrounding mountains.

Joanne Beierly

Joanne moved to Skagway from Seattle when she was in high school where she met Andrew Beierly. They were married in 1965. After her two children were grown, Joanne worked as a teacher’s aide, at the Skagway library, and in the Skagway Museum. She is a founding member of the Skagway Bird Club and has been heavily involved with the rescue of injured or sick birds, and participates in the annual Christmas bird count. As a nature lover and active outdoorsperson, Joanne is a keen observer of the local environment. In 2016, Joanne collected 41 carcasses of dead common murres and sent the specimens out for scientific analysis to determine cause of death.

Jeff Brady

Jeff came to Skagway, Alaska, in the mid-1970s from North Carolina and started the Skagway News newspaper, which he edited for 37 years. He also started the Skagway News Depot and Books bookstore. Jeff is one of the co-founders and organizers of the North Words Writers Symposium held in Skagway every spring, as well as one of the organizers behind the Buckwheat Ski Classic cross-country ski race and the Yukon River Quest canoe race. In 1996, he married his wife Dorothy who grew up in Skagway.

Dorothy Brady

Dorothy was born in Skagway and raised by her mother Bea Lingle, and step-father, Ben Lingle, who operated the hardware store and Skagway Air Service. At age 18, Dorothy moved away from Skagway, and lived in Juneau, Gustavus, and on the Aleutian Islands. She returned to Skagway in 1996, where she met and married her husband, Jeff. Dorothy is an avid gardener and maintains a large garden at their home in Skagway as well as at their summer home in Dyea. Dorothy has witnessed changes from her childhood in the 1960s to the present.

Lynne Cameron

Lynne moved to Skagway in 1987 from Idaho, and became the family nurse practitioner at the medical clinic. In the 1980's, when Skagway was first facing possible lead contamination from ore trucks driving through town, Lynne had concerns about the health effects and was active in the community's "Get The Lead Out" group. She retired in 2016, and continues to reside in Skagway, where she enjoys gardening, beekeeping, and a variety of outdoor recreational activities.

Elaine Furbish

Elaine came to Skagway in 1999 and was the Natural Resources Manager for Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park until 2001. Elaine conducted baseline natural resource surveys of parklands, as well as started a study of lichen as indicators of air pollution. She continues to live in Skagway and as a trained scientist remains a keen observer of the natural world and is involved with the local bird club and community environmental monitoring projects.

Bea Lingle

Bea was born in 1927 in Skagway. Her grandfather came to Skagway as a gambler during the 1898 Gold Rush. She grew up in Seattle with regular summer visits back to Skagway. Bea returned to Skagway in 1945, and after the end of her first marriage, she married Ben Lingle in 1961, who ran the Skagway Hardware store and lumberyard. Bea helped with the business and raised her children, while remaining active in the full social life that Skagway had to offer. They also had a cabin in Carcross in the Yukon Territory of Canada, where they spent most of their summers. In 2018, at age 91, Bea was the oldest resident of Skagway and continued to meet friends for daily "coffee klatches." Bea Lingle passed away in November 2022 at the age of 95.

John McDermott

John came to Skagway in 1970 from Seattle for a teaching job. In 1977, he and his wife, Lorna purchased an old cabin in Dyea and made Dyea their permanent home. He then worked as a conductor for the White Pass and Yukon Route Railroad until the railroad shut down in 1982, and did seasonal work for the re-opened tourist railroad from 1993 until his retirement in 2012.  In 2001, the McDermott's moved into a more modern home in Dyea, where they continue to maintain a large garden and "homestead." John is an active birder and gardener, and also having been a hunter and trapper has witnessed changes in his almost 50 years in the area. John started the Skagway, Naturally! Facebook page, where local residents enter their environmental observations and discuss what is happening in the natural world around them.

Carl Mulvihill

Carl was born in Skagway in 1936 and following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps worked for the Whitepass and Yukon Railroad. Starting when he was sixteen, Carl held a variety of positions from section crew member to brakeman to dispatcher to chief clerk. He had a deep interest in the railway’s history and amassed a large collection of railroad related photographs and artifacts. He wrote the White Pass & Yukon Route Handbook, a mile-by-mile guide of the historic narrow gauge with photos, and Century of White Pass and Yukon Route Equipment, a catalog of information on just about every car that had ever been on the railroad. Having grown up in Skagway and spending a lifetime traveling up and down the railroad corridor, Carl saw many changes to the landscape, vegetation, and the town itself. Carl Mulvihill passed away in November 2021 at the age of 85.

Stan Selmer

Stan grew up in Skagway, and has deep family ties to the community. His father was born in Skagway, and his grandfather was one of the first barbers in town, ran the movie theater, played in the town band, and was mayor. Stan's mother arrived in Skagway in 1945 and worked as a nurse at the White Pass Hospital until she retired in 1967. Stan has served on the City Council three times, and starting in 1989 has been mayor four times. He worked for Alaska Power and Telephone (AP&T) from 1993 until his retirement in 2010, where he was involved with development of the Goat Lake and the Kasidaya Creek hydroelectric projects, overseeing the company's 2002 bankruptcy settlement, and served as executive vice president and chairman of the board. Stan’s experience as a politician and business man brings a different perspective to the subject of climate change.

Emily Willis

Emily came to Skagway in 2002 from Wisconsin and worked at Jewell Gardens from 2002 to 2008. Feeling connected to plants, she began to learn about their traditional and medicinal uses. In 2010, she established her business, Maiden Alaska Herbals, which produces medicinal tinctures, teas, salves, and balms from her organically grown and locally foraged wild plants. She is also the co-director of the Skagway Community Garden, and collaborates with Jewell Gardens on educational programs and workshops on harvesting wild plants. Given Emily's extensive time outdoors foraging for wild plants and working in her own garden experimenting with various plants and growing techniques, she has a keen sense of the vegetation, habitat, and ecosystem that surrounds her.

Nome

Ken Adkisson

Ken has had a long career with the National Park Service, first as an archeologist and seasonal ranger. He came to Nome in 1985 to work as a ranger at the newly formed Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. Since then, he has held a variety of ranger and manager positions with the Preserve, including most recently as manager of the natural and cultural resources program.

Roy Ashenfelter

Roy grew up in the village of White Mountain living a traditional Iñupiaq subsistence lifestyle until leaving to attend junior and senior high school in Anchorage. He earned an associate’s degree in business administration from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and moved to Nome in 1982. Roy has held a variety of jobs in Nome, but for the last twenty years has worked at Kawerak, Inc., the regional Native corporation. He started with their Native allotment program, and most recently has been working as a natural resource advocate dealing with subsistence and fish and game management issues.

Howard Farley, Sr.

Howard first came to Alaska in 1949 on a family visit to Juneau and fell in love with Alaska. He served in the US Coast Guard until 1953, which included a stop at Nome, earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and agriculture from Washington State University, and became a journeyman butcher. Howard returned to Nome in 1959 to work as a butcher for the Northern Commercial Company store, and has lived there ever since. He obtained a dog team and got involved in the tourism business, helped organize and ran in the first Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1973, has been a commercial fisherman, and runs his own business, Farley Marine, that provides pilot boat, ship-to-shore transportation, and charter boat services. He has also served on the local Fish and Game Advisory Board.

Letty Hughes

Letty grew up in interior Alaska and earned an undergraduate degree in wildlife biology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Since 2004, she worked for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks, Bethel and Nome, and since 2018 has been the Wildlife Biologist for Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. Her work has included being a field technician studying the stomach contents of seals to conducting animal population surveys of moose, caribou, bears, muskoxen, and wolves. She has also looked at vegetation and changes to the animals' habitats and is involved with the Bering Land Bridge and the Arctic Inventory and Monitoring Network.

Jeanette Koelsch

Jeanette grew up Nome and her maternal grandparents were Jane and Jack Antoghame from St. Lawrence Island. She earned an undergraduate degree in general science from Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, and started working for Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in 1994 as a summer seasonal Park Ranger. Within a year, Jeanette was also working as an Interpretive Ranger during the winter months where she helped develop educational curriculum and hosted school programs. By 1996, she was the full-time Interpretive Park Ranger, and won the Alaska Region Freeman Tilden Award for her educational work, including a PBS documentary and a CD-ROM program called "Science in Our Lives" that included oral history interviews with elders, combining scientific and cultural elements, and games for children. From 1998 to 2009, Jeanette worked for Kawerak, Incorporated helping to develop economic development plans for their villages. Since 2009, she has served as the Superintendent of Bering Land Bridge National Preserve.

Charles "Charlie" Lean

Charlie grew up in Nome where his father was an engineer for the United States Smelting, Refining, and Mining Company (USSR&M) and was construction engineer with the Bureau of Public Roads for the Kougarok Road. The family moved away when Charlie was seven years old, but after earning a bachelor’s degree in wildlife management, Charlie returned to Nome to work as a fisheries biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He has since been the Subsistence Fisheries Manager for the Office of Subsistence Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service (OSM), served as fisheries biologist with the National Park Service’s Western Arctic Parklands unit (WEAR) where he conducted research projects in Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, and was director of fisheries research and development at the Norton Sound Economic Development Council (NSEDC). He also has been active with the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group, a co-management committee comprised of agency managers, scientists, and local users.

Jacob Martin

Jacob grew up in Nome, and his maternal grandparents were Lucy Koyuk and John Taxac from King Island, Alaska. He grew up living a subsistence lifestyle of hunting and fishing, with many summers spent with his aunt and uncle in Koyuk. He graduated from Nome-Beltz Senior High School in 2012 and attended one year at the University of Alaska Fairbanks before returning to Nome where he worked for Sitnasuak Native Corporation in their administration and their land departments. He then worked as a subsistence specialist and the Tribal Resource Director at the Nome Eskimo Community, the Native tribe for Nome, where he updated the community's Climate Adaptation Plan. He currently works as the Program Director for the Shared Beringian Heritage Program, a special program within the National Park Service.

Vera Kingeekuk Metcalf

Vera is from Savoonga on St. Lawrence Island, and grew up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle. She moved to Nome in 1979 where she has worked as a teacher’s aide, a translator of her native St. Lawrence Island Yupik language, and doing cultural documentation work with the Eskimo Heritage Program. In 1999, she earned a bachelor’s degree in rural development from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Since 2002, Vera has been the director of the Eskimo Walrus Commission at Kawerak, Incorporated. In this role, she promotes community involvement in research, documentation of local traditional ecological knowledge, and co-management of the Pacific walrus population. She also is a Commissioner on the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, an Advisory Panel member of the North Pacific Research Board, a Steering Committee member for the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, Special Advisor on Native Affairs for the Marine Mammal Commission, and a member of the Inuit Circumpolar Council Executive Committee. Vera is a strong advocate for the subsistence lifestyles of Alaska Native peoples, and passionate about strengthening Alaska Native languages and cultures.

Gay Sheffield

Gay came to Alaska from Rhode Island in 1988 with a bachelor’s of science degree in environmental conservation from the University of New Hampshire and worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service studying walrus at Cape Pierce near Dillingham. She earned a master’s degree in marine biology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks focused on studying walrus diet, worked as a marine mammal biologist for the State of Alaska Arctic Marine Mammal Program, and currently is an associate professor with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences and the Alaska Sea Grant and Marine Advisory Program agent for the Bering Strait region based in Nome.

National Park Service

Tahzay Jones

Tahzay has an undergraduate degree in biological sciences from the University of Chicago, and a PhD from the University of Miami focused on invertebrate animals in the marine environment and how the influences from coastal runoff impacted the near-shore environment. He came to Alaska to work as a technician for Katmai National Park based in King Salmon. He is currently the Oceans and Coastal Programs Coordinator for the National Park Service Alaska region, based in Anchorage. In this position, he has conducted research on the coastal lagoon system of the Seward Peninsula around Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, on coastal erosion, and on the impact to the ecosystem and subsistence due to changes in sea ice and the maritime and riverine environments.

David Swanson

David studied geology, soil science, and plant ecology in Colorado, and earned a PhD in soil science from the University of Minnesota. He came to Alaska in 1989 to work as a soil scientist for the Soil Conservation Service (now the Natural Resource Conservation Service), where he was in charge of all soil mapping investigations in central and northern Alaska. In the early 2000’s, David moved to Oregon for a job as a plant ecologist with the US Forest Service. In 2008, he returned to Alaska for his current job as an ecologist with the National Park Service’s Arctic Inventory & Monitoring Network based in Fairbanks. The network conducts scientific research and environmental monitoring projects in five national parks in northern Alaska: Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Kobuk Valley National Park, Noatak National Preserve, and Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve.