A Scientist’s Blog from the Arctic: By Steve Zack, Wildlife
Conservation Society Unraveling Mysteries of Migration 12 Jul
2011 “We have the Japan bird over here, and the China bird is
nearby,” Wildlife Conservation Society field assistant Lizzie
Goodrick states confidently into the walkie-talkie. She is
reporting to our other field assistants monitoring birds near
our remote field camp on the Ikpikpuk River on Alaska’s North
Slope. The birds in question — small, long-billed shorebirds
called dunlin — have indeed been photographed in those countries
last winter and have returned to breed again where we captured,
banded, and applied geolocators to them, here in our Ikpikpuk
site. Steve Zack of the Wildlife Conservation Society blogs from
the Arctic for Yale Environment 360. The first in a series. The
Ikpikpuk camp, located on the far western edge of the Teshekpuk
Lake Special Area in the U.S. National Petroleum Reserve —
Alaska, is a 1 1/2 -hour flight by bush plane from near the
Prudhoe Bay oilfields to the ea