April’s aerial survey route covered an area of 100 miles east to west across the northern portion of the Arctic Refuge.

April is aerial survey time on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as biologists are looking for dark animals against a snowy-white background. Earlier in the winter there is not enough light in the arctic for such surveys. Later in the year, dark-colored animals are difficult to spot against vegetation.

Arctic Refuge staff took advantage of sunny conditions on April 2-3 to conduct an aerial survey of moose and muskoxen across northern parts of the Refuge. Pilots and biologists in two small airplanes flew 2400 miles of survey lines across an area the size of Connecticut searching for animals wintering on the Refuge’s coastal plain and along major rivers in the northeast corner of Alaska.

The survey used a 3 mile search grid across the relatively flat tundra terrain, and included willow habitats along river corridors within the mountains. Each plane was equipped with a GPS that contained the survey lines in its memory. The location of each animal was entered as a waypoint on the GPS, and later downloaded into an office computer to be mapped. Biologists counted 59 moose and 5 muskoxen during the two day survey, similar to survey results collected over the past few years.