Alaska stories: bison, Laurel, AlaSkins

The latest news from Ron & T of The Buffalo Wool Co. at RATH Ranch. Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more

Hello and Happy Saturday Friends!

Hope you had a great week, life here in the shed is good, fair is quite busy and a lot of friends have come by to say hi and restock on socks etc.

Had a really special visit Sunday, on my first trip up here, I met a really cool kid named Tristan, and he basically ran my booth at the Alaska Outdoors show... just helped in many ways, His parents have a fishing lodge on one of the islands not far from Whittier, and are exceptionally great people as well.. They stopped by to say hi and give me my annual update on the kid, who is no longer a kid... living in New Zealand and just got engaged. Really great to know how well he is doing. Really love catching up with everyone here.

The most wonderful people here are taking great care of us, was gifted the most amazing pot of moose chili this week, truly the best thing I have eaten here this trip. Was amazing stuff, can't get enough moose meat, and another dear friend brought us a spectacular load of jalapeno cheese sourdough. Made breakfast great the last couple mornings.

Have a couple of good Alaskan stories in here today, and I hope you enjoy it. Have shared about the AWCC before, but it's such a great place and story, thought I would elaborate a bit more.

Ron and T and the crew back home running the show at the BWC.

its long today, might need to refill your coffee before you start.

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Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and the Return of Wood Bison

For more than a century, wood bison were a memory in Alaska—bones in the ground, stories in Athabascan oral history, and a gap in the lowland meadows where a big grazer used to walk. The last known animals in the state were killed around 1918. By the early 1900s the subspecies had nearly vanished across North America. Today two experimental herds are living wild again, a third is planned for 2027, and much of that story still runs through a 200-acre sanctuary at the head of Turnagain Arm. Usually our first stop on our way out of Anchorage... love sharing this amazing place with family and friends.

The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center (AWCC) sits at Mile 79 of the Seward Highway in Portage Valley, on Dena’ina homelands, with the Chugach Mountains behind it. Founded in 1993 as Big Game Alaska and later reorganized as a nonprofit sanctuary, AWCC’s day-to-day work is caring for orphaned and injured animals that cannot go back to the wild: bears, moose, wolves, muskox, lynx, and the rest of the familiar Alaska roster. Its less visible job has been to keep wood bison alive in the United States long enough for the state to put them back on the landscape.

They have some other fun animals too

The animal that disappeared, Wood bison (Bison bison athabascae) are the northern cousin of the plains bison most people picture. They are larger, darker, and built for boreal wetlands and sedge meadows rather than shortgrass prairie. Archaeological sites and elder accounts place them across Interior Alaska for thousands of years. Climate-driven habitat change and unregulated hunting are the leading explanations for their disappearance. Canada’s remnant herds, especially the disease-free stock at Elk Island National Park in Alberta, became the source for Alaska’s restoration.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game began planning a return in the 1990s. The legal piece took longer. Wood bison are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated Alaska’s animals a “nonessential experimental population,” which allowed a release without locking up huge blocks of critical habitat and left room for future hunting under state sustained-yield rules. That ruling is what made the first wild herd possible.

Portage as a nursery ADF&G needed a place to hold and breed animals before any barge or C-130 could fly. AWCC signed on. A small group of wood bison arrived in the mid-2000s; a much larger shipment from Elk Island followed in 2008. Plains bison that had been on site were moved out so the wood bison herd would stay genetically distinct. The center devoted pasture—including Forest Service land next door—to the project. Businesses donated hay for years. Staff learned how to load animals that can weigh more than a ton into custom shipping containers without losing one. It's a pretty amazing process.

AWCC’s role never ended after the first release. The center still keeps a breeding herd. As of spring 2026 it held 34 wood bison and typically produces eight to ten calves a year, enough to send 15 to 20 animals toward the wild every other year. Visitors who walk the 1.5-mile loop see the same species biologists are trying to put back in the Innoko, the Tanana, and eventually the Yukon Flats. That public view is part of the design: people have to know what a wood bison is before they will care that one is gone.

The first wild herd, 2015 In March 2015, about 100 cows, calves, and young bulls left AWCC by truck and C-130 for the village of Shageluk. They were held briefly, then led across the Innoko River toward sedge meadows. Later that spring, 30 mature bulls made the longer trip: containers at Portage, highway to Nenana, then hundreds of miles by barge downriver. All 130 animals were released. Sixteen wild-born calves were counted that first summer. For the first time in more than 100 years, the United States had free-ranging wood bison.

The Lower Innoko–Yukon herd grew, then hit a wall. A brutal winter in 2022–23—deep snow, ice over the forage, a late spring, flooding at melt—killed nearly half of the here. Twenty-eight yearlings imported from Canada and released in 2022 had helped push the count toward 150; the crash pulled it back. By winter 2025 the herd was estimated at about 111, still using a roughly 60-mile corridor along the Innoko and Yukon near the GASH communities of Grayling, Anvik, Shageluk, and Holy Cross. In winter they live on sedge. In summer they switch to higher-protein plants. The habitat can work. The winters have to cooperate.

A second herd on the Minto Flats The state’s original plan named three focus areas. The second is the Lower Tanana, centered on Minto Flats State Game Refuge about 50 miles southwest of Fairbanks. In summer 2024, 41 young bison from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Large Animal Research Station (LARS) and 17 from AWCC were trucked to Nenana and barged to a 100-acre soft-release pen. They spent 9.5 months inside the fence so the place would feel like home. On May 13, 2025, the gates opened. Sixty-one wood bison, including a newborn calf, walked out. Alaska had its second wild herd.

The AWCC animals on that trip were not a footnote. They were the first major release drawn from the Portage breeding herd rather than a fresh Canadian shipment. Loading them took a 40-hour relay of veterinarians, biologists, and truckers. No animal was lost in transport—consistent with every major move since 2015. Radio collars now ping daily locations. Summer 2026 is the first breeding season when most of that young herd is old enough to calve in numbers. A few adults have already died of winter stress. That is the honest part of restoration: the pen is the easy chapter. The meadow in March is the test.

LARS has become the Interior counterpart to AWCC. After a 2026 transfer of 44 more bison from Elk Island, LARS was holding 56 animals, all eligible for future release. Canada keeps sending surplus stock. Alaska keeps trying to turn that stock into herds that persist without a hay truck.

What comes next, A third herd is aimed at the Yukon Flats in 2027, on state land with sedge, grass, and cottonwood—drier country than the Innoko, which biologists hope will spare the animals some of the icing that hammered the first herd. Soft-release fencing is slated for 2026. Transport there will lean on aircraft rather than barges. The long-term goal is not a zoo population and not a return to prehistoric numbers. Managers talk about a few thousand animals across the three areas, enough genetic depth to last, and eventually a public-trust resource that communities might hunt under sustained yield.

That last point matters. The program was built with villages, landowners, conservation groups, industry, and agencies in the same rooms. The 10(j) experimental-population rule exists so restoration does not freeze other land uses. Local “bison guardian” work already pays people to haze animals off infrastructure and collect samples. Restoration here is as much a social project as a biological one.Why the sanctuary still mattersAWCC will keep a display and breeding herd even as more animals leave. Calves born in Portage can still go north. Visitors can still stand on the loop road and watch a cow and a red-brown calf move through grass with the mountains behind them. That is not the same as a wild meadow on the Innoko. It is how most Alaskans, and almost every tourist, will ever see a wood bison

The species is not “saved.” Two small herds and a planned third do not erase a century of absence or a winter that can take half a population. What has changed is the direction of the story. For a hundred years the trail ended. Now it runs from Elk Island to Portage to Shageluk to Minto Flats, and next toward the Yukon Flats—with a nonprofit sanctuary at the road-accessible end of that chain still doing the unglamorous work of feeding, fencing, and loading the next group onto a truck.Wood bison were Alaska’s animal before they were Alaska’s absence. The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center helped hold the line until the state could try to give them a home again.Where to send readers

AWCC: alaskawildlife.org · Mile 79 Seward Highway, Portage

ADF&G wood bison restoration: adfg.alaska.gov wood bison pages

“This is a very exciting moment for international wood bison conservation.” — Tom Seaton, ADF&G, on the May 2025 Minto Flats release

Meet Laurel Downing Bill—a third-generation Alaskan, award-winning author, journalist, curriculum developer, and lifelong storyteller of Alaska’s remarkable past. And one of our long time fair neighbors, and this is her last Fair. Such a wonderful woman and I love her books. Excellent Alaskan history.

Born in Fairbanks in 1951, Laurel’s family history reaches back to the late 1890s on both sides of her family. Her paternal great-grandfather, Capt. John Couch Downing, commanded the steamships Excelsior, Portland, and Bertha, vessels closely associated with the Klondike Gold Rush era. On her mother’s side, great-grandfather Robert Burns Mathison helped establish the mining community of Hope and reportedly recovered 389 ounces of gold from Resurrection Creek in only 59 days.

Laurel’s own life has carried her from Fairbanks and Juneau to Cameroon, West Africa; Mallorca, Spain; and Leysin, Switzerland. She returned to Alaska in 1970 and later made her home in King Salmon, where she raised her family and worked in telecommunications for Bristol Bay Telephone Cooperative. After moving to Anchorage in 1997, she earned a journalism degree from the University of Alaska Anchorage and went on to write hundreds of articles for Alaska newspapers and magazines, earning multiple Alaska Press Club honors.

Her acclaimed five-volume Aunt Phil’s Trunk series grew from the research collection left by her late aunt, historian Phyllis Downing Carlson. Laurel combined those treasures with years of original research in archives, libraries, museums, and university collections to bring Alaska’s colorful history to new generations of readers.

The series has earned widespread praise and received Literary Classics International’s Gold Medal for Best Nonfiction Series Worldwide.

Laurel also developed award-winning Alaska history curriculum based on the books, now used by homeschool and charter-school families, school districts, and Alaska Native village schools throughout the state.

At the insistence of homeschool families, she recently created full-year creative-writing programs built around Alaska themes for middle- and high-school students. In 2027,

Laurel will also serve as the historical speaker aboard Oceania Cruises’ Riviera for four consecutive Inside Passage voyages from Seattle, running from mid-May through July 7.

You can watch her short CBS Alaska Story Time snippets on Youtube at: https://auntphilstrunk.com/aunt-phil-now-on-tv/

Alaska’s history lives in the stories Laurel preserves—and in the students, readers, and travelers she continues to inspire.

Link to her books:

www.auntphilstrunk.com

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LaurelBillAuthor/

Email:

Laurel@auntphilstrunk.com

AlaSkins Turns Discarded Skins Into Dog Treats

It's such a brilliant business plan, keeping good quality stuff out of the trash. Gonna have to restock a years worth... Or see if we can carry them on the website. Maverick and Goose love these so much. Can't not bring home a bunch.

Alaska’s processing plants, the prize is the fillet. After the salmon, halibut, or cod is skinned and packed for market, the skins often go the other way: into grinders, low-value fishmeal, landfills, or back into the water. That leftover layer is not empty tissue. It is dense with protein, omega-3 oils, and vitamins—the same nutrients that make wild Alaska seafood famous.AlaSkins, a woman-owned company in Soldotna, built a business on that overlooked layer. The treats are simple: 100% wild Alaskan fish skin, dehydrated until crunchy, with nothing else added. Dogs love the snap. Owners get a single-ingredient snack. Processors get paid for something they used to throw away. (business model sounds slightly familiar... )

A fishing-family idea that started with “waste”Founder Sara Erickson is a third-generation Alaskan, born in Newhalen on Lake Iliamna and raised on the Kenai Peninsula. She grew up commercial fishing with her family in Bristol Bay and Cook Inlet. Her father used to talk about the nutrition sitting in parts the plants discarded—especially the skin. Erickson has said that watching bears rip off skin and leave the flesh made the point obvious: the skin is where a lot of the protein and oil live.

After years in the seafood industry, she started calling plants in 2016 and asking them to save skins instead of sending them to waste. It was not an easy sell. During peak season, slime lines and skinners are built for speed, and skins often drop straight into grinders. Local relationships helped. She began at home with a countertop dehydrator, trademarked the name AlaSkins, and launched online in 2017. The first wholesale bags at AK Bark in Anchorage sold out almost immediately.

By 2020 she had a retail store and manufacturing plant on the Kenai River Bridge in Soldotna. The company has been named Soldotna Business of the Year, Alaska Manufacturer of the Year, and an Industry Innovator. The mascot is Max, Erickson’s black lab. The tagline writes itself: dogs are Askin’ for AlaSkins. What used to be waste is now the whole product, commercial plants typically keep the fillet—and sometimes roe—and treat the rest as a disposal problem. Erickson has described skins being dumped in oceans, bays, rivers, or landfills, or rendered into cheap meal. Alaska’s seafood system is huge, and a large share of each fish never becomes food for people. One commonly cited figure in this conversation is that a majority of the fish can be left unused when the industry is built around fillets for export.

Staff clean the skins—pulling fins, bones, and extra meat—then hand-roll them or lay whole skins on racks and dehydrate them for about 15 hours. The result is a shelf-stable, crunchy chew with one ingredient: wild salmon skin, wild halibut skin, or wild Pacific cod skin.

The company has said it has diverted more than 42 tons of fish skins from the waste stream. Later company updates put the total even higher as production grew. Either way, the model is the same: a byproduct becomes a finished food instead of a disposal cost.

Why fish skin is good protein for dogs, skin is not a filler. It is connective tissue plus residual meat and fat, concentrated by drying. AlaSkins markets the treats as naturally rich in protein, omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamins such as A, D, and B12. Fish oils in the skin support skin and coat, joint comfort, and cardiovascular health, and they are associated with lower inflammation. Because nothing else is added—no grains, glycerin, dyes, or mystery “digest”—the ingredient list stays short for dogs with sensitive stomachs.

The texture matters as much as the nutrition. Dehydrated skin has a hard crunch dogs chase, without turning the treat into a highly processed biscuit. It is still a treat, not a complete diet, but it is closer to “real fish” than most supermarket chews.Wild Alaska sourcing is part of the pitch. The skins come from sustainably managed, wild fisheries—not open-net farmed fish—and the plant is in Alaska, so the product stays tied to the same boats and processors that already handle the fillets.They do not stop at the skinAlaSkins talks about a “100% fish” approach inspired by full-utilization models such as Iceland’s Ocean Cluster: keep asking what else the leftover can become. Extra meat left on halibut skins is canned as pet food. Fatty trim is cooked down into pure halibut oil; what remains after rendering becomes a meal topper. Broken salmon pieces and tails become cat treats. Shed moose antlers are soaked in that same oil and smoked. Each extra product is another way to keep protein and oil in the food system instead of the dumpster.

That is the quiet economic argument. Processors get a buyer for a stream they used to pay to haul away. Alaska keeps a bit more value in-state. Pets get a nutrient-dense chew. The ocean and landfill get less discarded skin.A small plant with a bigger idea. AlaSkins is still a small manufacturer—own plant, a handful of employees, products in roughly 100 stores plus online, and early expansion Outside. Erickson has been clear that the mission is not only treats. It is proving an Alaskan-owned company can turn byproducts into year-round work, and that “waste” in a wild fishery is often just a product nobody bothered to make yet.

For dog owners, the story is simpler. Those crunchy salmon, halibut, and cod rolls started as something a processing line was built to throw away. Now they are one-ingredient protein, made in Soldotna, from fish that was already caught. Dogs, as the bags say, keep Askin’ for AlaSkins. The more interesting part is that the skins were never worthless. They were just waiting for someone to stop treating them like trash.

Order some for your pup here