Activity Report Explorer

Rio Grande Valley Broadband • Entered by Susan Ostlie on March 31, 2022

The Birds of Cooper Island

March 8, 2022

Key Issue: Wildlife Protection
Activity Type: Relationship Building with non-white and/or frontline communities (relational meetings, attending events, community support, etc.)
Key Partners: Alaska Wilderness League

Short Description of Activity

In 1972, George found a colony of black guillemots on Cooper Island, a barrier island in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea and began an ongoing long-term study of the colony in 1975. His nearly half-century of summers camping on the island have allowed him to witness major changes to a rapidly disappearing ecosystem. George Divoky has studied Alaska seabirds since 1970 when, as a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution, he participated in a three-year census of marine birds and mammals in response to the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay. In 1975 he began a study of Mandt’s black guillemots, an ice-obligate seabird, on Cooper Island, 35 km east of Point Barrow, Alaska. The study, now 47 years in duration, is the longest continuous seabird study in the Arctic and its findings on the consequences of decadal-scale reductions in snow and sea ice to seabird demographics and breeding provide some of the best examples of the long-term biological consequences of climate change.
Divoky has worked for federal and state agencies on a range of Alaska seabird management and conservation issues including the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act, oil and gas exploration of the outer continental shelf, and oil spill damage assessment and restoration. He is currently director of Cooper Island Arctic Research, funded by the Seattle-based nonprofit, Friends of Cooper Island.
Divoky’s research on the black guillemots of Cooper Island was featured in a cover story in The New York Times Magazine entitled “George Divoky’s Planet,” in the PBS Scientific American Frontiers program “Hot Times in Alaska” with Alan Alda, and on “ABC World News Tonight” and “Nightline.” He has appeared on “The Late Show with David Letterman,” and has been interviewed on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” “On Point” and “Science Friday.”

Reflection/Evaluation

The dramatic impacts of climate change left an impression on all of us following our conversation with ornithologist George Divoky about his studies of black guillemots on Cooper Island, a barrier island in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea.
Yesterday’s latest installment in the League’s Geography of Hope series was a reminder of Alaska’s unique position as a preview of broader climate impacts and offered images and information from the “frontlines” of climate change to help inspire people around the world to take action and demand change.
This was a most moving series of videos about someone who has done amazing science in a most remote and unfriendly island for about 50 years. His company was often only the occasional polar bear. It was sad to see that he died recently of cancer, but had continued to do his summer studies (from April through October, as I recall) up until his last days. One of the sobering aspects that he observed was the cannibalizing of the young guillemots by puffins, who are usually considered a charming group of endangered birds.