Nome residents are worried about their safety as musk oxen hang around within city limits.
Musk oxen have been spotted in various places around town, including the elementary school and neighborhoods. Musk oxen have reportedly killed or antagonized animals, and they’re keeping people from visiting the cemetery.
And in December of 2022, a musk ox killed a state court services officer as he was trying to haze it off his property’s dog lot near Nome.
Musk oxen disappeared from Alaska by the beginning of the 1900s but were bred in the Bering Strait Region in the 1970s and transplanted to the mainland.
According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the population has grown from 750 musk oxen in the 1970s to more than 4,000 today.
This year, the state is offering 30 musk ox hunting permits for the inner and outer Nome areas. Sarah Germain, a wildlife biologist with Fish and Game, said this should help control the musk ox population in town.
“Hopefully, now that there’s a cow season, folks may be encouraged to harvest a musk ox in the fall,” Germain said. “And we’ll have to assess and see if that does help the nuisance musk ox situation.”
Germain said musk oxen have been coming into town since 2007.
“Since that time, we’ve periodically gotten calls about dog and human conflicts with musk ox,” she said. “I don’t really know that I’d say that it’s increased over time.”
She said residents have used tactics to help deter the animals off personal property, and some are more effective than others.
“Fish and Game staff have learned a lot about getting musk ox enout of an area through time, but it seems like you could yell, you could try to use sirens, there’s water guns,” she said. “Folks have tried various things, but all those things are temporary compared to a fence.”
Sarah Swartz, a Nome resident since 2006, remembers driving down Beam Road to view musk oxen when she first moved to town. But a personal encounter six years later changed her perspective.
“Back in 2012, my dog, in that short time of folding my laundry, he did get gored,” Swartz said. “And that was very, very traumatizing because this big animal who had just attacked my dog was angry and he wouldn’t move. And I couldn’t find my dogs.”
The increasing presence of musk oxen in town prompted Swartz to adapt her daily routines around musk oxen, specifically around her home. She said she goes outside every morning to make sure there are no musk oxen hiding, so she can safely leave her house.
Fish and Game advises residents living in musk ox country to clear brush around their homes to improve visibility and reduce potential encounters with musk oxen. But Swartz said not all Nome residents have the financial means or tools to clear brush or build a fence.
“That takes a tremendous amount of time and money because of resources and stuff that I have to use,” she said. “I really don’t feel like we should be paying for it.”
Swartz said she can’t find a management plan for musk oxen in the Seward Peninsula, but has found plans for other Arctic regions, including Greenland. She said there’s enough land in the region for the musk oxen to be moved and recommends a musk ox farm.
“It’d be great for tourism, and it would be safer for the community and everybody else,” Swartz said. “We could actually get to a point where we could have a higher population and end up having some of those animals harvested for food and it can go to communities in need.”
Nome police didn’t immediately answer a request for comment Friday.
Germain said that Fish and Game will be performing a musk ox survey around the Seward Peninsula next spring that will assess the results of the new bag and cow limits. Limits will be reevaluated for the next hunting season based on those results.
