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For decades, dogs have been verboten on the Pribilof Islands under a rule imposed by the federal government to protect the world’s largest concentration of northern fur seals.

Now, dogs are welcome — with important caveats.

Under a new interim rule enacted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, dogs may be brought to the islands, but only for the specific purpose of hunting for rats. Dogs allowed on St. Paul Island or any other part of the five-island archipelago must be trained and certified as rat-detectors and catchers, and their stays are limited to 180 days. The general ban on dogs, in place since the 1980s, remains intact, but the new rule creates an exception for dogs enlisted in the anti-rat work.

The Pribilofs have managed to stay rat-free even as other Alaska islands and coastal areas have become infested with the non-native rodents.

Rat-sniffing dogs would help keep things that way, according to the residents of St. Paul Island, site of the main community in the archipelago.

“We work very, very hard to keep this a rat-free island. And we also recognize that shipping lanes are opening up right in the Arctic and there’s just potentially, if not already, going to be more vessel traffic in this part of the world,” said Chelsea Campbell, marine mammal programs manager for the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, the local tribal government.

Allowing dogs to help is a bit of “forward thinking,” she said. The idea is that “maybe we should have some ability to get a rat sniffing dog out here, just in case,” she said.

Rats are not native to any part of Alaska. But, introduced by ships, they have infested several coastal regions and become one of the most destructive invasive species in the state.

Once established, they can devastate natural ecosystems, especially on islands where bird populations have evolved without exposure to or defenses against any land-based predators. It is a longstanding problem for islands around the world. Invasive rats are even believed to be partly to blame for the extinction of the Dodo.

On St. Paul, there have been a few isolated cases of rats escaping ships, but almost all of those were caught immediately in traps set up at the harbor. One rat escaped that gauntlet in 2018; it was found dead 10 months later.

A reported but unconfirmed rat sighting in 2024 was the main impetus for the new rule, said Mike Williams, NOAA’s Pribilof Islands program manager. No rat was ever found, so if there had been one that escaped from a ship, it apparently died, he said.

Another impetus, Campbell said, was a visit in recent years by a cruise ship that underreported its rat-infestation problem.

Compared to other vulnerable Alaska islands, the Pribilofs have some advantages in their fight against rats.

Community members have been vigilant in the anti-rat program, in coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and other entities and organizations.

Additionally, ship traffic through the Pribilofs is not quite as heavy as that through the Aleutians, Wiliams said. And a “saving grace” for the archipelago, he said, is the native population of Arctic foxes.

The Pribilof foxes make up a genetically distinct population known for the blue tint that shows up in the animals’ fur. Williams said they do not bother the fur seals.

They have a varied diet that includes birds, eggs, marine resources and berries. And they are on hand to hunt and eat rats, Williams said.

One of the first rats ever seen on St. Paul, an event in the 1990s, was actually in the mouth of a passing fox, he said.

The new rule went into effect on Aug. 6. For now, Williams and Campbell said, there is no particular dog or dog trainer yet identified as a candidate for Pribilof work.  

Williams said that if a rat-catching dog is sent to St. Paul, it might make the most sense to have it there in the winter, when any rats on the island would be concentrated in town rather than across a wider area where they may not be able to find food.

“You want a small, focused area to search rather than the whole entire island,” he said.

On the other hand, having a rat-sniffing dog on duty during the summer might be useful to ensure that ships that come to the island are safe, Campbell said.

Rat eradication

Although it is difficult to eject rats once they are established, it is not impossible.

Rat eradication has been successful at some islands, and possibly most famously at an Alaska site formerly called Rat Island. It got the name because it was the first place in Alaska to be invaded by rats; it is believed that the rodents swam ashore from a wrecked Japanese sailing ship in the late 1700s.

A cooperative effort between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and two nonprofits, Island Conservation and the Nature Conservancy.

By 2012, the bird populations there had recovered, and the island was officially bestowed with its Unangan name: Hawadax.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is now planning for similar rat eradications on four other Aleutian islands: Kiska, Attu, Amchitka and Great Sitkin. Like Hawadax, all four islands are part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Different types of rat poison are being considered, along with genetic biocontrol technology, which is a process that uses genetic engineering to limit reproduction.

Kiska and Attu were occupied by the Japanese during World War II, and a brutal battle occurred on Attu in 1943. The rats there are war legacies. The threat is particularly ominous in Kiska because that rugged volcanic island is home to what is considered a “superflock” of seabirds, particularly auklets, but also an ever-expanding population of rats using the same rocky crevices to kill and stash their prey. Since Kiska is much bigger than the island now called Hawadax, rat eradication there would be more challenging, the Fish and Wildlife Service notes.

The rat eradication proposals for the four Aleutian sites are moving forward, though gradually.

Scoping, the initial phase that leads to an environmental impact statement, was conducted in 2024. A draft environmental impact statement is expected to be released later this year. A draft environmental impact statement is expected this fall, to be followed by a final EIS and a decision on action next year, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Dawson City will host the Tenth Annual Great Klondike International outhouse race during Labor Day weekend. 

Dawson City Mayor Peter Jenkins, on behalf of the Outhouse Race Committee, has challenged all Alaskans to participate. “We are eager to show our neighbors in Alaska, as well as the world, that when it comes to running outhouses, Yukoners are the best,” the mayor said. 

The 1 ½ mile race through Dawson City begins at 3 p.m. Aug.…

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Earlier this summer, I was jogging on a local trail with my 7-year-old black lab mutt, Camas, when she suddenly froze. The fur along her spine bristled. Then she let out a single, sharp bark — a timbre I’d never before heard.

I caught the unmistakable musk of an animal and my hand shot to the bear spray on my chest. Halfway up a tree less than 20 yards away, a beautiful, small cinnamon black bear stared back at us.

The bear scampered off as Camas growled, standing her ground in front of me on the trail. “Good girl,” I told her, my heart rate slowing to a normal pace. My dog, I assumed, warned me early of a potential threat. I was proud.

In bear country, common wisdom holds that dogs serve as early bear alarms, or even deterrents. That belief, however, has long rested mostly on anecdote. Until recently, almost no one had tested whether it was actually true.

A new study in the Journal of Wildlife Management analyzed bear-dog conflicts involving black, polar and brown bears from Alaska to Florida. The results challenge the idea that dogs make people safer in bear country and they have me rethinking my relationship with Camas in the woods.

“If you think a house pet is likely going to be your bear, not only detector but deterrent, you might want to think twice about that,” lead author of the paper Tom Smith told me over Zoom, one of his dogs begging for attention in the background while mine snoozed next to me.

Smith, a research wildlife biologist at Brigham Young University in Utah, analyzed 326 bear-dog encounters spanning more than a century, drawing from newspaper articles, federal and state government reports, books, records compiled by other bear specialists, and internet searches.

Smith began working with bears more than 30 years ago in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. He’s published influential research on bear spray and guns as bear deterrents, and has become one of the world’s leading experts on human-bear interaction. “As soon as you become the bear guy, then everybody comes running to you for advice on how to be safe,” he said. “So I thought, ‘I’m going to have to get to the heart of this.”

Smith has long been interested in the way dogs impact humans’ odds of an encounter in bear country. But the issue became urgent and tangible to him following a 2023 attack that left two people and their dog dead in a tent in Canada’s Banff National Park. The issue hasn’t gone away. This summer alone, a jogger and his dog were mauled near Island Park, Idaho, while recordings of separate encounters involving dogs in Banff and Alberta went viral online.

The findings

The data show people are largely unprepared for bear encounters and naive to their possible consequences. Dogs ran away, fought with bears, provoked confrontations, drew owners in to fight off bears barehanded, and even boomeranged bears back to people.

The first surprise in the data was how few people carried any deterrent at all. That might be because people thought, erroneously, Smith says, that dogs would be sufficient to keep bears away. Recreators wielded bear spray in only about a tenth of cases and a firearm in roughly a third. All told, five people and 56 dogs died in the encounters Smith analyzed.

Contrary to some common wisdom, dogs also weren’t effective warning systems for bears. In fact, they alerted their owners early of a bear in only 1 in 11 of the encounters the study analyzed. Dogs provoked the bear, instigating the encounter, in more than half the cases. After the bear conflict began, things didn’t look much better: Dogs tangled with bears about 40 percent of the time, ran away in 20 percent of encounters, and didn’t engage at all in about 17 percent of cases. So much for dogs being excellent protectors.

Other findings were less surprising. Leashes were a major decider in the severity of the interaction. Unleashed dogs were involved in six times as many incidents as leashed pets. Smith said dogs without a leash can dart ahead of owners or crash through brush and spook a bear. Canines can also act as bear boomerangs. In 27 of the encounters, dogs brought a bear back to their owners. In 70 percent of these instances, the dog owner was injured. Worse yet, many owners in the data came to rescue their pet when it got in a scuffle with a bear, often with no deterrent. The result: 85 percent of the time, those owners were injured.

Additionally, the data reinforced something bear experts have known for years: the larger the group of people, the less likely the encounter. However, the presence of a dog dramatically shifts that risk. Dogs roughly doubled the odds of a conflict compared to the same-sized groups with no canine companions.

Taken as a whole, the data paint a portrait in which bears and domestic dogs don’t get along. Smith suspects it’s part of the long evolutionary relationship between bears and wolves. For thousands of years, wolves competed with bears for food, killed cubs and even kicked bruins off carcasses. Some of this behavior is on public display in places like Yellowstone National Park, where populations of both species flourish. Modern dogs may still trigger those ancient instincts.

Smith recognizes limitations and nuance in his data, too. For one, it’s important to note that the dogs in the analysis were domestic companions, not highly-trained guardian dogs meant to fend off predators — which data show can reduce bear presence at ranches and farms. Also, data on human-bear conflict inherently shows a bias, depicting only the encounters that went majorly wrong rather than the majority of experiences when people venture into the places bruins live and the species coexist without incident. “For the most part, people and their dogs pass through bear country without incident,” Smith wrote in the paper.

Should your pup join the hike?

“The takeaway isn’t to keep dogs out of bear country,” Smith said. “The takeaway is there are things you can do that greatly improve your odds.”

Best practices, backed by Smith’s data, say to travel in groups, eliminate smells if you’re camping and make noise. Bear bells, he says, don’t work. Above almost all else? “You have no business being in bear country without a deterrent,” Smith said.

Dogs just don’t cut it on that front. According to Smith, bear spray has the highest likelihood of fending off an aggressive bear for the vast majority of recreationists in bear country. But firearms can work too for experienced users. Carry your spray (or gun) where you can reach it in a split second. No matter what deterrent you choose, practice with it. Bear encounters can happen in seconds.

If you do take your dog, consider a leash. “It’s not just dogs and bears,” Smith said. “It’s also dogs and everything else.” Smith’s own dog had been sprayed by a skunk twice in the last month. Mine finds few greater joys in life than chasing ground squirrels, marmots and grouse. So, we’re both faced with navigating how to behave in wild places with these family members that, if they see a deer or elk or bear, may not be able to hold themselves back.

Since talking with Smith, I’ve thought about the role Camas plays in bear country in a more nuanced way. She’s warned me about bears — even since that encounter on my jog. But she’s also ignored bears less than 30 yards away, chased wildlife she shouldn’t and, even in her younger days, treed a black bear.

The lesson isn’t that dogs don’t belong in bear country writ large. It’s that they’re dogs. If recreating in bear country is an odds game, they’re not doing you any favors. As much as we love and trust them, they’re unpredictable. And they can make things worse as often as they make things better.

“It’s a personal thing, it really is,” Smith said. “We work in statistics with a pool of instances. But you are not a pool of instances. You’re you.”

This story was originally published by Mountain Journal at mountainjournal.org.