Alaska_ _Wild Life in the 49th State_ circa 1959 DuPont [360p]

'"Your name is Walter Berlet. You make your living in part as a naturalist. But long ago you put aside the rifle in favor of the camera. For stalking wild game with the lens can be just about as exciting as a hunt with a Remington. You photographed the Rocky Mountain grizzly. You've scaled the steep slopes in pursuit of the bighorn ram. But now far to the north a new star is born. A new challenge beckons. Alaska, the last frontier..." Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska Alaska is a U.S. state situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent. Bordering the state to the east is the Canadian Yukon Territory and the province of British Columbia, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia (specifically, Siberia) further west across the Bering Strait. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area, the 4th least populous and the least densely populated of the 50 United States. Approximately half of Alaska's 731,449 residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaska's economy is dominated by the oil, natural gas, and fishing industries, resources which it has in abundance. Tourism is also a significant part of the economy. Although it had been occupied for thousands of years by indigenous peoples, from the 18th century onward, European powers considered the territory of Alaska ripe for exploitation. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia on March 30, 1867, for $7.2 million ($121 million adjusted for inflation) at approximately two cents per acre ($4.74/km²). The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife... The wildlife of Alaska is diverse and abundant... Brown Bear Alaska contains about 98% of the U.S. brown bear population and 70% of the total North American population. An estimated 30,000 brown bears live in Alaska. Of that number, about 1,450 are harvested by hunters yearly... Black bear The black bear is much smaller than the brown bear. They are found in larger numbers on the mainland of Alaska, but are not found on the islands off of the Gulf of Alaska and the Seward Peninsula... Black bears are big dangerous animals that attack when bothered or hungry. As many as 100,000 black bears live in Alaska... Alaska's polar bear populations are concentrated along its Arctic coastlines. In the winter, they are most common in the Kuskokwim Delta, St. Matthew Island, and at the southernmost portion of St. Lawrence Island... Only about 4700 polar bears are known to inhabit Alaska... Caribou Alaska is home to the Rangifer tarandus granti subspecies of caribou... Caribou in Alaska are abundant; currently there are an estimated 950,000 in the state... Moose The Alaska subspecies of moose (Alces alces gigas) is the largest in the world; adult males weigh 1,200 to 1,600 pounds (542--725 kg), and adult females weigh 800 to 1,300 pounds (364--591 kg) Alaska's substantial moose population is controlled by predators such as bears and wolves, which prey mainly on vulnerable calves, as well as by hunters... Mountain Goat Mountain goats are found in the rough and rocky mountain regions of Alaska, throughout the southeastern Panhandle and along the Coastal Mountains of the Cook Inlet... Bison The ancestors of the American bison (Bison bison) now in Alaska were transplanted from Montana in 1928, when 20 animals were imported by the Alaska Game Commission and released in the area of what is now Delta Junction... Another sub-species of bison, the wood bison (b. b. athabascae) was once Alaska's most common large land mammal. The combined effects of pre-contact habitat change and human harvest were probably responsible for their disappearance... Fish Alaska has quite a variety of fish species. Its lakes, rivers, and oceans are home to fish such as trout, salmon, char, grayling, halibut, lampreys, lingcod, longnose sucker, pacific hake, pacific herring, pike, rockfish, salmon shark, sculpin, walleye pollock, white sturgeon, and whitefish... Birds Thousands of species of birds inhabit Alaska, especially in coastal regions...