BBuilt like a small bison, as heavy as a grand piano, and covered in thick, shaggy fur, musk oxen are one of the most distinctive species of the Arctic highlands. But from the tundra hills of Greenland, they seem impossible to spot.
Each bush, rock, and grass clump resembles a mass of wool and horn in the brutal cold of the edge of the island's vast polar ice sheet. Chris Sorensen scans the shimmering landscape through binoculars, looking for signs of movement.
“Do you see those black dots in the orange grass over there?'' That could be one of them,'' the Kangerlussuaq International Scientific Support (Kiss) station master limped toward his car. I said while doing so.
“But it could also be a stone,” he says. As you approach the dot, you quickly realize that it is unfortunately a rock.
Musk oxen are a relic of the Ice Age, adapted to thrive in the pitch-black polar winters, where temperatures remain below -20C (-4F) for months. When light returns during the short arctic summer, they give birth and prepare to take advantage of the 24-hour grazing until light goes out again. Isolated populations are often surrounded by ice and geography; Among the most inbred mammals in the world.
More than 20,000 musk oxen live around Kangerlussuaq, on the edge of a 120-mile fjord. Kangerlussuaq was once home to Greenland's main international airport (a converted World War II US air base) until it was relocated to the capital Nuuk in December.
In the 1960s, 27 of the animals were introduced to the region from their native range in the far north. They have flourished and now support a burgeoning trophy hunting industry as well as providing vital food and economic resources to indigenous communities. A soft, lightweight wool underlayer, qiviut is one of the warmest natural fibres, and scarves and hats can cost hundreds of pounds.
Officially, Musk ox is classified It is listed as a species of least concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. But in a warming world, rising temperatures are putting new challenges to their resilience and raising concerns among scientists about the survival of many fragmented populations.
Diseases and parasites, accelerated by climate change, are increasing across much of the musk ox's range. a 2020 survey People in Canada's Arctic Islands have discovered an increase in lungworms that cause breathing difficulties and weakness.
According to the researchers, the main concern is that erysipelas erysipelas Bacteria are common infections in livestock and lead to high mortality rates in Arctic mammals.
In Canada's Arctic archipelago, the world's largest population of musk oxen has more than halved since the early 2000s, with thousands of the mammals extinct.
“Climate change is exacerbating the multiple challenges that musk oxen already have to deal with,” said Professor Susan Kutz, a veterinary parasitologist at the University of Calgary and a long-time musk ox researcher. We know that the region is warming four times faster, and I think that's making them more susceptible to new diseases.”
“I don’t think it’s a musk ox.” [have] It’s a guaranteed future,” she says. “There's a lot we don't know. Populations grow and then decline. The hope is that rather than disappear, they can decline and remain stable.”
So far, the disease has not affected musk oxen in Greenland, which are geographically isolated. However, there are concerns that the disease could be spread to the region by birds and other arctic mammals.
Professor Niels Martin Schmidt, an arctic ecologist at Denmark's Aarhus University, says the climate crisis is having a significant impact. The herds he studies in Greenland, the world's northernmost point, are moving further north as temperatures rise.
“The east coast of Greenland is ultra-isolated, which is why we have not yet seen any disease spillover from southern latitudes, at least. So the main threat in this region is the We have a stable winter climate,” Schmidt said.
“In the short term, that in itself is not a bad thing, because there are suitable areas further north. . It goes in one direction. The North Pole is getting smaller all the time,” he says.
After driving for over an hour looking for musk oxen, we were close to giving up. We roar along a dwindling river fed by snowmelt from nearby Russell Glacier. Oddly shaped rocks and spots of color in the landscape cause a few more false alarms.
Then, in the shadow of the ice sheet, they found eight musk oxen huddled together. Two members of the group are playfully fighting on the riverbed, which quickly dries up as the temperature drops.
We watch the hairy herd head back towards the tundra. There they become invisible again and feed until the arctic night returns.
