Alaskan Bigfoot Haven?

[Guest DWA]

I should add some other thoughts to my previous post.

 

1. Sasquatch reports reflect culture as much as they do other factors.  As the PNW has long been a "sasquatch friendly" region, it stands to reason that those states will get a lot of reports.  The US east of the Mississippi isn't culturally oriented to sasquatch, and yet some states (PA and OH come to mind, and MD has a lot for a small state, maybe more for area than any other) have a sizable report history.  (One of only two pieces of possible evidence I've seen was in MD, in fact.)
2. Habitat is KEY, and so is availability of other food sources.  On both counts MD and NJ rank high:  lots of wetlands; considerable marsh and swamp habitat; more mountain forest than anyone thinks; exploding bear populations (think:  sasquatch's ecological clone); and agriculture agriculture agriculture (not much of that in AK outside the Matanuska Valley).  Both coyote and bear are doing smashup in these states:  lots of food.  If the human population tolerated wolves there would be dozens of packs, several probably per county in most of the two states.
3. Wildlife is thin on the ground in most of AK.  The Tongass looks good where it hasn't been cut; and the bear population alone says more than I need to about potential suitability for sasquatch.  (Alley's reports indicate that SE AK may indeed be the "haven" of the OP.)  But most folks think the habitat is superb when really the only two outstanding things about it are its minimal human population and alteration.  The animals there are in general (SE again the great exception) good at getting along with little most of the time.  The salmon runs and caribou migrations are blink-and-miss-'em, in terms of sustaining year-round wildlife populations.  (Many travelers in the north have been emphatic on this:  get there at the wrong time, and starve.)  MD and NJ are overrun with deer squirrel and rabbit (and feral and stray dogs and cats) 24/7/365.  Many turkey, and growing, as well.  In most of AK's wild habitat there is nothing bigger than a lichen most of the time.

I mean, yep, the OP need look no further than SE AK for his "haven."  But I just wanted to make the point that the general observer views the lower 48 as considerably more impoverished with regard to AK than is in fact the case.  It's impoverished, indeed, by the standards of what it was.  But  so is AK, by the standards of what the East once was.

 

[BobbyO]

This falls into the trap that so many do - the trap of forgetting how things were.  And how they got to be the way they are now.

 

I'd take any single acre of any of the nature I've seen in NJ or MD over any acre of the Tongass, any day of the week, as habitat for anything but caribou and polar bear and Dall Sheep and moose.

 .

I'm sorry but that is an absolutely obscene thing to say.

To suggest that the Tongass is habitat for Polar Bear or Caribou is absurd as its a rainforest.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

[Guest StevieStrangeGlove94]

Dwa, alaska houses the united states largest population of grizzlys. Sasquatches ecological clone? Right? So how are you saying alaska is "the worst habitat" when wildlife is extrordinairly abundant. Where else in the world do you walk behind a wal mart and see a 1000 pound caribou? Siberia? Maybe. Is alaska harsh? Yes. But saying its "the worst habitat" is ridiculose.

[JDL]

Folks on this thread should read Raincoast Sasquatch.  Coastal Alaska is prime Squatch country, particularly along the panhandle.  The Alaskan interior may be less inviting, but is by no means off-limits for any reason from a squatch perspective.

 

I've seen squatch in high desert and they've been reported in just about every terrain in the U.S.  I wouldn't sell them short in either adaptability or opportunism. 

 

The only question is what size population a given area of terrain will support.

[Guest DWA]

I'm sorry but that is an absolutely obscene thing to say.

To suggest that the Tongass is habitat for Polar Bear or Caribou is absurd as its a rainforest.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

 

 

Dwa, alaska houses the united states largest population of grizzlys. Sasquatches ecological clone? Right? So how are you saying alaska is "the worst habitat" when wildlife is extrordinairly abundant. Where else in the world do you walk behind a wal mart and see a 1000 pound caribou? Siberia? Maybe. Is alaska harsh? Yes. But saying its "the worst habitat" is ridiculose.

You guys still aren't thinking about this right.

 

AK doesn't have abundant wildlife anywhere compared to what most of the US lower 48 did when settlers first arrived.

 

This means one thing:  the lower 48 has much better habitat.

 

It also has far more people with far less tolerance of wildlife.  It's intolerance of wildlife close to settlement - and most people's tendency not to go very far from settlement - that has generated a very, very erroneous picture of AK's wildlife riches.  It is generally not developed, by lower-48 standards.  That's the main difference.

 

I hope you're not telling me that, say, Denali - the size of Massachusetts - has better habitat for wildlife than Massachusetts does.  It's a silly notion, and I've been both places.

 

if the Tongass has biomass per acre comparable to any routinely-selected swamp in the lower 48, show me the numbers.  (For just one other example.)

 

Improper thinking about wildlife and habitat generates most of the inaccuracies in people's thinking about sasquatch.

[Guest DWA]

Go to the more recent posts on this thread for thermal video evidence of how little we know before we actually sit down and start looking:

 

http://bigfootforums.com/index.php/topic/39851-n-a-w-a-c-field-study-discussion/page-84#entry808196

 

Most of our suppositions about AK vs. the lower 48 come from a romanticized view of the largely-undeveloped AK backcountry...and a glaring lack of acquaintance with what's outside our back doors.

(See Stan Norton's post for the thermal video.)

[Guest DWA]

Hello BobbyO,

 

The OP does bring up a thoughtful concept. I would be interested to know if the Brown and Kodiak bear populations are on the rise even if it's a slow rise. The Kodiaks are enormous and ferocious and it could spell out a new or ongoing Sasquatch migration south resulting in an increase in sightings and activity in the PacNW.

 

Just my two rocks.

From what I've read in Raincoast Sasquatch, it may be that sasquatch and brown bear try generally to stay out of each other's way.

 

It may also be that different adaptations (hands/intelligence, for example), allow habitat segmentation that more or less eliminates resource conflicts.

[Guest DWA]

I think assigning them to Alaska / Canada is human psychology at work, nothing more.   Those are "remote, wild places" where strange things can exist because they haven't been explored.   Only ... they have.   And unexplored isn't necessary.   But it is easier for the city dweller to accept such a possibility in some far away, wild, semi exotic place than in the briar patch along the creek behind their house inside the city limits.   .....

MIB

 

Much of what I hear is that "a place has to be so wild and huge that no one ever sees them."

 

Well, evidence comes from people seeing them; and evidence says lots of people are seeing them.

 

I think, as your post suggests, that it's denial of possibility that has us not seeing things we don't want or expect to.

 

When one takes simple food into account, never mind cover which certainly appears ample, AK isn't actually "better."   Less exploitation, yes.  But human exploitation frequently creates food...as the whitetail deer and black bear can attest.

[Guest DWA]

I'm sorry but that is an absolutely obscene thing to say.

To suggest that the Tongass is habitat for Polar Bear or Caribou is absurd as its a rainforest.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

and the Tongass is far from all rainforest.  From Wiki:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongass_National_Forest

 

"Though its land area is huge, about 40% of the Tongass is composed of wetlands, snow, ice, rock, and non-forest vegetation,..."

 

I'm not suggesting, but stating that a high-latitude (generally) undisturbed rainforest may look impressive to us.  But a bigfoot who wanted to, you know, eat daily would choose many places in the lower 48 first.  And it's food, not solitude, that determines where animals live.  Simple as that.

[Guest DWA]

And before we beat this horse to death (fine horse!  fine!):

 

• Sure, the lack of development (relatively) makes a "bigfoot haven" possible in the least developed portions of AK; but available food is going to determine that in the terms we usually use, i.e., numbers of animals.
• Raincoast Sasquatch makes the case that SE AK is as good a candidate as there is.
• In just about any place in the lower 48 in which it's likely to find sasquatch, it's likely to find agriculture and livestock too, cheek by jowl; and that's a major major food multiplier...and not a truly hazardous one, particularly when you are gonna have a hard time convincing anyone, including yourself, that the thief even exists.

Finally, we don't know enough about this animal to be sure that remoteness is a major sine qua non.  It may not be.  Food will always be important; and history shows that when animals can get it from us, they cluster near us to try for it.

[Guest DWA]

Oh.  The topper on the cake.

 

Know why there are fewer people in AK than in many cities in the lower 48?

 

HABITAT.

 

We're animals too.

[Guest DWA]

^^^And I should have added:  we have colonized most of the best habitat...and in so doing pumped huge amounts of potential bigfoot food into it. 

 

Particularly compared to when large bodies of Native Americans were foraging the same habitat.