By Sally Hertz
USDA Forest Service

WRANGELL — Here on the Tongass National Forest, both black and brown bears wade into the creek and perch on rocks to pluck fish from the water, tolerating one another in a rare interspecies truce brought on by sheer abundance.

According to the Anan Wildlife Observatory, up to 60 people a day purchase permits to visit — a cap set to avoid impacts to the wildlife they’ve come to witness.

This past summer, the number of people able to appreciate the dynamic banquet jumped dramatically when two bear-viewing livecams began broadcasting on Explore.org, a nonprofit live nature cam network. More than 200,000 people tuned in from every state and around the globe between late July when the cameras went live, and September, when the cameras were turned off for the season.

An extraordinary alliance

The groundwork for broadcasting these unique wildlife views — including installing cameras, solar panels and satellite internet— took seven months of intense planning and ingenuity, which Rusch says is typical for Explore.org’s off-grid locations. What was out of the ordinary about Anan, however, was that the team researching and installing the system was comprised of students from Wrangell High School.

The students were part of the Teaching Through Technology Alliance, an organization that engages rural Alaska students with science, technology, engineering and mathematics in their communities. An agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, funded through the Great American Outdoors Act, covered the costs of the camera system components, design and installation, including small stipends for the students and their mentors working on the project.

Wrangell District Ranger Tory Houser explained that the partnership developed over the years as students accomplished smaller “missions” for the agency such as surveying cabins and creating three-dimensional trail maps.

Hands-on learning, real world impact

Each of the fourteen students had a domain of responsibility, with Andrei Bardin-Siekawitch, a sophomore at Wrangell High School, taking on the power system. He created an energy budget to determine how many solar panels would be needed to power the cameras and satellite internet. During installation, it would be up to him to wire together the batteries and related components on the observation deck.

The remote location posed several challenges, starting with transporting bulky equipment to the site. Team problem solving and community support proved to be critical assets as the students embarked on installation.

The journey to the observatory began with an hour and 15-minute boat ride from Wrangell. When the boat arrived at Anan, the students waded through the shallow water to transfer materials, including large batteries, to a dolly, which they pushed along the narrow trail to the observatory.

It takes a community

As the students set to work installing the solar panels, they realized that they needed customized brackets to complete the task. Fortunately, they knew who to call. Wrangell community member and T3 parent James Edens got to work right away making the brackets and arranged for them to be flown in by float plane.

Other community members, like John and Artha DeRuyter, stepped up to host the students on their boat when they needed a place to stay on site during the first week of work.

On the second trip to the site, the students were the first to stay in the newly rebuilt Anan Bay Cabin, a Forest Service public-use cabin. District Ranger Houser spent a day there with the group, as both a Forest Service employee and a parent to one of the students.

Houser recalled working alongside Bardin-Siekawitch to wire together the batteries, distributor, inverter and other components of the power system. “We had a few iterations on our battery project. As we experimented, we asked questions, consulted Google and YouTube, and used the T3 growth mindset to ultimately wire the batteries successfully.”

Esther Aaltséen Reese is a tribal administrator for the Wrangell Cooperative Association, and a parent of one of the students. Reese said that Anan has always been an incredibly special place to the people of the Shtaxʼhéen Ḵwáan, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial. “Beautiful white sandy beach, waterways teeming with fish, the bears — it’s a magical place.”

Anan is usually translated from the Tlingit language as “resting town,” but the actual meaning is deeper, explained Reese. “It means to sit, watch, and observe — almost meditative — watching the sun, moon, stars, the way the animals are moving — all of it.” She appreciated the livestreams as a means to share that way of knowing and learning with the world.

The site is filled with potential (for further development in) future years.