The Survivors: Alaskan Arctic Musk Oxen

Arctic Muskox HERO

At first glance, it seems as if a herd of musk oxen is carved from black rock. Solid and unmoving, they seem to lean into the whipping winds and billowing snow of the blizzard. Their ponderous jackets of layered hair are coated in snow, and the deep cleft between their helmet-like horns is filled with ice. These prehistoric relics from a time past have survived and thrived in some of the world’s most inhospitable regions.

Arctic Muskox 1

Photograph by: Kiliii Yuyan

The intimate family dynamic of the herd was the secret of their survival. By working together and presenting a wall of muscle, sinew, and deadly horns, they were able to keep most predators at bay.

The intimate family dynamic of the herd was the secret of their survival. By working together and presenting a wall of muscle, sinew, and deadly horns, they were able to keep most predators at bay. But, their show of strength was also their doom. With no reason to fear mankind, they were almost driven to extinction by the advent of guns that ripped through the slow-moving herds. In Alaska and on the rest of the planet, they simply disappeared by the late 1800s. All that was left of an animal that had been around since the time of the caveman were fuzzy stories passed down through Indigenous communities.

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a muskox standing stoiclyon rocky snow covered ground looking off into the distance

Luckily a herd of them survived in Greenland, and in 1930 the U.S. Biological Survey shipped thirty-four musk oxen on a six-month cross-ocean and cross-continent journey from their home to Alaska. Reintroduced on Nunivak Island, the behemoths thrived, and their numbers grew to over 600. Throughout the 1960s and 70s they were transplanted to the Seward Peninsula in northwest Alaska and to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Nowadays, there are over 3,500 of them spread through the state, slowly moving over the landscape, fattening up on summer grasses and lichens, and leaning into the winter cold, relying on their thick coats and low metabolism to once again live in a region they know all too well.

"Musk oxen seem immovable. They just lean into the wind and snow, seemingly ignoring the discomfort it causes just about every other creature." Seth Kantner

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