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Attending Alaska's Birds: A Wildlife Pilot's Story

by James Gore (Jim) King; Foreword by Jim Rearden

476 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #07-1764; ISBN 1-4251-4243-5; US$28.62, C$28.62, EUR19.55, £14.78

This 50 year account of adventure with bird biology, conservation issues, northern people and historical events, all over Alaska, will fascinate those interested in northwest American ecology.

About the Book

Attending Alaska's Birds, author King's 60 year memoir, covers a dramatic period in Alaska's history, a time when the people increased five-fold to over 600 thousand. King arrived in Alaska in 1949 at the age of 21. He describes life as a pilot/game warden, a refuge manager, a flyway biologist and an expert at enumerating birds while whizzing over them in a small plane.

The story covers a series of accomplishments: Learning to fly in northern Alaska – Game law enforcement for the pre-statehood Alaska Game Commission – Banding 15 thousand ducks to assess a possible cost of the proposed Rampart Canyon Dam on the Yukon River – Establishing the first headquarters for the enormous Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge at the Eskimo village of Bethel – Flying the annual survey to provide a forecast for the number of ducks expected to be available for Pacific coast hunters each fall – Providing the first description of the one million seabirds that nest at Cape Newenham resulting in designation of a new National Wildlife Refuge – The first valid estimate of the number of Bald Eagles threatened by logging on Southeast Alaska's convoluted coast – Drafting the plan that resulted in 7 new waterfowl refuges covering 22 million acres – Planning and managing the first complete census of Alaska's Trumpeter Swans and – Experiences rearing rare waterfowl species on the edge of Juneau's tide flats.

This is a compelling narrative about Alaskan life, conservation issues, wild bird habits, history, geography, and personal adventure.

About the Author

Jim King was born in 1927 at Portland, Maine where his father was a newspaper writer. He grew up mostly at the edge of Boston. His mother got her children to rural settings most summers where they became familiar with woods and streams and nearby farms. After graduating from high school in rural Connecticut, he served 18 months in the US Marine Corps. His degree is in wildlife management from Washington State College. He came to Fairbanks, Alaska in 1949 at age 21, and learned to fly.

Jim married Mary Lou Neville in Juneau in 1961. She grew up on a farm in Oregon, got a teaching degree and was employed at the Alaska Department of education. They spent the first summer of their marriage in the Arctic village of Fort Yukon where Jim was banding nearby ducks. A year later they moved to the Eskimo village of Bethel to initiate a refuge program. In 1964 they returned to Juneau and acquired an old homestead where they could tend and rear waterfowl. They had 3 children, Sara and Laura born in 1962 and James born in 1967. They all graduated from college and the girls settled in Washington and Oregon. James after 10 years managing a non-profit trail company was appointed Director of Alaska State Parks.

Mary Lou supported and participated enthusiastically in Jim's work. Though things were often not easy, they always agreed that what they were doing was worthwhile – and fun.