Alaska’s Rivers Are Turning Orange

Photo: Alaska Region U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service/Flickr

In a wonderfully in-depth, informative story, Alec Luhn takes us through the next great environmental threat facing Alaska -its rivers are turning orange. Rivers throughout the Brooks Range (which has been in the news recently as hunters and anglers flock to protect it from foreign mining interests) are turning orange as permafrost thaws and iron is leaked into the water. Other factors are impacting this incident, as well, but so far the early returns show that these orange rivers are lethal to almost all aquatic life.

We’ll have an in-depth analysis of this story later, but for now, you can read the full writeup here.