This piece mixes a close-up on Alaska wildlife—a lynx family sighting—with a look at shifting Alaska politics as the Alaska Independence Party votes to dissolve, all while offering the writer’s blunt, conservative take and local color from rural Alaska life.
When people picture Alaska wildlife, they usually imagine bears, moose, wolves and caribou, not wild cats. Yet lynx are part of our ecosystem and show up in surprising places, including near towns where prey and cover overlap. They’re not common in the Lower 48 style, but they belong here and can turn up where chickens or small animals are left unprotected.
A few years ago one of these cats got into a neighbor’s chicken coop and killed a handful of laying hens, which was a real sore point because we buy most of our eggs from them. Those encounters remind you that wild animals don’t care about property lines, and living in Alaska means adjusting to that reality. People on Anchorage’s Hillside report occasional lynx sightings, which suggests the species does fine as long as food and shelter are available.
There are several things that make spotting a lynx special, even in a wildlife-rich city like Anchorage. Alaska’s only native wild cats are beautiful creatures, with disproportionately long legs, big feet, thick gray coats and adorable tufts of hair that extend from the tips of their ears.
And they’re stealthy. I’ve only spotted a lynx a handful of times in decades, usually as one was darting across the road as I drove. I’ve only managed to photograph one once before, so fleeting was the opportunity. They tend not to stick around.
That’s what made an occasion this week so exciting. While pulled over high on the Hillside to take in the afternoon view, I happened upon a lynx family passing through the area, perhaps 75 feet away. One crossed Toilsome Hill Drive and disappeared in the woods. Then another. Then another. Each leaped like a playing house cat onto a snowbank.
There’s an undeniable kinship across cats, from the big ones to the scrappiest house pet, and lynx behave like cats in miniature with sudden bursts of grace. On that hillside I counted five kittens tumbling and leaping, more than enough to keep a photographer reaching for a camera. It was a quick, joyful wildlife moment that reminds you why people who live in the bush pay attention to seasons and movement.
Alaska Man score: 5 lynx kittens.
Shifting from the woods to the ballot box: Alaska’s third-largest political party, the Alaska Independence Party, has voted to dissolve. That’s notable because they’d been one of the few third-party outfits to actually win a big office in state history, and their membership numbered in the tens of thousands. Their collapse raises practical questions about what happens next for those registered members and where their votes go in future races.
Leaders of Alaska’s third-largest political party voted to dissolve it last month, raising questions about how the state Division of Elections would handle the registration of its more than 19,000 members.
The Alaskan Independence Party dates back to the 1970s, when it was founded by Joe Vogler, a serial political candidate who advocated for Alaska to secede from the United States and become an independent country.
The party, which broadly speaking opposes taxation and favors private land ownership, was used by former Gov. Wally Hickel to win a gubernatorial election in 1990. The former Republican ran as a member of the Alaskan Independence Party, becoming at the time the first third-party candidate in the U.S. to win a governor’s seat in more than a decade.
The Alaskan Independence Party’s platform often sounded like a grievance with statehood itself, urging a redo or at least a referendum on whether Alaska should remain a state. That posture appealed to a certain strain of anti-tax, pro-property rhetoric, but it never achieved consistent mainstream traction. For conservatives who value limited government and strong property rights, the party’s policies sometimes aligned and sometimes diverged from Republican priorities.
Alaska Man score: 1.5 of 5 moose nuggets. The decision to dissolve may make sense internally, but part of the party’s decline is linked to structural quirks like ranked-choice voting, which many voters find confusing and counterproductive. Ranked-choice has reshaped Alaska politics in ways voters didn’t fully anticipate, and it complicates how upstart parties survive and influence outcomes.
Winter brings other infrequent visitors to Alaska’s settled places, and those sightings are worth noting because they tell you how dynamic even remote ecosystems can be. Occasional mammals, birds blown in by weather, and transient predators show up when food or conditions change, and people who live here pay attention. These appearances are part of the lived reality in a state where wilderness and human communities overlap in unpredictable ways.
Living in Alaska means balancing appreciation for wild beauty with a pragmatic sense about governance and civic life. Wildlife gives the place character and humility, while political shifts remind residents that institutions and rules shape how communities navigate change. Both subjects — the animals we share the land with and the political choices we make — deserve clear-eyed attention from anyone who calls Alaska home.
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