Raven

Photo By: Wildlife Conservation Society

This camera-trap photo shows a raven in the Alaskan Arctic, where it was removing an egg from a Laplan longspur nest in the Prudhoe bay oil field.

It's from a set of camera-trap photos set up by researchers associated with the Wildlife Conservation Society. The aim of the research was to identify predators of ground-nesting birds in the Alaskan Arctic, especially those predators considered "subsidized species." Subsidized species are those that benefit from human development. In more familiar lower-latitude "habitats" raccoons and crows are considered subsidized species, because both thrive in part by feeding off human refuse. In the Alaskan Arctic some of species that survive in large measure due to human energy industry damage local bird populations. In a sense, these subsidized species are a form of pollution.

According to the Wildlife Conservation Society, "Ravens, which rarely nest in the Arctic because of the scarcity of nesting sites on the treeless tundra, opportunistically nest on towers, eaves of buildings, and other structures across the transformed landscape."

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