The Long-Term Threats from Climate Change to Rural Alaskan Communities. The Long-Term Threats from Climate Change to Rural Alaskan Communities (U.S. National Park Service) Have flexible harvest strategies and compensate for short falls in one resource type by harvesting more from other available resource categories (e.g., see Kivalina below). In general, when one resource such as marine mammals become unavailable or inaccessible, harvesting more of another resource, e.g., caribou or white fish, tends to make up the shortfall. Climate change has the potential to severely impact both strategies mentioned above and in fact is already doing so. Some preferred marine mammals such as walrus and seal populations are already in sharp decline with the retreating arctic ice cap, caribou have already suffered a 50% decline throughout the arctic, and parasitic organisms such as Ichthyphonus (associated with warmer waters) are starting to infest salmon stocks. Thus, climate change presents a new, more encompassing threat, in that multiple subsistence resource categories maybe at risk at the same time, although from different climate drivers. These impacts limit the opportunity within a community to ramp up the harvest of alternative species. Skip to footer.