How Can You Participate and Contribute to This Site Links to Alaska Biodiversity Overview Biological diversity is the sum of the variety of species, their genetic variations, and the whole spectrum of natural communities and ecological processes in which the species participate. Alaska still has healthy populations of large predators, such as whales, bears, wolverine and wolf. Its caribou herds still undertake migrations like those once made by the bison of the Great Plains. Its rivers still run with masses of salmon. Finally, its Native peoples maintain their links to the land and its resources, a bond stretching back for millennia.
Biological diversity is critical to the well-being of Alaska's natural resources and people.
Natural communities support subsistence, sport and commercial hunting and fishing, biomedical products and disease control. Biological diversity also sustains forestry, tourism, and wilderness values. A deep understanding of Alaska's biodiversity is thus critical to the future of the State. Richardson near Anchorage Vascular Plant Species List for Ft.