Flora and Fauna
The Alaska Peninsula is home to some of the largest populations of native and undisturbed wildlife in the United States. Besides the famous McNeil River and Katmai brown bear populations, large herds of caribou, moose, wolves and waterfowl inhabit the area. The bears of the peninsula and Bristol Bay are so numerous because they feed on the world's largest sockeye salmon Oncorhynchus nerka runs, which occur here in large part because the many large lakes of the peninsula are an important element in their lifecycle. These salmon, after returning from their short life at sea, swim into the lakes and their contributing streams to spawn. Their offspring, or fry, overwinter in the deep and food-abundant depths of these lakes until their migration to the sea in one or two years.
Exceptionally large seabird colonies exist along the coast.
The rugged southern half of the peninsula, and also the Kodiak Archipelago which lie off the south coast of the peninsula and are home to even more bears, constitute the Alaska Peninsula montane taiga ecoregion and contain a number of protected areas such as Katmai National Park.
Read more about this topic: Alaska Peninsula
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Louis Aragon (1897–1982)