Interior adds flight hours to Tok company's work for Tetlin refuge

The Interior Department on Thursday added flight hours to a Tok company's on-call plane work for Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge, according to the federal award record.

Drivers coming up the Alaska Highway from Canada reach Tetlin almost as soon as they cross the border. The refuge runs along the south side of the highway for almost 65 miles, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service calls it the first refuge travelers encounter on the drive into Alaska.

Beyond the road are snowcapped mountains, glacier-fed rivers, forests, tundra and a lot of wetlands. Thousands of migratory birds pass through each spring and fall, and the refuge counts more than 120 kinds of birds and at least 42 kinds of mammals. The Fish and Wildlife Service describes the Upper Tanana River Valley as the home of the Upper Tanana Athabascan people. The refuge was set aside in 1980.

The highway along its northern edge has its own history. Crews built it in seven months during World War II and recorded a low of minus 79 degrees along the way, the agency says.

The award record doesn't say what the flights are for. Refuge officers use planes, along with trucks, snowmachines and boats, to patrol and to help staff with wildlife surveys, according to the refuge.

One of those surveys happens every spring. Biologists fly low in Super Cubs looking for moose cows with calves and count how many have twins. Twins are a sign the cows are well-fed. In 2025, nearly 1 in 5 cows with calves had twins, about the same as the four years before, according to the refuge's moose twinning report. Twins were less common west of the Nabesna River, though still above the level the report treats as a sign of nutritional stress.

40-Mile Air flies for other federal land managers too. This year, it has Park Service work flying for moose in Gates of the Arctic and helicopter flights for wolf work in Yukon-Charley Rivers.