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Directors and Teachers

JUNEAU, Alaska — James Active Jr. may live in one of the more remote areas of North America, but that hasn't kept him from tracking the path of the avian-flu virus on its march across the globe.

A Yupik Eskimo from Kipnuk, a native village of 600 people on the edge of the Bering Sea, he follows the news on satellite television: reports of poultry killed or culled en masse in Asia, a scattering of human deaths among poultry workers, fallen swans and ducks in France and, most recently, a dead cat in Germany.

Thousands of miles from these outbreaks, he sounds resigned to the eventual appearance of the disease on his turf.

"We hear about it being overseas in different countries but somewhere down the line, I'm sure it will end up this way too," he said.

A subsistence hunter, Active depends on birds to feed his family through the spring until salmon return to local rivers in June. Like many others, he shrugs off his nagging worries about the virus.

He can't afford to give up hunting birds, he said, even as a massive effort gears up to find out if the disease has gained entry into North America through his vast back yard.

While no roads link Kipnuk and dozens of neighboring villages to the rest of the world, the skies are thoroughfares for migrating waterfowl and shorebirds. Come spring, they nest by the millions in the surrounding delta of the mighty Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers.

It's considered the crossroads for birds migrating between Asia and North America.

So far, the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, found in migratory birds in other parts of the world, has not been detected in North America. And in an effort to make sure the virus has not arrived, the federal government plans to spend $7.4 million this year to test wild birds, focusing on the vast tundra and small isolated villages of western Alaska.

"If all goes according to plan, we'll have tested well over 15,000 birds" in Alaska, said Deborah Rocque, avian-influenza coordinator for the region's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

While most birds will be tested live, several thousand hunter-killed birds also will be tested.

That will require enlisting the help of local subsistence hunters. They'll be asked to bring their catch to a check station where technicians will swab the bird for a sample of fecal matter.

Even though test results won't be available for another two weeks to two months, Active is willing to help. He and other residents of the delta's cash-poor villages depend on the spring migration — birds like cackling geese, king eiders, sandhill cranes, green and blue-winged teal — for their protein.