Kenai Fjords

Kenai Fjords National Park was established in 1980 in southern Alaska, on the Kenai Peninsula, under the ANILCA act that reorganised the state's protected areas. It protects some 2,711 km² of ice, mountain and sea.

Its heart is the Harding Icefield, an expanse of more than a thousand square kilometres of permanent ice, a remnant of the glacial masses that covered the region during the last glaciation, from which some forty glaciers descend. Some are tidewater glaciers that reach the ocean and calve blocks into the water; Exit Glacier, reachable by road, is the only point in the park that can be visited without a boat or light aircraft, and the marks of its retreat over the past century are signposted on the ground as a record of warming.

The coast is a string of deep fjords carved by those glaciers, and their waters, fed by the nutrients of the meltwater and the upwellings of the Gulf of Alaska, support extraordinary marine life: humpback whales, orcas, porpoises, sea otters, Steller sea lions and seabird colonies with puffins, guillemots and cormorants on the cliffs. On land there are black bear, mountain goat and moose, although the ice-covered terrain greatly limits the land fauna. The usual visit is made by boat from Seward.