Last winter, Lacey Higham, operations lead at Georgeson Botanical Garden, discovered that the garden on the west side of the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus had a prickly little vandal living on the premises.
A porcupine had made its home in a culvert and spent weeks “living its best life” feasting on trees in the garden, according to Katie DiCristina, GBG manager.
Alaska porcupines usually spend their winters eating the inner bark and needles of white spruce trees. DiCristina said the animal had completely girdled some of the trees in the garden, which prevents the trees from moving nutrients from the roots to the area above where the bark was removed, effectively killing the trees.
This spring, four trees in the garden had to be cut down, two that were porcupine-damaged this year and two that were porcupine-damaged in the winter of 2021-22, she said.
A third, a Scotch pine at the entrance, lost almost all of its bark and is nearly dead.
Several other trees in the garden have gnaw marks on their trunks and branches where the porcupine sampled them and then moved on. Fortunately, the porcupine itself seems to have moved on.
DiCristina said the Scotch pine at the entrance doesn’t pose a hazard at this time, so she is leaving it as an educational tool.
"The garden is a stage where many ecological systems are at play," she said. "Although sometimes challenging, we strive to celebrate nature and use these events as learning opportunities for both us and our visitors."
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