Tragic Incident Underlines Ice Dangers as Warming Winters Shift Survival Practices

Tue Mar 17 2026 15:38:15 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

The death of Elmer Brown and a friend after falling through thin ice in Alaska highlights a rising crisis as traditional hunting practices become increasingly perilous in warming winters.

Elmer Brown lost his life while hunting with friends in Alaska, another victim of the treacherous ice conditions that have emerged due to climate change. As ice seasons shorten and become less predictable, Indigenous communities face growing dangers when hunting and fishing, risking food security and traditional practices. Experts warn that as climate change continues, these risks will increase, threatening not just lives but an entire way of life.

Elmer Brown was following two friends on his four-wheeler last November, hunting caribou across a frozen channel in northern Alaska when the ice gave way. All three plunged into the frigid water. One friend drowned, and Brown, 45, later died of hypothermia, leaving behind five children.

“He was always helping other people and sharing his catch with the elders,” said his brother Jimmy Brown. “It’s been tough, not seeing him. I keep expecting him to walk in and tell me about his day.”

The friends had ventured onto the ice to hunt caribou, under pressure to make the most of shorter and less reliable hunting seasons, Jimmy Brown said.

It wasn’t the first time the family had lost someone to the ice. The Brown brothers’ father drowned in 1999 while seal hunting.

They’re among thousands who have died on ice across the Northern Hemisphere in recent decades as warming winters make conditions thinner and less predictable for those who fish, hunt and recreate on frozen lakes, rivers and coastal waters. March and April are particularly dangerous months as winter conditions recede.

The risks are especially acute in Alaska, where the unpredictable ice season disrupts traditional hunting practices for Indigenous communities and pushes people to take chances. Though some communities are using satellite imagery to assess conditions and social media to share ice observations, technology can’t replace the predictability that generations once relied upon.

Transition seasons are deadliest

A 2020 study examined more than 4,000 winter drownings across 10 countries, including Canada, the U.S., Russia and Japan, over a 26-year period ending in 2017. It found drowning rates surged fivefold when winter temperatures rose to just below freezing. Deaths peaked in March and April, when reduced snow cover allows sunlight to penetrate the ice, melting it from within in invisible ways, said Sapna Sharma, a biology professor at York University and the study’s author.

Earlier sea ice breakup has shortened Kotzebue’s spring seal-hunting season by 26 days compared to a decade ago, research shows. “Each winter, it gets more and more dangerous to be out on the ice,” said Roswell Schaeffer, 78, one of Kotzebue’s few Inupiaq who still hunts seals at the treacherous ice edge.

Schaeffer hopes to teach his great-grandson to hunt seals, but worries the rising danger will cause the tradition to fade.

“Our native food is really key in terms of how we survive the Arctic,” Schaeffer said. “The ice is changing too much, and it’s not going to slow down.”