Climate changes spur plan for village move

With sea ice shrinking, permafrost thawing and sea storms becoming more frequent, residents of a remote Eskimo village in Alaska are preparing to move their entire community to more solid ground within four years, officials said on Wednesday.
Located on a narrow Chukchi Sea barrier island, the Inupiat village of Shishmaref has lost so much ground in recent years that it has become an internationally famous case study into the effects of global warming. It is likely to become the first U.S. community to move because of a warming climate, many scientists have said.
"The situation facing Shishmaref needs to be categorized as an emergency," Luci Eningowuk, head of the Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Council, told the Coastal Engineering Research Board, an U.S. Army Corps of Engineers advisory panel.
Erosion at Shishmaref, an Inupiat island village of 600, is so dramatic that residents plan to start moving to a new site about 13.5 miles inland by 2009.