FAIRBANKS, AK—Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration received a $42 million federal grant for a captive-glacier breeding project that will attempt to spawn three to five of the massive, slow-moving bodies of land-carving ice by 2020. "As the number of glaciers worldwide is less than half what it was 40 years ago, it is evident that we must do something to improve glacial fertility or they will face imminent extinction," said NOAA chief glacier behaviorist Ingrid Boorstein at a press conference at the future site of the National Indoor Glacier Preserve in central Alaska. "We've already sent teams of specially trained climbers to collect the Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland, Vatnajökull in Iceland, and the Siachen in the Himalayas to establish mating pairs."The NOAA has received heavy criticism for its past failed attempts to reintroduce wild glaciers into their former Ice Age habitats in Central Europe and on the plains of the American Midwest.