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This November, when the President steps out on Pennsylvania Avenue and looks toward the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol, he's going to see a Christmas tree from the Tongass National Forest. Better yet, Wrangell High School students were tasked with keeping it alive. Members of the T3 program (Teaching Through Technology), a federally funded teaching nonprofit, teamed up with a local inventor to make sure the tree continues to absorb water on its nearly month-long journey from Wrangell to Washingto...
A major copper-and-gold mining project in the rugged mountains of northwestern British Columbia - upriver from Wrangell - is poised for a boost from the Canadian government. Canada's Department of Natural Resources last month announced that it plans to inject about $15 million U.S. into a massive copper and gold development just 25 miles from the Alaska border. The project is perched above tributaries of the Stikine River - a major salmon-bearing waterway that flows into Alaska waters. The...
Two thousand and ninety to one. Those were the odds of winning the only elk-hunting permit on Zarembo Island this year - the first time in nearly 20 years the state Board of Game has permitted elk hunting on Zarembo after they were urged to do so by the Wrangell Fish and Game Advisory Committee. Quite literally against all odds, Wrangell resident Curtis Kautz won the lottery. His prize? A 31-day window to try and bag a creature Kautz described as smart, skittish and fast. "They're hard to sneak...
Alaskans will vote Nov. 5 on a ballot measure that would increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2027 and require that workers get paid for up to seven sick days a year. To backers who collected signatures to put the question before voters, Ballot Measure 1 is about fairness for workers and overall state economic vitality. But opponents in business groups warn that the measure, if passed, would bring dire consequences. To Sarah Oates, CHARR’s president, the consequences of Ballot Measure 1 would be bad. “This is going to kill small...
Tickets are on sale for “You Can’t Take It With You,” the fall community theater production at the Nolan Center. The comedy is scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 1-2. A volunteer cast of about 15 people, with an additional 10 people working on the set, staging, sound and lighting, are practicing their lines, building the set and getting ready for the show, said Hailey Reeves, co-director. “It’s definitely a group effort,” she said last week, with full dress rehearsals planned for next week. In a first for the Nolan Center, tic...
Jenya Anichenko just wants to know what happened. In 1908, the Star of Bengal - an iron-sided sailing ship carrying 138 people - sank off the coast of Southeast Alaska's Coronation Island. The ship was carrying 106 Chinese, Japanese and Filipino salmon cannery workers, and 32 white crew members. The crew's survival rate was over 50%, but just nine percent of the Asian cannery workers survived. Anichenko's talk explored possible reasons for the racial discrepancies in the survival rates, as well...
Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) officials hear that processors have mostly cleared out their overflowing inventories of Alaska salmon from the 2022 and 2023 seasons, but the problem remains that Americans don’t buy enough seafood to sustain consistently profitable sales, particularly in years of strong salmon runs. And while last year’s problem was an oversupplied market, which pushed prices paid to fishermen to as low as 20 cents a pound for pink and chum salmon, this year’s harvest may come up short of a robust supply, Greg Smith...
A 30-year-old nonprofit received a five-year, $7.5 million state grant this year, which will enable the organization to do more to share seafood with Alaskans. SeaShare has grown from its 1994 beginnings as a small group of Alaska commercial fishermen who distributed bycatch to food banks into an organization that has shared seafood in 20 states this year, said Hannah Lindoff, the Juneau-based executive director. Though bycatch species still are a part of the organization’s volume, the percentage has declined over the years. Looking at the b...
The federal government board that manages subsistence will be expanded with three representatives of Alaska Native tribes, under a new rule the Biden administration made final on Oct. 16. The new Federal Subsistence Board members are to be nominated by federally recognized tribes. They need not be tribal members or Native themselves, but they must have “personal knowledge of and direct experience with subsistence uses in rural Alaska, including Alaska Native subsistence uses,” according to the rule. The term “subsistence” refers to harvest...
Alaska legislators have voted to ban large signs in the state Capitol, a move that followed large protests over Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s decision to veto a multipart education bill earlier this year. Under a new policy, visitors to the Capitol “are permitted to hand-carry a paper-based poster board or placard type sign up to 11×17 inches in the Capitol corridors and lobby.” The policy prohibits signs on sticks and posts — all signs must be held by hand. “A sign will be confiscated if it is used to disturb, or used in a manner that will imminently...
An airport-style security screening checkpoint could be coming to the Alaska State Capitol, ending decades of open public access. In a public notice published Oct. 2, the nonpartisan agency in charge of Capitol administration seeks a private firm to “conduct security screening of visitors and visitors’ belongings.” The firm may also be in charge of screening incoming packages. Security officers at the Alaska Capitol do not currently screen incoming visitors, and the Capitol does not use metal detectors or backscatter X-ray machines like those...
Alaska’s seafood industry has been contending with turbulent global markets for the past two years, which have been hammering harvest values and threatening fishermen’s and processing companies’ financial stability. Prices paid to salmon fishermen crashed in the summer of 2023, prompting protests and generating headlines in national news outlets. But it’s unlikely most heard anything about black cod, which is harvested in smaller volumes — though the numbers are still significant for many full-time Alaska fishermen and processing businesses, wi...
Alaska’s Department of Health is again slipping into a backlog of food stamp applications. The news comes from state data included in a filing from the Northern Justice Project in its class-action lawsuit against the state. The suit asks the court to make sure the state issues food stamp benefits on time after years of chronic delays. Attorney Nick Feronti represents the class of Alaskans affected by the backlog in the department’s Division of Public Assistance, which manages the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for the sta...
Evergreen Elementary teachers want the school district office to lock its doors for security. So far, their fight has been an uphill battle. The entire teaching staff of Evergreen Elementary signed a letter last month imploring the school board to make several safety changes. The teachers want to better protect students and staff against hostile intruders and potential school shooters. The teachers requested that the district office doors, which provide entry to the classroom area, remain locked during school hours. They also requested a...
Wrangell's famed Three-Frog Totem on Shakes Island is no more. The clans involved in the pole's history decided its purpose had long since passed. It was taken down in a ceremony on Sept. 6. Kiks.adi clan mother Katherine Geroge-Byrd said the pole's origins date back to the 19th century. A Naanyaa.aayí chief's three sons were slated to wed Kiks.adi women in a series of arranged marriages. Instead, the three women instead fell in love with - and ran away with -slaves. For the Naanyaa.aayí chief,...
The borough is planning to move the senior center from its longtime but aging location at Church and McKinnon streets to the community center’s multipurpose room. The new space, directly across the hallway from the community gym, will receive several upgrades to accommodate its new use, including a full kitchen remodel and new furniture, according to Borough Manager Mason Villarma. The borough also plans on reserving parking at the community center for the senior center bus, which is used for taking seniors to medical appointments, the post off...
SEARHC has organized its annual wellness fair for Saturday morning, Oct. 19, and medical care will not be limited to just people. The Teddy Bear Clinic will be open for children to bring in their favorite plush animals. Health care professionals will guide kids to check out their own animals, using a stethoscope to listen to the heartbeat and breathing, a blood pressure cuff and thermometer. It’s an opportunity to get children familiar with checkup procedures and instruments, getting them to feel more comfortable for when they are the p...
The borough wants a data center to plug into Wrangell. Better yet, it could even move into the unused formal hospital property. Data centers are large hosting sites for multiple servers that provide computing power and storage for cloud-based service providers. While at Southeast Conference, held in Ketchikan last month, borough representatives spoke with Sam Enoka, founder and CEO of Greensparc — a San Francisco-based technology company that specializes in setting up modular, small-scale data centers for cloud computing. Enoka grew up a...
The coffee will be free and the borough wants the information and questions to flow just as freely at the first of its “Our Town, Our Future” informal community sessions. The listening-and-sharing session is set for 9 a.m. Friday, Oct. 18, at the Stikine Inn. The borough has carved out two hours for the meeting, but people don’t have to stay that long, explained Kate Thomas, the borough’s economic development director. The sessions will be held the third Friday of every month through March as part of the borough’s effort to provide more info...
The debate between the school board and the School Advisory Committee (SAC) ended how many bureaucratic disputes end: in a compromise. On Oct. 7, the school board unanimously voted to adopt revisions to Board Policy 1220, which serves as the governing document for the secondary schools’ advisory committee. This policy, which also dictates the committee’s access to the school board, was the epicenter of a lingering dispute between the two parties. According to committee members, their recommendations to the school board often went unanswered by...
An award-winning documentary film about the yearslong struggle of the Tahltan First Nation to protect their sacred headwaters in British Columbia will be shown at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17, at the Nolan Center. The event is free. Several Tahltan elders from the region across the Coast Mountains from Southeast Alaska will be at the screening to answer questions and talk with audience members after the showing of “Klabona Keepers.” The movie, which was released in 2022, covers about 15 years of the Tahltans’ opposition to industrial devel...
A variety of market forces combined with weak fish returns in a rapidly changing environment caused Alaska’s seafood industry revenues to drop by $1.8 billion from 2022 to 2023, a new federal report said. The array of economic and environmental challenges has devastated one of Alaska’s main industries, said the report, issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And the losses extend beyond economics, casting doubt on prospects for the future, the report said. “For many Alaskans the decline of their seafood industry affec...
The state primary election is Tuesday, Nov. 5, but Wrangell voters who would rather cast their ballots early can come to City Hall between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. weekdays starting Monday, Oct. 21, through Monday, Nov. 4. Just walk back to the assembly chambers and, if the state elections staff does not recognize you, present a drivers license, voter ID card or other form of identification to get a ballot. On election day Nov. 5, the polling booths will be set up at the Nolan Center from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voters are reminded that state law prohibits...
A state food safety and sanitation inspector visited Wrangell last week as part of the program’s ongoing efforts to conduct on-site inspections within its limited budget. The inspector was in town for a routine check on a seafood processor that ships some of its products overseas. The U.S. Department of Commerce contracts with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation food safety and sanitation program to conduct inspections of seafood operations, explained Kimberly Stryker, program manager. “We also did some retail food service work...
The school board on Oct. 7 reelected Dave Wilson as president, defeating John DeRuyter in a 3-2 vote for the position. DeRuyter was elected vice president after board member Liz Roundtree nominated him for the position. Sophomore Kalee Herman will join the board as the student representative. The meeting was the first with newcomer Dan Powers in attendance. He replaced Brittani Robbins, who lost her reelection bid in the Oct. 1 municipal election. Along with Wilson, DeRuyter, Roundtree and Powers, the other school board member is Angela Allen,...