Sorted by date Results 448 - 472 of 1780
Now in its 15th year, the applied fisheries program at the University of Alaska Southeast draws students from across the state and across the country. Not just ocean states like Florida, but the Great Lakes state of Wisconsin, and even landlocked Wyoming and Kentucky this semester. “Our enrollment has been increasing,” said assistant professor Lauren Wild, who has taught in the program since 2020. Students attend online or, she said, if they live in an area without adequate and reliable high-speed internet service, the school will send the...
Alaska fish-harvesting employment declined in 2022, a continuing yearslong slide caused by a variety of factors, according to an analysis by the state Department of Labor. Employment for people harvesting seafood dropped by about 25% from 2015 to 2022, according to the analysis, published in the November issue of Alaska Economic Trends, the department’s monthly research magazine. The industry lost ground compared to other sectors of the Alaska economy, the analysis found. Seafood harvesting accounted for 7.3% of Alaska jobs in July of 2021, b...
Chum salmon are now reproducing farther north in some North Slope rivers, researchers have confirmed. A University of Alaska Fairbanks team this fall found about 100 chum salmon that were spawning or had just spawned in the Anaktuvuk and Itkillik rivers. The rivers are tributaries of the Colville River, which flows into the Arctic Ocean. The discovery of salmon that far north was not a surprise since all five species of Alaska salmon have been spotted in the Arctic, said Peter Westley, an associate professor at UAF’s College of Fisheries and O...
The state has begun a sweeping analysis of its employees’ salaries to determine whether poor pay is contributing to ongoing hiring woes. The Alaska Department of Administration published a request for proposals, seeking a contractor to perform a comparison between state pay in Alaska, pay in the private sector and pay among other governments. The comparison will include 404 different job classes, including positions as varied as prison guards, archaeologists, ferry workers, tax auditors, and the people in charge of regulating the accuracy of g...
PORTLAND, Maine — The last wild Atlantic salmon that return to U.S. rivers have had their most productive year in more than a decade, raising hopes they may be weathering myriad ecological threats. Officials counted more than 1,500 salmon in the Penobscot River in Maine, home to the country’s largest run of Atlantic salmon, state data show. That is the most since 2011, when researchers counted about 2,900. The salmon were once abundant in American rivers, but factors such as overfishing, loss of habitat and pollution reduced their pop...
Nearly every Alaskan received a $1,312 payment last month, their annual share from the earnings of the state’s nest-egg oil fund. Some use the money for extras like vacations but others — particularly in high-cost rural Alaska where jobs and housing are limited — rely on it for home heating fuel or snowmachines that are critical for transportation. The unique-to-Alaska payment has become a blessing and a curse in a state that for decades has ridden the boom-and-bust cycle of oil, and the annual Permanent Fund dividend now competes for fundi...
Vic Fischer, the last living signer of the Alaska Constitution and active in progressive state politics for seven decades, died Oct. 22 at age 99. His death came after several years of declining health and an extended stay in hospice care. Born May 4, 1924, in Berlin, Germany, to an American father and Latvian mother, his family rotated between the Soviet Union and Germany, leaving the latter country for good after Adolf Hitler took power in 1933. As Josef Stalin’s purges took hold in the Soviet Union, Fischer’s father, journalist Louis Fischer...
The state has approved new regulations on inexpensive cannabis-like products derived from hemp, sometimes referred to as “diet weed.” The new changes mean intoxicating hemp-derived products will have to be regulated by the state’s marijuana control board, an act that will see them removed from vape shops and other unregulated stores across the state. Some nonintoxicating products will also be affected by the changes. So-called “full-spectrum” hemp products intended to help with epilepsy and pain include a variety of cannabinoids, including...
Former President Jimmy Carter was honored Nov. 1 by the Alaska Wilderness League for his conservation work in the state. The Mardie Murie Lifetime Achievement Award recognized Carter’s role in creating and passing the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. “Alaska is a special place for many Americans, and President Carter was ahead of his time in understanding how protecting wild Alaska would outlive his White House tenure,” Kristen Miller, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement. “We honor and celebrate...
The smell of cedar and the sounds of singing filled the garden behind the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage during the raising of a totem pole that symbolizes healing from the boarding school era decades ago. More than 600 people gathered on Oct. 22 for the ceremony, raising Alaska's first totem pole dedicated to Alaska Natives who attended boarding schools operated by the federal government or religious orders, as well as their descendants and those who died during their time there....
For the next week, Alaskans have a chance to register their opinions on the future of the state ferry system through an online survey that will be used to help create a long-range plan. The survey responses will be used over the next year to craft the “2045 Long-Range Plan” for the Alaska Marine Highway System, intended to establish its goals for service levels and operations beyond the more reactive, short-term decisions that have guided the system in recent years. AMHS General Manager Craig Tornga opened an Oct. 24 public meeting by des...
PORT ANGELES, Wash. - Alaskan Jeanette Kiokun, the tribal clerk for the Qutekcak Native Tribe in Seward, Alaska, didn't immediately recognize the shriveled, brown plant she found on the shore of the Salish Sea off the Washington state coast or other plants that were sunburned during the long, hot summer. But a fellow student at a weeklong tribal climate camp did. They are rosehips, traditionally used in teas and baths by the Skokomish Indian Tribe in Washington state and other tribes. "It's getting too hot, too quick," Alisa Smith Woodruff, a...
Staff for Gov. Mike Dunleavy quashed the publication of a new Department of Labor report examining the competitiveness of teacher pay in Alaska, an act that current and former staff say could damage the apolitical reputation of the division that publishes state economic data. “This is data that typically is available to the public, and it’s never good to suppress good, objective data,” said Neal Fried, who retired in July after almost 45 years as an economist with the department. The report, which had been the cover article in this month’s edit...
Alaska’s industrial development agency has sued the Biden administration in an attempt to revive its Arctic National Wildlife Refuge oil and gas leases. The lawsuit filed Oct. 18 by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority alleges that the Department of the Interior violated federal laws and its own regulations when it canceled the leases last month. Interior’s actions were politically motivated and illegally deprived AIDEA and the state of the economic benefits that would come from drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain, an area...
The city of Whale Pass in Southeast Alaska doesn’t have much: a few dozen residents, a road, a school and a few lodges, among other businesses. But what it does have is a lot of trees. The town, nestled in a cove on the north end of Prince of Wales Island, about 40 air miles southwest of Wrangell, has been the site of logging camps since the 1960s. Like the rest of Southeast, it’s within the Tongass National Forest, the United States’ largest national forest. Now, Whale Pass residents are fighting a pending state timber sale in their town,...
A couple of Sitka teens have pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the illegal killing of bears on a road north of town last fall and will forfeit their hunting rights temporarily, pay fines and lose the firearms and gear used in the violations. Peter Holst and Bae Barkhoefer were 16 years old at the time of the offenses but were prosecuted as adults, as is allowed under state law for fish and game violations. Barkhoefer took part in only the first of the two bear killings to which Holst pleaded guilty. The state charged that on Sept....
The last of this year’s record of 1,646,862 cruise ship passengers left Juneau on Oct. 25. It was dark, temperatures were below freezing and a steady wind was blowing. All of which suited Shane Carl, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, just fine. “I wanted to experience cold,” he said. “I knew it would be cold because the summers I hear are warmish, I heard. And I wanted to see the northern lights. But also the prices were great. It was toward the end of the season and I knew there’d be a lot of sales. And it did not disappoint.” The 1,936-passenger N...
As demand for seafood grows, including across Indiana, a remote farm is harvesting thousands of pounds of salmon every year — on land. But the genetically modified fish teeming in the Albany, Indiana, tanks are continuing to draw pushback from environmental advocates who say the “Frankenfish” threaten local ecosystems and are not a sustainable food source. Engineered by biotech company AquaBounty Technologies, the “AquAdvantage” salmon is the first such altered animal to be cleared for human consumption in the United States. A boycott a...
Bystanders watched through the windows of Petersburg IGA as wildlife troopers and police captured a young bear inside the grocery store on Oct. 17. Authorities later killed the orphaned bear, which they said was unlikely to survive the winter. Alaska State Wildlife Troopers Josh Spann and Sgt. Cody Litster tried to push the bear out the door, hoping to get it back into a wooded lot and on its own again. However, “it was starting to create more problems and a spectacle,” Litster said. “A dog catcher’s pole was used. It was brought out across...
The Alaska Permanent Fund isn’t running out of money, but it may be running out of money that can be spent. After years of earning less than it needed to beat inflation and the demands of the state treasury, the Permanent Fund’s spendable reserves may be exhausted within four years. Alaska relies on an annual transfer from the Permanent Fund for more than half of its general-purpose revenue, used to pay for state services and dividends. If the spendable account runs dry, it would trigger an instant statewide crisis. With that scenario in min...
A statewide effort to build up Alaska’s mariculture industry is looking to expand production at the same time it grows the market, particularly for kelp. “Everyone talks of the chicken-and-the-egg situation,” Juliana Leggitt, mariculture program manager at the Southeast Conference, said of what comes first: More kelp or more buyers. “There are definitely challenges in both.” The Alaska Mariculture Cluster, a consortium led by the Southeast Conference, has $49 million in federal money and $15 million in cash and in-kind matching funds to use ove...
Alaska fishermen will be able to harvest red king crab, the largest and most lucrative of all the Bering Sea crab species, for the first time in two years, offering a slight reprieve to the beleaguered fishery beset by low numbers likely exacerbated by climate change. There was no such rebound for snow crab, however, and that fishery will remain closed for a second straight year, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on Oct. 6. “The Bristol Bay red king crab fishery for the prior two seasons were closed based on low abundance and par...
A year after state officials imposed unprecedented shutdowns on crab fishing in the Bering Sea, the snow crab population is in even worse shape than it was last year, when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled the 2022-23 harvest. Survey results were presented Oct. 4 in Anchorage to the advisory panel of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which is charged by the federal government with managing fisheries in the region. The presentation was by Mike Litzow, a National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries biologist...
More than 63% of Sitka voters cast ballots Oct. 3 to approve a 1% seasonal sales tax increase to provide more funding for school repairs and construction. The ballot measure will raise the sales tax from 5% to 6% from April 1 through Sept. 30, starting next year. The sales tax passed 1,058 to 594. Sitka had a 1% seasonal sales tax for 20 years to cover the city’s share of school construction bonds, but it ended June 30 this year when the tax had raised enough to pay off the bonds. The new seasonal tax addition approved by voters this month i...
Sitka’s municipal clerk has notified resident Larry Edwards that his application to circulate a petition for a ballot initiative to limit cruise ship visitors to Sitka has been turned down. Clerk Sara Peterson notified Edwards that the proposal would be an “impermissible appropriation of a public asset,” which is prohibited by the state constitution’s provision for citizen initiatives. Edwards filed the application on Sept. 15, with 43 other co-sponsors, in response to the growth in cruise ship visitation which reached record numbers in 2022...