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Fishery managers overseeing Alaska’s faltering salmon runs should be able to rely on a more comprehensive and holistic approach to science that considers all habitat, from the middle of the ocean to freshwater spawning streams far inland, according to a task force report on salmon research needs. The report was issued this month by the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force, a group established through a 2022 act of Congress to identify knowledge gaps and research needs. The task force comprises close to 20 members and includes scientists, f...
Living amid craggy peaks and remnant glaciers, Southeast Alaska mountain goats survive in variable conditions, often dealing with heavy snowfall and extreme cold. But a new study published and written by an Alaska wildlife ecologist shows that many goats die in avalanches. Kevin White, who worked with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game before continuing his studies at the University of Alaska Southeast and University of Victoria, British Columbia, has concluded over a 17-year project, using data from 421 collared goats, that between 23%...
Tens of millions of dollars raised by a landmark climate law in Washington state will go to Native American tribes that are at risk from climate change and rising sea levels to help them move to higher ground, install solar panels, buy electric vehicles and restore wetlands, Gov. Jay Inslee announced July 16. The money — $52 million — comes from the 2021 Climate Commitment Act, which auctions off allowances for heavily polluting companies in the state to emit carbon, with the revenue invested in education, transportation and other programs. Con...
Two environmental groups have filed a new legal challenge to the Biden administration’s approval of a proposed multibillion-dollar project that would send Alaska North Slope natural gas to overseas markets. In a petition filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club argued that federal agencies failed to properly consider harms that the massive gas project would cause to Endangered Species Act-listed animals living in the affected marine areas: polar bears, Cook Inlet beluga whales and...
The Alaska Division of Public Health is hoping to expand wastewater-monitoring programs that have proved useful in detecting outbreaks of COVID-19 and other respiratory diseases, a recent report said. Testing at Anchorage’s John M. Asplund Wastewater Treatment Facility, the municipality’s main wastewater plant, was able to provide notice of a spike in COVID-19 cases in January 2023, several days ahead of patients’ cases that were confirmed by health laboratories, said a bulletin recently issued by the division’s epidemiology section. The inf...
Photographer Matt McDonald had lived on Puget Sound for years but had never seen a whale, so he was elated when he spotted a giant marine mammal just off Seattle’s waterfront one evening. The excitement was short-lived. As McDonald tracked the whale in his camera’s viewfinder, a Washington state ferry that dwarfed the animal came into the frame. The next morning, he saw on the news that the humpback whale had died in the collision he witnessed. “I still remember the moment when they crossed paths and my heart just started sinking like, ‘Oh m...
Alaska U.S. District Court Judge Joshua Kindred resigned after a federal judicial council determined he had “sexualized relationship” with a clerk, lied about it to a senior judge and investigators, and maintained a hostile workplace for law clerks. Kindred resigned effective July 8, after the judicial council for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals requested his resignation in a May 23 order. Kindred was nominated by President Donald Trump in November 2019 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in February 2020. The order followed the work of a s...
The federal government has awarded more than $5 million in grants to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute to help the state agency find new ways and new places to sell fish. Of the federal money, over $4 million is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Regional Agriculture Promotion Program, known as RAPP. That money will be used in specific areas of the state to help improve international markets, said Greg Smith, an ASMI spokesperson. “The timing of the RAPP funds is well-aligned with the Alaska seafood industry’s needs to combat numer...
A federal judge on July 8 sentenced two members of a Washington state family for selling more than $1 million of Filipino-made products which were marketed as authentic “Alaska Native produced artwork.” The scheme involved two Ketchikan shops for about five years, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska. The family members were ordered to pay restitution, complete home confinement and community service, and write apology letters for violating the federal Indian Arts and Crafts Act (IACA). Glenda Tiglao Rodrigo, 46, w...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy on July 11 signed into law a bill originally aimed at curbing the meteoric rise in opioid overdoses in the state, but which turned into comprehensive crime legislation that Alaska lawmakers approved in the final hours of the legislative session. Lawmakers built the wide-ranging law around Dunleavy’s proposal to increase penalties for fentanyl and methamphetamine dealers. The law also directs the state to look into why minority groups are overrepresented in the prison system, creates the crime of assault in front of a child, t...
Commercial trolling for king salmon closed July 8 in Southeast Alaska after an eight-day opening. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game reported July 8 that it expected trollers would reach their harvest target for the first chinook salmon retention period of the summer of 66,700 kings. The fishery opened July 1. The department manages the first summer chinook retention period to harvest 70% of trollers’ allocation of about 92,400 treaty salmon for the summer fishery. Trollers will be able to catch the remainder of their chinook allocation d...
Of all the courses offered by the Della Keats precollege program, the three high school students in the University of Alaska Anchorage lobby were most struck by the cadaver lab in their anatomy and physiology course. It’s not the kind of opportunity students from rural Alaska usually get, which is the point. Bristol Albrant, a 16-year-old from Ketchikan, said the experience was indescribable. “That’s definitely not normal,” she said. For Tanya Nelson from Napakiak, it was her first time seeing a cadaver. “Probably most of our first time,” sh...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed $10 million in funding for the state agency charged with marketing Alaska seafood, with the message that he would “re-evaluate future funding needs after development of a marketing plan.” That doesn’t make sense to the state Senate president. “Waiting doesn’t help at all,” said Sen. Gary Stevens, from the commercial fishing hub of Kodiak. “It’s a very shortsighted view of the industry. Now is the time to help it out, not to just delay things,” Stevens said last week. The governor vetoed the funding on June 30 as par...
Unless Juneau’s city assembly makes the change first, a proposal to forbid cruise ships on Saturdays will be on the municipal ballot in October, but a Sitka push to put cruise ship passenger limits on that town’s ballot has been denied. They are the latest steps in a broader reckoning in some Southeast communities about the effects of increased traffic from cruise ship tourism. Cruise ship passengers are a mainstay in the regional economy. But people like Karla Hart in Juneau say increased passenger numbers come at a cost to quality of life. “I...
The melting of Southeast Alaska’s Juneau Icefield, source of more than 1,000 glaciers, is accelerating, shrinking 4.6 times faster than it was in the 1980s, according to a new study. Researchers tracked snow levels in the nearly 1,500-square-mile expanse going back to 1948, with added data back to the 18th century. It slowly shriveled from its peak size at the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850, but then that melt rate sped up about 10 years ago, according to a study in Nature Communications on July 2. “What’s happening is that as the clima...
An emerging seafood company is preparing to purchase its first loads of pink and chum salmon from a handful of seine boats in Metlakatla this summer while also building a high-tech floating freezer barge at a Washington shipyard that the company plans to operate in Southeast Alaska next year. Circle Seafoods, which was founded by Pat Glaab, Charlie Campbell and Eren Shultz, is renting out a portion of the Metlakatla Indian Community’s Annette Island Packing Co. plant this year while starting up a statewide operation that’s geared at buying and...
Alaska’s new election system — with open primaries and ranked voting — has been a model for those in other states who are frustrated by political polarization and a sense that voters lack real choice at the ballot box. Used for the first time in 2022, the changes helped propel the first Alaska Native to a seat in Congress. The voting system, however, could be short-lived. Opponents of ranked voting want to repeal it and are entangled in a legal fight over whether their initiative will be on Alaska’s November ballot. It’s just one example t...
A federal judge has ruled that the Department of the Interior may take land into trust on behalf of Alaska Native tribes, a decision that could allow tribes to create “Indian country,” which had been mostly eliminated here by the 53-year-old Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. In a 39-page summary judgment order on June 26, Anchorage Judge Sharon Gleason ruled mostly but not entirely against the state, which sued the Interior Department in 2023 to challenge an administrative decision that the department has the power to take land into tru...
The Biden administration is advancing a plan to restrict logging within old-growth forests that are increasingly threatened by climate change, with exceptions that include cutting trees to make forests less susceptible to wildfires. The draft environmental impact statement, which was published June 21, rejects a blanket prohibition on old-growth logging that’s long been sought by some environmentalists. The official review concluded that such a sweeping ban would make it harder to thin forests to better protect communities against wildfires t...
The Alaska Supreme Court on June 28 overturned a lower court decision that found two statutes governing Alaska’s publicly funded homeschooling programs violated the state constitution by sending public funds to private and religious schools. The ruling is a victory for Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who has sought to defend the statutes and keep them on the books. But it is largely procedural, and the attorney who originally challenged the constitutionality of the statutes vowed to continue fighting the practice of spending correspondence school a...
The Alaska Permanent Fund started the fiscal year on July 1 facing a possible $600 million shortfall. Legislators have earmarked $3.8 billion from the fund for next year’s budget, which includes the Permanent Fund dividend. An additional $1 billion has been set aside for inflation proofing. Both draws would exceed currently available revenue in the fund’s spendable account. “That’s the first time that we’ve been in this scenario,” Deven Mitchell, CEO of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp., told a joint legislative committee on June 24. Investment...
The Metlakatla Indian Community’s Annette Island Packing Co. has reopened after a five-year closure. About 100 people gathered on June 14 to start the summer fishing season with a blessing of the fleet and to celebrate the return to work of the seafood processor which has operated in the community for more than 100 years. AIP was founded as a cannery in the late 1800s and operated year-round until 2019, when the plant reduced its operations due to rising costs and other liabilities, according to a report from the Metlakatla Indian Community. M...
A ballot proposition on October’s Petersburg election ballot will ask residents whether they want to increase the amount of a purchase that is subject to sales tax. Currently, Petersburg collects its 6% tax on sales of goods and services up to the first $1,200 on the invoice. Above that amount is free from the tax. The proposed municipal code amendment, approved for the ballot in a unanimous vote by the borough assembly on June 17, would raise the taxable sales limit to $5,000. If approved by voters, the maximum sales tax on a purchase would in...
Ben Mallott, the son of former Alaska Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, will become the new president of the Alaska Federation of Natives on Oct. 1, the organization announced June 28. The younger Mallott, who is stepping into a role his late father previously served at AFN, will succeed Julie Kitka who is stepping down after 34 years as president. Mallott, 40, has served 11 years as an officer with the largest statewide Native organization. AFN represents about 140,000 Alaskans and more than 300 Native corporations and federally recognized tribes. He is...
Southeast commercial purse seine fishermen are preparing for a summer season with no confidence they will earn a good price for the pink and chum they catch. The Southeast seine fishery opened with a one-day pink salmon fishing opportunity on Sunday in areas near Sitka, with more widespread openings to come. The Department of Fish and Game has forecast a “traditional” fishery harvest of 19.2 million pink salmon by commercial seiners this year, not counting the fish netted in terminal harvest areas near hatchery release sites. That would be an...
