Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 117
The Alaska Legislature has passed a bill requiring an end to the use of firefighting foams containing substances known as “forever chemicals” — called that because of their resistance to any natural degradation. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have been commonly used at airports for their effectiveness in smothering burning fuel. The PFAS bill requires a switch to alternative firefighting foams by Jan. 1. The bill goes to the governor for his signature or veto. The measure won approval on the last day of the regular legislative se...
The Alaska Legislature has approved a measure that would set up a system for leasing state forested lands to businesses and investors that could profit by preserving the land and selling “credits” to others who need or want to offset their direct or indirect carbon emissions. The carbon-offset credits bill would allow leases of up to 55 years, with payments made to the state by businesses and other entities seeking to preserve tracts of land for their capacity to absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide. The measure, Senate Bill 48, passed the Sen...
In southwestern Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, which has some of the nation’s worst water and sanitation service and most overcrowded housing, vaccines proved to be valuable safeguards against the worst ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study. The study, by experts from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tracked COVID cases, hospitalizations and vaccination status of the region’s mostly Yupik residents throughout 2021. It found that vaccination was 92% effec...
Alaska’s coastal communities are home to more than a third of the U.S. wastewater plants still allowed to treat their sewage at the lowest and most basic level. But six cities in Southeast Alaska, including Wrangell, may soon have to invest in improvements to better clean their wastewater before discharging it into the ocean. That is the message from draft permits that have been released or are to be released by the Environmental Protection Agency, which has determined that too much bacteria is going from the communities into marine waters. The...
One of the world’s largest sea stars is on track to receive Endangered Species Act protections. Federal regulators are proposing a threatened listing for the sunflower sea star, a creature that has been killed off in much of its Pacific habitat by disease. While the effect of a listing on Alaska and its fisheries is not certain, scientists say they don’t expect significant changes in the state in the near term. The public comment period has ended on the proposal for the threatened listing published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adm...
Alaska is the home of the world's biggest piedmont glacier - meaning it falls from a mountain into a flat plain. But a new study has revealed that the Malaspina Glacier is not quite as big as previously believed, and that its low elevation makes it more highly susceptible to melting that would affect the rise in global sea levels. The glacier spills out of the St. Elias Mountains into a wide circular lobe atop a broad plain that stops short of the sea. At its widest, the glacier spans 40 miles...
A pair of connected Southeast Alaska waterways are on the 2023 list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers issued by a national environmental organization. The Chilkat River and its biggest tributary, the Klehini River, are among the rivers cited as at risk by the organization American Rivers, which issued its annual list of top 10 threatened rivers last month. The Chilkat and Klehini rivers flow through the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, which holds the world’s largest congregation of eagles. The rivers also support salmon runs and a pop...
To optimists, the plants that grow in the sea promise to diversify Alaska’s economy, revitalize small coastal towns struggling with undependable fisheries and help communities adapt to climate change — and even mitigate it by absorbing atmospheric carbon. Cultivation of seaweed, largely varieties of kelp, promises to buffer against ocean acidification and coastal pollution, promoters say. Seaweed farms can produce ultra-nutritious crops to boost food security in Alaska and combat hunger everywhere, and not just for human beings. “Kelp is good...
Bans on commercial fishing in U.S. and international Arctic waters have been lauded as admirable preemptive actions that protect vulnerable resources before they are damaged by exploitation. But now the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is preparing for a time when the 14-year-old moratorium on commercial fishing in federal Arctic waters is lifted. The department is seeking $1 million in state general funds and $2 million in federal funds to work on research to better understand those Arctic waters in the event that commercial fisheries are co...
Alaska Natives continued to have the world’s highest rates of colorectal cancer as of 2018, and case rates failed to decline significantly for the two decades leading up to that year, according to a newly published study. The study, by experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, compared colorectal cancer rates among Alaska Natives with those of other populations in Alaska, the Lower 48 and other parts of the world. The 2018 colorectal cancer rate for Alaska Natives was 61.9 per 10...
Nearly six months after Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed a bill aimed at reducing youth use of electronic cigarettes, its primary sponsor is trying again to pass similar legislation. Senate President Gary Stevens on March 1 introduced Senate Bill 89, which seeks to impose the first-ever statewide tax on e-cigarette products. The bill would also raise the legal age in state law for purchasing, selling or distributing the products to 21, aligning with federal law. Currently, the legal age in Alaska is 19. Stevens said the bill is needed to counter a tre...
Alaskans will no longer need college degrees for most state jobs, under an administrative order issued Feb. 14 by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The action is needed because of the labor shortage that affects Alaska and the nation, Dunleavy said in a statement. “Today people can gain knowledge, skills and abilities through on-the-job experience. If we’re going to address our labor shortage, we have to recognize the value that apprenticeships, on-the-job training, military training, trade schools and other experience provides applicants. If a person can...
Nearly 18 years ago, about 6,000 young Alaskans left high school and launched into adulthood. Where did they end up? Slightly half were still in Alaska as of 2021, but the percentage was much smaller for those who got college degrees outside of the state, according to an analysis by the Alaska Department of Labor. Results are published in the February issue of Alaska Economic Trends, the monthly magazine of the department’s research and analysis division. There is “nothing magical” about the class of 2005, said Dan Robinson, the depar...
One of the biggest sea stars in the world has been devastated by a malady likened to an underwater "zombie apocalypse" and could soon be granted Endangered Species Act protection. Sunflower sea stars, fast-swimming creatures that can have up to 24 arms and grow to three feet in diameter, have largely vanished from their habitat, which stretches from the western tip of Alaska's Aleutian Islands to the waters off Mexico's Baja California. The culprit is sea star wasting syndrome, a body-mangling...
The first-ever cancellation of Alaska’s Bering Sea snow crab harvest was unprecedented and a shock to the state’s fishing industry and the communities that depend on it. Unfortunately for that industry and those communities, those conditions are likely to be common in the future, according to several scientists who made presentations at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium held in late January. The ocean conditions that triggered the crash were likely warmer than any extreme possible during the preindustrial period but now can be expected in...
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has rejected a petition from crab fishers to bar all commercial fishing for six months in an area of the Bering Sea designated as a special protective zone for red king crab, which have suffered a population crash. The decision announced on Jan. 20 by NOAA Fisheries confirms action in December by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. The council rejected the emergency request, which was made by the Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a harvester group. In a statement, NOAA Fisheries said the...
There are at least two distinct populations of harbor porpoises in Southeast Alaska waters, and one of them — which swims around Zarembo and Wrangell islands — appears to be particularly vulnerable to deaths from entanglements in commercial fishing gear, according to newly released information from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists. The breakdown of Southeast Alaska’s porpoises into separate northern and southern populations contrasts with current management, which treats the region’s porpoises as a single populat...
As the Alaska Legislature’s 2023 session approaches, a state Senate leader last Thursday highlighted the potential benefits of that body’s newly formed bipartisan majority coalition. Incoming Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel said the nine Democrats and eight Republicans in the coalition have shared values. “This coalition formed with a goal, and that is working together to keep Alaska a producing state – not a consuming state, but a producing state,” the Anchorage Republican told the Resource Development Council for Alaska at a breakfast...
Aid to Alaska fishermen, seafood processors and marketers and communities was included in the year-end congressional appropriations package that won final passage last month. The $300 million in aid follows official disaster declarations issued by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo for Alaska salmon and crab fishery failures dating back to 2020, as well as some salmon failures in Washington state dating back to 2019. “This will be relief for commercial, recreational, subsistence harvesters, all those who were directly impacted by the f...
Alaska teens have largely ditched cigarettes over the past two decades, but they have substituted that unhealthy habit with another: vaping. About 25% of surveyed high schoolers reported using electronic cigarettes in the past 30 days, according to the Alaska Tobacco Facts Update, released last month by the Alaska Department of Health. The national rate of teen e-cigarette use, also known as vaping, is even higher, at 33%, the report said. Among Alaska youth, cigarette smoking has declined drastically since the 1990s, from 37% in 1995 to 16%...
Disruptions in Alaska over the last year, some of them threatening health and safety of people, are part of the ongoing pattern of rapid warming and transformation of the Arctic, said an annual report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last December’s record-wet weather in Fairbanks, marked by crushing snow loads and winter rain that left a thick, long-lasting layer of ice on the ground, was one of those disruptions. So were the August deluge that produced the rainiest day on record in Utqiagvik, the record-setting...
There is danger lurking on the floor of the Bering and Chukchi seas for mussels, snails, clams, worms and other cold-water invertebrates, according to a new study led by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists. If climate change continues its current trajectory, the Bering and Chukchi seafloor areas will be too warm for those creatures by the end of the century. In turn, that means trouble for walruses and other marine species. Snails and mussels are particularly important to commercially harvested fish like halibut and...
Alaska Native tribes seeking better protection from the environmental impacts of Canadian mines have enlisted allies in their flight: Lower 48 tribal governments with concerns of their own about transboundary mining impacts. A delegation of tribal representatives from Alaska, Washington state, Montana and Idaho traveled to Washington, D.C., last week for meetings that pushed for action to regulate downstream effects of mines in British Columbia. The meetings Dec. 6 and 7 were with Biden administration officials and officials at the Canadian...
New controls on how fish are commercially harvested and more research to understand the effects of climate change in the ocean and freshwater spawning grounds are some of the key recommendations of an Alaska task force examining ways to address bycatch, the term for capture of untargeted species in commercial seafood harvests. Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who created the task force a year ago, released the group’s final report on Dec. 8. The collapse of salmon runs vital to western Alaska — and public complaints that too many salmon were being int...
Seventeen of Alaska’s 20 state senators and senator-elects have banded together to form a bipartisan majority coalition that members promise will be moderate and consensus-focused. Gary Stevens, a Kodiak Republican and veteran lawmaker known as a moderate, will be president, returning to the role he held from 2009 to 2012. “It’s a pleasure for me to announce that we have a very healthy majority and we’ve found a way to share responsibilities between all of us,” Stevens said at an Anchorage news conference late Friday. Cathy Giessel, a Republica...
