Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 25
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...
Oct. 23, 1924 After a great deal of discussion pro and con following litigation looking toward procuring a suitable place for high school basketball practice, the PTA executive board recommended that a gymnasium be built on the lot next to the school play shed, provided the town council could be induced to buy the property. Tentative plans for a standard-size playing floor 35 by 60 feet with a 5-foot seating space along each side and 7 feet along each end, with two 12-by-16-foot dressing rooms (eventually to be fitted with showers) at the...
SALVATION ARMY Christmas toy assistance sign-up is open 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays until Nov. 5. Bring identification for all adults and birth certificates for children in the home. Thanksgiving sign-up is open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesdays until Nov. 12. Sign up at The Salvation Army. For more information or to schedule sign-ups for another day or time call 907-874-3753. COMMUNITY CHORALE REHEARSALS 5:15 to 6:45 p.m. Mondays at the high school music room for the Christmas concert. Use the back entrance. All singers are welcome. Contact...
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...
Wrangell hasn’t been this excited about a harvested spruce tree since the sawmills were running. Only the tree that is the subject of this month’s enthusiasm wasn’t cut down, it was dug up. Crews dug, then dug some more, cut some roots and then lifted the 80-foot-tall tree and its massive root wad out of the ground on Zarembo Island on Oct. 19 for a short ride to Wrangell, where it will go on display Saturday, surrounded by a weekend of activities. Not to diminish its brief display in Wrangell, but the tree’s real destination is the West La...
Making it easier for Alaskans to cast their ballots shouldn’t be about how they vote, which way they lean politically or how much they favor one party over another. Admittedly, elections are partisan. Sadly, increasingly so. Candidates, their fat-funded political action committees and political parties have turned the nation’s elections into an endless stream of negative attack ads that prey on the public’s fear of anything that will get them to the polls. It’s bad enough that partisanship has taken over election campaigns. But those same ug...
In state House District 1 there are three candidates: Jeremy Bynum, Republican, and Agnes Moran and Grant EchoHawk, both running as nonpartisan. But are they really nonpartisan? Moran, who has donated to the Democrat party and its fundraising mechanisms more than 98 times since February 2019, raises significant questions about her nonpartisan claim. Specific instances include contributions to Democrat U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, the Progressive Era PAC (described as a Democrat liberal organization), and seven donations to Democrat presidential...
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...
Wrangell swimmers continue to chip away at their race times, boasting 11 personal bests against Southeast competition on Oct. 11-12. The Juneau Invitational was the Wolves third meet of the season. And as the season nears its close, head coach Jamie Roberts remains optimistic about her last couple of weeks at the helm of the Wrangell swim program (she is moving out of town this winter). The reason for her optimism? Her swimmers keep getting faster. Of Wrangell swimmers’ 25 individual events in Juneau, 11 resulted in personal-best times. Better...
The Wrangell High School wrestling team competed in its first meet of the season this past weekend in Hoonah. The three-day meet Oct. 17-19 was a success for the Wolves, as they boasted four tournament champions, three second-place finishers and two bronze medalists. On the girls side, senior Della Churchill finished atop the podium in the 120-pound bracket, while Hailey Cook won the 114-pound weight class against her nationally ranked opponent in the gold medal match. For the boys, sophomore...
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...
Loretta "Jeanne" Lindley passed away on April 7, 2024, in Wrangell. Jeanne was born Oct. 29, 1933, to Sally and James Jones in Canadian, Texas. She was almost always called "Jeanne" (she'd say, 'like I Dream of Jeannie'). She grew up in Washington state with her older brothers Joseph and James; younger sisters Shirley, Donna and Dora; and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. She graduated in 1950 from Clallam Bay High School. In 1951, she married Ronald Edward Lindley. They raised five...
Monday, Oct. 14 Agency assist: State probation office. Theft: Letter served for removing a person from a licensed establishment. Agency assist: Municipal electrical line crew. Agency assist: Hoonah Police Department. Citizen assist. Traffic stop. Tuesday, Oct. 15 Missing person. Agency assist: Ambulance. Wednesday, Oct. 16 Civil issue. Dog complaint. Inmate transfer. Domestic disturbance. Domestic violence assault. Thursday, Oct. 17 Traffic stop: Verbal warning for failure to dim headlights and expired tags. Citizen assist. Agency assist:...
HELP WANTED Wrangell Public Schools is accepting applications for: - Paraprofessional: This is a part-time, 9-month classified position, working 5.75 hours daily in the Special Education Department at Evergreen Elementary School. Salary placement is in Column B of the Classified Salary Schedule. Job duties include but are not limited to working with intensive special education students individually and in small group settings. A High School Diploma or equivalent and an associate degree or the ability to pass the ParaPro Assessment is required....
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...