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The Wrangell community garden has seen better days. Its board members believe it can see those days - plus a little more - again. A survey was recently posted online to gauge interest from the community in revitalizing the garden. So far, 40 people have responded, and three have said they want to be on the board. According to Kim Wickman, one of two board members, a great deal of work has already been done to make the plot workable. It's located on Zimovia Highway just south of Heritage Harbor,...
Wrangell Cooperative Association members are eligible for a second round of pandemic assistance grants for food and utility expenses, with applications due by Nov. 30. The assistance payments will be $1,000 per household for groceries and $1,000 for utilities, the same amount as the first round administered by WCA with funds from last year’s federal CARES Act. Tribal members must fill out a certification form “to verify the tribal household applying needs assistance due to the COVID-19 pandemic and there have been no changes to household inf...
A federal effort to help Southeast diversify its economy includes $25 million to be shared across the entire region — and Wrangell has weighed in with its requests. The U.S. Forest Service launched the Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy over the summer to help promote “a diverse economy, enhanced community resilience, and conserved natural resources.” From Sept. 15 to Oct. 18, the agency sought input from communities and tribes for projects that could fulfill that strategy. Participants submitted 240 project proposals to spend the $25 m...
Rather than grumbling about face masks or grousing about politics, many of Wrangell’s students are working to improve the school, the community and the world. They are thinking about their life in the future and the life of others today. Good for them, and good for everyone. The high school students in BASE — Building a Supportive Environment — are working to help feed other students, recognize staff for their good work, support students who are having trouble, and even contribute to a microloan program that helps people in need around the w...
The borough will be asking for “archaeological proposals” for a ground survey of the former Wrangell Institute property, consulting with state and federal agencies and the Wrangell Cooperative Association on the process before any work begins. The borough had been waiting on guidance from the U.S. Department of the Interior, which has pledged that surveys will be conducted of former Alaska Native and American Indian boarding school sites nationwide. But the department “really doesn’t have any guidance on this,” said Carol Rushmore, Wrangell...
The first rule of Tech Club is talk about Tech Club. Science teacher Heather Howe wants the students who attend Wrangell High's newly formed program to share what they're learning and doing to interest more kids in attending. The T3 Alliance -often referred to as Tech Club - is a program designed to supplement the U.S. Department of Education's Upward Bound program, which helps students increase their ability to complete a secondary education, whether college or a technical school. Not all membe...
The U.S. Forest Service got to most of its Wrangell-area work projects this past summer, with one big job pushed into next spring. The Anan Wildlife Observatory- which has reached the end of "its structural lifetime and needs replacement," the agency's website says - was supposed to be torn down in October, Corree Delabrue, U.S. Forest Service information assistant at the Wrangell Ranger District, said. Tory Houser, the recreation, lands, minerals and heritage staff officer for the Wrangell and...
To some it may look like a pile of dirt; to others it's a way to sustain agriculture and nurture the land. The popularity of composting is catching on, giving growers a way to keep operations affordable and sustainable, and potentially helping the borough save on landfill costs. Composting is the process of breaking down organic materials to be used in growing plants, providing needed nutrients and saving on irrigation. Composting runs hot and cold, literally. Passive or anaerobic composting,...
When the tide is low, the table is set. Sandy Churchill, a teacher at Tlingit & Haida Head Start in Wrangell, was referring to the ocean's banquet of sea cucumbers - known as yein in Tlingit - plus kelp, hooligans, beach grasses and fresh fish. Harvesting the banquet is difficult for about a hundred elders in Wrangell. That's why Churchill and Kassee Schlotzhauer, branch manager at Wells Fargo, organize a subsistence proxy program to help elders who can no longer subsistence harvest from the lan...
From building smokehouses and gardens to assisting with utility and food bills, the Wrangell Cooperative Association has been working to help its tribal citizens make it through the financial and emotional stress of the pandemic. "We took a hard look at what the WCA citizens were facing with the pandemic," said Esther Ashton, tribal administrator. That included financial needs and helping to build food self-sufficiency, she said. The eight-member elected tribal council last year considered how...
Wrangell is seeing some positive growth. The number of farming operations is on the rise throughout the community, and it's contributing to a healthier economy. There are two farms in Wrangell that grow a variety of fruits and vegetables and sell to residents and businesses, no less than nine residents that grow for their own consumption, and even Evergreen Elementary has a small farm. According to the Alaska Farmland Trust, the number of farms in the state increased by 30% from 2012 to 2017,...
There is no precise count but it looks like federal pandemic aid distributed or allocated over the past 18 months to Wrangell residents, businesses, the borough, school district, tribe and nonprofits totals close to $30 million. That's about equal to all the income earned by every household in town in half a year, according to U.S. Census numbers. It's almost three times the annual budget of the borough and school board combined. Most of the money came as grants or simply as federal aid to keep...
The borough is waiting on further guidance from the U.S. Department of the Interior on the agency’s nationwide initiative for researching and even searching the sites of former Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools, including the former Wrangell Institute property. The borough plans to subdivide the property for residential development, turning the 134 acres into 40 building lots. While waiting on the Interior Department, borough officials are talking with the State Historic Preservation Office and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to ensure t...
Six candidates are vying for three seats on the Wrangell school board. Angela Allen, Alex Angerman, Brittani Robbins and Elizabeth Roundtree are running for two open three-year terms. The top two vote-getters will win the election. Julia Ostrander and Jessica Whitaker are competing to fill one seat for an unexpired one-year term. Although each candidate has similar goals they want to achieve during their term if elected, they all have varied backgrounds and experience they believe would lend a...
The Wrangell Cooperative Association will assist with a two-year research project into seafood consumption rates, intended to help state officials understand the importance of clean water and healthy seafood for the community’s Indigenous population. The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Tribal Climate Resilience Program has approved a $130,000 grant to the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission, which will administer the program and work with WCA. The project will include a survey of current and past seafood consumption and its imp...
Sept. 15, 1921 Fires invariably come in groups in Wrangell and three occurred within a short time during the past week. On Friday night, the McCulla house on Church Street had a small blaze on the roof; on Saturday forenoon, the house occupied by Mrs. Doit Burnett just off Front street was afire; and on Monday morning the Adams home, near St. Philip’s gymnasium, caused the alarm. Of the three, the Burnett home received the most damage, the roof being badly burned. Sept. 6, 1946 Republican boss Albert White has been attempting to direct some G...
Sometimes a pause in the hustle is necessary. Our transboundary watersheds, the Taku, Stikine and Unuk rivers that flow from Northwest British Columbia into Southeast Alaska, face an onslaught of too many industrial mining projects proposed for locations too close together to each other in far too sensitive areas. Those projects, and the way they are being approved without the consent or input of many of those who could be impacted, including tribes and Southeast Alaskans, give many reasons for a pause in business as usual. After the infamous...
Kindergartener Leeya Gillen was one of 154 Wrangell schoolchildren who went home Tuesday with new backpacks from the annual Wrangell Cooperative Association event. The backpacks, filled with school supplies, were part of the Tlingit & Haida Central Council's drive to ensure Native children have supplies for school. To guard against COVID-19 infections, the backpack giveaway was socially distanced at the covered basketball court behind Evergreen Elementary School. Classes start Monday in...
The borough’s plans to subdivide the former Wrangell Institute Native boarding school property will wait until a thorough inspection of the site is conducted for cultural artifacts and remains. “We are working with both the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and working with the tribe (Wrangell Cooperative Association),” to ensure the property is searched “before any activity takes place,” Mayor Steve Prysunka said last week. “It is incredibly sensitive that we do it really well,” Prysunka said. “What I care the most a...
Wrangell businesses did better than those in Skagway but worse than their counterparts in the larger and more diversified economies of Juneau and Sitka during the economic shutdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an online survey of business owners and managers throughout the region. “On average, reporting businesses in the region lost 42% of their revenue due to COVID-19, while Wrangell businesses were down 48% overall,” the third highest for any community in the area, said the report issued by the Southeast Conference, com...
Nate Rooney (left) practices his casting with help from Jason Rivers at the annual Family Fishing Day last Saturday at Pats Lake. Rivers, who taught kids and adults the basics of fly-fishing, was among several volunteers who helped out at the event, sponsored by the U.S. Forest Service. The Wrangell Cooperative Association and Stikine Sportsmen Association also participated....
Most of a half-mile of slippery boardwalk trail at the Anan Wildlife Observatory is being replaced with gravel this summer, but that's just one of several U.S. Forest Service projects planned and proposed for the Wrangell area over the next several years. The agency is accepting public comments on another project proposed at Anan - a new deck at the viewing platform. "The existing viewing platform has reached the end of its usable life and needs to be replaced,"according to the Forest Service...
Continuing a decade-plus of tradition, the U.S. Forest Service and other volunteers will sponsor Family Fishing Day at Pats Lake from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. June 26. The fishing day is an opportunity for families to come out and enjoy the outdoors, said Corree Delabrue with the Forest Service. It’s also a chance for kids to develop an interest in fishing and become “anglers for life.” “Family Fishing Day, it started probably over 10 years ago, I think,” she said. “It was originally put on and organized by the local Boy Scout troop. When all those s...
It was 25 years ago last month that Wrangell received title to the former Institute property near Shoemaker Bay. The 134 acres have mostly been unused since the Bureau of Indian Affairs shut down the boarding school almost 50 years ago. There have been plans, proposals, wishes and dreams over the decades of turning the property into tourist lodging, senior citizen housing, a school or training center. And now the borough is moving closer to the latest plan - subdividing the land into lots for...
A preliminary plat for the first phase of developing the former Wrangell Institute property into residential and commercial lots, known as Shoemaker Bay Subdivision II, was approved by the planning and zoning commission Tuesday afternoon. There is still a lot of work to do, but this is a significant step in the development process, said Wrangell Economic Development Director Carol Rushmore. It may be optimistic, she said, but site work could begin sometime next year. Final plat approval by the commission could be several months away, Rushmore...