Sorted by date Results 1481 - 1505 of 7954
After 12 years of studying, paying attention, taking notes, playing sports and, in some cases, goofing off, Wrangell High School's senior class will receive their diplomas on Friday night. The final two weeks of school for the graduates have been filled with finishing their senior projects, making sure other work is complete and taking time out for a sanctioned skip day up the Stikine River. Nineteen students will walk to the pomp and circumstance at 7 p.m. Friday at the high school gym, make...
Stacey Wayne, Wrangell High School class of 1982, said it was an honor and a blessing to work as drama and debate coach with Sitka students for a quarter-century. The Alaska School Activities Association added to the honor this month when it inducted Wayne into the Alaska High School Hall of Fame. "Wayne started coaching and teaching drama at Sitka High in 1987 and took two students to the state championship event in that inaugural year," the May 7 awards ceremony program said. "The next year...
Wrangell High School graduate Kayla Hay was always interested in learning German. Her great-grandparents emigrated from Austria to Alaska in the 1920s, she said, and she was intrigued by different cultures and wanted to be able to communicate with her relatives who remained in Austria. Hay didn't have the opportunity to take German as a student in Wrangell (class of 2018), but when she enrolled at Montana State University in Bozeman that fall, she signed up for a basic German language class her...
One thing Ethan Blatchley did not want to do for another four years was sit at a desk to earn a degree. A recent trip to Western Welding Academy in Gillette, Wyoming, reaffirmed the graduating high school senior’s choice to pursue a welding certificate, finishing up in six months. Since he started learning how to weld in shop class last year, Blatchley has been following the academy’s social media posts. He shared them with shop teacher Winston Davies, who was inspired to pursue his own certificate. “(The academy has) a huge social media prese...
Alaska high school students would be required to complete a civics education course or receive a passing score on a civics assessment exam to graduate if the state House next year accepts legislation approved by the Senate. Senators unanimously approved the bill on May 5, and the House could take up the measure next year. The legislation comes as recent national data shows the first-ever decline in U.S. eighth grade students’ history and civics test scores, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which released the data Ma...
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture is planning to develop outdoor recreation opportunities near national forests and grasslands, part of a broader Biden administration push to help communities reap economic rewards from the growing recreation sector. Three USDA agencies — the Forest Service, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the Office of Rural Development — signed a memorandum of understanding last fall pledging to collaborate on plans to develop outdoor recreation economies in “gateway communities” near nati...
Forty people spread across the estuarine beach of northwest Tamgas Harbor to study the invasive European green crab that's been moving into the large bight on the southern shore of Annette Island since at least July 2022. For two days the last week of April, a cohort of scientists, resource managers and community members who want to quash the spread of the insidious green crab gathered in Ketchikan and visited Annette Island Reserve to share information about the crab's recent invasion in...
Alaska's top health official discussed the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, the lessons learned and the need for Alaska to be ready for future public health emergencies. Dr. Anne Zink, chief medical officer for the Alaska Department of Health, was the speaker at the Beyond COVID: Pandemic Preparedness in the Circumpolar North conference on April 27 at the Sheet'ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi community house in Sitka. Zink, an emergency health physician in Palmer, became the state's chief medical offi...
The salmon crisis in Western Alaska is prompting new discussions in the U.S. and Canada about an idea that would have been a non-starter a decade ago: Maybe it’s time to build hatcheries to stem the steep fish declines on the Yukon River. Indigenous culture along the Yukon, in both the U.S. and Canada, is centered on wild salmon runs. Historically, those runs supported both commercial fisheries that rural residents depended on for cash income, and subsistence fisheries that kept freezers and dinner plates full through the winter in a r...
A Palmer woman has been indicted on murder, manslaughter and assault charges for an alleged hit-and-run in Metlakatla that resulted in the deaths of her 3-year-old son and her brother, as well as injuring the child’s father. Alecia A. Henderson, 27, was taken into custody on a court-ordered warrant May 2; the indictments were issued May 4. Ketchikan District Court Judge Kristian Pickrell set Henderson's bail at a $500,000 appearance bond, with 10% cash requirement. Pickrell also stipulated that Henderson could not be released from custody u...
WASHINGTON — Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan were among a bipartisan group of 13 senators who jointly signed letters to five U.S. museums and universities, urging them to repatriate Indigenous remains in their collections. The letters call on the University of California Berkeley, Harvard University, Illinois State Museum, Indiana University and the Ohio History Connection to comply with the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act. The 1990 federal law mandates that museums receiving federal money must return human remains, f...
Shoreline Wild Salmon co-founder Marie Rose is feeling like a small fish in a big pond after the Southeast Alaska-based company was recently listed in Good Housekeeping magazine’s 10 Best Seafood Delivery Services & Subscriptions of 2023. “A lot of the companies on the Top 10 list are really big companies, we’re quite small in comparison, so to know that our products are making the ranks with theirs is really exciting,” Rose said. “It feels really great to have been included, we’ve worked really hard over the years to try to establish t...
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...
SEATTLE (AP) — A ruling from a federal judge in Seattle could effectively shut down commercial king salmon trolling in Southeast Alaska — a valuable industry that supports some 1,500 fishermen — after a Washington state-based conservation group challenged the harvest as a threat to endangered killer whales that eat the prized fish. The state and the Alaska Trollers Association filed a notice of appeal on May 3, the day after the judge’s decision. The state is asking for a stay of the ruling, pending the appeal. Wild Fish Conservancy, which b...
A simple 30-minute trip by jet boat could be the outing of a lifetime for many Wrangell and Petersburg youths, and if they pay attention, it could mean extending that lifetime. On May 2, a mix of fourth and fifth graders from Evergreen Elementary and Petersburg's Stedman Elementary traveled up the Stikine River on a warm, sunny day to Cottonwood Island to learn about everything from identifying wildlife to surviving the elements. Field trips up the river have been going on for about 23 years,...
Want to fly in and out of Wrangell but don't feel like dealing with TSA, long lines and checking baggage? Now you can from the comfort of your home cockpit (aka, couch). Northern Sky Studio, a software developer based in Kharkiv, Ukraine, recently released a Wrangell expansion pack for the popular Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it's just like being here. Flight Simulator, like many long-running video games, had humble origins. Rather than the hyper-realistic detail of modern games, the...
With a week remaining in Alaska’s regular legislative session, leading lawmakers say they still haven’t reached agreement on a deal to finish the state budget and end the session on time. “We are meeting daily with the Senate … just working on finding some way to come together to put this kind of ‘endgame’ package together, which I can tell you right now, we don’t have the details as of yet,” House Speaker Cathy Tilton, R-Wasilla, said last Friday. Since 2015, odd-numbered years have brought tortuously long arguments over the budget as lawma...
At its special meeting May 1, the borough assembly unanimously approved $266,920 for engineers to assess the condition of Wrangell’s three school buildings, in hopes of making the list for millions of dollars in state funding to repair and refurbish the decades-old structures. The borough is hoping to get the repairs on the Alaska Department of Education’s list of major maintenance projects at school buildings throughout the state. However, making the list is a highly competitive process that requires districts to demonstrate their need. The...
After the chamber of commerce received an anonymous tip two weeks ago that elements of its ongoing $10,000 raffle were against state law, the organization is taking steps to bring the fundraiser into compliance. The chamber held an emergency meeting May 2 to establish an end date for the raffle and discuss its financial needs in advance of the Fourth of July celebration, which it funds and organizes. As originally designed, the chamber’s raffle did not have an end date. Tickets would have been drawn and the $10,000 prize would have been a...
The first cruise ship of the season is scheduled to tie up in Wrangell on Thursday, and borough crews have been working to get new restrooms ready for visitors — and locals — who need another option while walking around downtown. The borough has installed two portable units just off Front Street, next to the 56° North shop, near the intersection with Campbell Drive. These are not your routine porta-potties with holding tanks; they are portable units set in place and hooked up to municipal sewage and water lines — sinks included. One of the fa...
Learning about politics, visiting memorials and even singing for Sen. Lisa Murkowski were all part of a recent trip four Wrangell students took to Washington, D.C. The yearly Close Up program took Sarah Merritt, of the Wrangell Legislative Information Office, along with students Alisha Armstrong, Ander Edens, Sean McDonald and Spencer Petticrew to the nation's capital and New York City for 10 days at the end of April. The purpose of the program is to expose students to the worlds of business...
Tribal citizens lined up outside the WCA carving shed on the sunny afternoon of May 2 to collect boxes of herring eggs from the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. The Tlingit and Haida Traditional Food Security program purchased over 17,000 pounds from spawn-on-kelp fishery permit holders in the Craig and Klawock area, according to the Ketchikan Daily News. The eggs are being distributed in 21 designated communities, including Wrangell, which received 463 pounds of eggs in about 100 4.5-pound boxes for tribal...
On June 1, the Wrangell Senior Center will cut back its in-person meals and ride services after a loss of funding. Juneau-based Catholic Community Services, the organization that operates the senior center, announced on May 1 that there would no longer be any funding from COVID-19 emergency relief federal programs, making it necessary to reduce operating hours. “With the White House’s announcement that the coronavirus public health emergency is officially ending, there is no longer emergency relief money available to support the senior ope...
As the days get longer and the weather gets warmer, Wrangellites are gearing up for a fun-filled summer. And thanks to a new downtown business that will offer candy, inflatables, décor, custom clothing and more, the community's seasonal festivities are about to get even sweeter. Scott and Keeleigh Curley's new Front Street shop, Midnight Oil, will hold its grand opening starting at 10 a.m. on Saturday, one of the borough's two sales tax-free days in 2023. Midnight Oil will offer the community...
