Sorted by date Results 2066 - 2090 of 7954
School enrollment is heading in the right direction, but just slightly. After counting 257 students during the state-mandated annual tally last year, this year’s Wrangell enrollment count was at 266 as of last week, said Schools Superintendent Bill Burr. The school district had estimated 263 students when it put together its budget for the 2022-2023 school year. State funding, which provides more than 60% of the district’s operating budget, is based on enrollment, with districts statewide required to submit their count every October. The hig...
David Wilson will serve as school board president for a second year. He was selected by board members at their Oct. 10 meeting. Wilson has served on the board since 2017. He ran unopposed for the board in the Oct. 4 municipal election. Members selected Brittani Robbins as vice president. She has served on the board since last year. Angela Allen was reappointed to a second term as the board secretary. Filling out the five-member school board are new members Elizabeth Roundtree and Esther Ashton. They replaced Jessica Whitaker and Julia...
The borough assembly unanimously approved a resolution to amend Trident Seafoods’ lease of the borough-owned cold storage facility. The new five-year lease establishes building maintenance guidelines and raises the rental rate from $1,370 to $2,990 per month, with 2% yearly increases to account for inflation. The changes are part of the borough’s ongoing effort to update its leases, explained Borough Manager Jeff Good. Though the company’s new agreement lasts longer than its previous one-year lease extensions, Trident is still deter...
The borough assembly unanimously approved a $574,000 contract with Sitka Electric to install new fire alarm systems at the middle and high schools. The majority of the project will be funded through state Community Development Block Grants, though the borough may contribute up to $180,750 in local funds. Though the fire alarm system meets the code that was in place when it was installed in the 1980s, it needs to be updated to meet current standards, explained borough Capital Facilities Director Amber Al-Haddad. The system has become difficult...
The chamber of commerce’s annual Pumpkin Patch event will start at 11 a.m. Saturday at the downtown pavilion. In addition to orange, white, blue and pink pumpkins for people to pick up and take home, the event will include a bake sale, chili feed and face painting, said Luana Wellons, of the chamber. Lynch Street will be closed to traffic and the pumpkins set out in the street for kids to make their selections. They will be sold by weight. The Girls Scouts will run the bake sale and Saint Frances Animal Rescue will staff the chili feed, both a...
As of last week, “The Sound of Music” cast was short just one male actor and will need some extras, partygoers and dancers as it gets closer to the Dec. 2 and 3 stage performance. “It’s hard to find male actors in town,” Cyni Crary, one of the show organizers, said last Friday. She described the open part as “kind of like a bad guy,” though he doesn’t have many lines. The cast already includes almost 20 Wrangell volunteers, plus about a dozen singers, musicians and a choreographer. About five more volunteers are helping behind the scenes with s...
Since 2016, no issue has divided Alaska state lawmakers more than the issue of the Permanent Fund dividend. The annual struggle over the amount given to state residents has repeatedly driven the Legislature into impasses that have brought the state to the brink of a government shutdown. Ahead of this year’s governor election, independent candidate Bill Walker, Democratic candidate Les Gara and Republicans Mike Dunleavy and Charlie Pierce have each outlined different approaches to solving the impasse, which voters have said is a top issue of c...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy has indicated that he will vote in favor of calling a convention to consider amending the state constitution. Candidates for governor at an Alaska Resource Development Council forum on Oct. 11 were asked during if they would be voting for a constitutional convention in next month's general election. Candidates responded by raising “yes” or “no” signs. Dunleavy and Republican Charlie Pierce raised “yes” signs. Former Gov. Bill Walker, an independent, and Les Gara, a Democrat, raised “no” signs. A...
Wildlife officials in Metlakatla continue to trap record-setting numbers of the invasive crab species that threaten local subsistence food sources and fish habitat. The tribe's Department of Fish and Wildlife has trapped hundreds of European green crabs - but the numbers keep growing. Months after the first green crab shell was found on the beach in Metlakatla, the community is still trying to figure out how to handle the arrival of a species that officials call one of the most invasive around....
Natalie Bennett was walking surveying a beach on Annette Island as part of a team trying to defend Southeast Alaska from marine invaders when she made a major but ominous discovery: the state’s first documented shell of an invasive European green crab. Bennett, a summer intern with the nonprofit Sealaska Heritage Institute who was working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, noticed the tell-tale spines on the side of the eye areas. Right away, she notified one of her internship advisers, Barb Lake of NOAA Fisheries. ...
SEATTLE (AP) — Alaska officials have canceled the fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest, and for the first time have also scrapped the winter harvest of smaller snow crab. The move is a double whammy to a fleet from Alaska, Washington and Oregon chasing Bering Sea crab in harvests that in 2016 grossed $280 million, The Seattle Times reported. The closures reflect conservation concerns about both crab species following bleak summer populations surveys. The decisions to shut down the snow crab and fall king crab harvests came after days of d...
An Anchorage man pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts of illegally trafficking in walrus ivory and was ordered to pay a $4,000 fine and sentenced to two years on probation. Uzi Levi, 71, of Anchorage, purchased six Pacific walrus tusks and one three-tusked Pacific walrus head mount from an undercover U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service special agent, all of which is in violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, it is unlawful for a non-Alaska Native to transport, purchase, sell, export or offer...
The stakes in Alaska are high in the search for a solution to the problem of bycatch, the unintended at-sea harvest of non-target species, such as hundreds of thousands of salmon a year, by commercial fishermen that are going after pollock or other fish. A special task force is nearing the end of a year-long process to find solutions that satisfy competing interests to the problem of bycatch. Many of the mostly Indigenous residents of western Alaska who depend on now-faltering salmon runs in the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers have said strict rules...
The Alaska Quakers apologized to Alaska Native communities for the boarding schools it ran in Alaska and the United States, which forcibly assimilated and abused Indigenous children, separated them from their families and caused intergenerational trauma. In the 1800s and 1900s, the Quakers ran about 30 boarding schools for Native American and Alaska Native youth in the U.S. and its territories, including one in Alaska — the Douglas Island Friends Mission School in Juneau. Members of the Alaska Friends Conference of the Religious Society of F...
Liz Landes found a 30-pound puffball mushroom while on a bike ride on the Haines Highway. She said she was enjoying her bike ride when she spotted something unusual. "I looked up from the highway and saw what initially looked like a river rock," Landes said. "I turned back and hiked up the hill and was totally amazed. I didn't necessarily have the intention of taking it, but it broke off the ground more easily than I thought." Landes had found a giant puffball mushroom, a fungi typically found...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican Museums are home to some of the most magnificent artworks in the world, from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel to ancient Egyptian antiquities and a pavilion full of papal chariots. But one of the museum’s least-visited collections became its most contested one ahead of Pope Francis’ trip to Canada in late July. The Vatican’s Anima Mundi Ethnological Museum, located near the food court and right before the main exit, houses tens of thousands of artifacts and art created by Indigenous peoples from around the world...
When Ukrainian Arsen Tatizian arrived in Petersburg in February he did not think he would be staying in Alaska beyond the end of his contract with OBI Seafoods, much less with his wife and his daughter at his side. It was his second year working for OBI, though he spent his first summer at its other plants in Alaska. He was only in Petersburg for two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. While he continued with work, his mind was on the safety of his wife Snizhana and their 2-year-old daughter...
JUNEAU (AP) — Ben Stevens, a former Alaska Senate president and son of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, has died. He was 63. The state troopers said they responded to a report last Thursday evening of a hiker — later identified as Stevens — having a medical emergency on the Lost Lake Trail near Seward. The troopers’ statement said a medical service team reached the scene around 6:40 p.m. and that lifesaving measures were unsuccessful. A Republican women’s group posted on Facebook that Stevens died of a heart attack after collapsing on the trail...
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP)— The benefits provided by four giant hydroelectric dams on the Snake River must be replaced before the dams can be breached to save endangered salmon runs, according to a final report issued by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Washington U.S. Sen. Patty Murray. That is especially true regarding the reliable and carbon-free electricity the dams generate, the report concluded. If the four Snake River dams were ultimately removed, it would be the largest such project in U.S. history. In 2012 the Elwha Dam on Washington state's O...
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A five-year review by U.S. officials has determined that Endangered Species Act protections for oceangoing salmon and steelhead that reproduce in the Snake River and its Idaho tributaries must stay in effect. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries division review found that steelhead, spring and summer chinook, sockeye and fall chinook that return to Idaho in rivers from the Pacific Ocean still need their federal protections. The protections include limits on fishing, restrictions on how much w...
SEATTLE (AP) — By the time you read this story, what it describes will probably have disappeared beneath the waves. That’s how it was meant to be — and how it used to be. Since time immemorial, as the saying goes, people in what is now Washington and British Columbia farmed the sea with a type of environmental engineering called clam gardening. Around the time Europeans showed up here, the practice was lost. “It was stolen from us,” Swinomish Tribal Senator Alana Quintasket said. “All of our teachings, all of our practices, our connections to t...
Child care has been a pressing need in the community for some time, and the Wrangell Cooperative Association is hoping to address the issue at least in some part. Starting last week, the WCA distributed surveys on bulletin boards around town, on its website and on Facebook. The survey will help the organization assess how great the need is. “We’re looking to assess the need in our community as a whole,” said Esther Reese, tribal administrator for WCA. The organization is asking how many families need child care, what days of the week are neede...
In a relatively short season, the Wrangell High School boys cross country team went from training to champions. The team won the Division III state title last Saturday at the ASAA/First National Bank Alaska Cross Country Running Championships in Anchorage, making it the first in the program's history. Assistant coach Mason Villarma predicted the runners had the potential to make history for the school after only a couple of meets earlier in the season. That prediction came true with the team...
The U.S. Forest Service spent last week showing that the wildlife at Anan Creek aren't your average bears. From the chilliest to the chunkiest, the inaugural Anan Bear Awards were posted via Facebook from Oct. 3 to Oct. 7, honoring nine bears for their unique personalities. Paul Robbins, public affairs officer for the Tongass National Forest, said the awards are modeled after the Katmai National Park and Preserve's Fat Bear Week held at the same time. In that event, National Park Service...
Several thousand people needed help after communities in Western Alaska were ravaged by the tail end of a typhoon in mid-September. Though the affected region is more than 1,200 miles away from Wrangell, residents here wanted to help however they could. With icier months fast approaching places like Hooper Bay and Nome, cold-weather gear will be necessary. "People called me and asked if we were going to do anything," said Jana Wright, Wrangell Cooperative Association staff member. Wright said...
