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Fishermen are calling for state and federal fisheries managers to make changes to salmon bycatch limits for trawlers as chinook salmon numbers plummet across Alaska. Chinook returns were dismal virtually everywhere in Alaska this year, from Southeast to the Bering Sea, with few exceptions. That follows a trend, as abundance has declined over roughly the past decade. Commercial fishermen have lost most of their opportunity to harvest kings, and sport fisheries have been restricted. Now subsistence fisheries are being reined in to help preserve...
The U.S. will reopen its land borders to nonessential travel next month — including entry into Alaska from Canada — ending a 20-month freeze due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The new rules will apply to all border crossing points, including the highways leading to Haines and Skagway in Southeast Alaska. “Everybody’s chomping at the bit to get to Alaska,” Yukon Territory Premier Sandy Silver told the Yukon News. “We expect there to be a large convoy of visitors coming from the Yukon the minute that border opens,” said Skagway Mayor Andrew Cremata. ...
Wrangell’s public library is turning 100 years old. It was established in November 1921. The library is celebrating with an open house from 2 to 4 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28. Coffee, punch and birthday cake will be served. Irene Ingle Public Library director Margaret Villarma, who was hired by Kay Jabusch in 1989 and took over from her as director in 2015, said the story of the library’s progression over the past 100 years will be on display at the open house. The library is an important resource for everyone in the community, Villarma said, “fr...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — The Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention, the largest gathering of Indigenous people in the state, will be all virtual again this year, organizers announced last Friday. The decision was made after federation leaders consulted with state federal and tribal health officials and reviewed current COVID-19 data trends, according to a statement. The federation decided to go all virtual out of concern for the safety of the thousands of people from across the state who normally attend in person, the statement said. The conve...
Sealaska Corp. is still accepting applications from shareholders for a one-time $500 relief payment, funded with federal pandemic aid. As of last week, payments had gone out to 70 shareholders in Wrangell, said Matt Carle, spokesman for the Southeast regional Native corporation. “That number will likely grow as we’re starting to contact shareholders with incomplete applications,” Carle said. “The program is still open and we are encouraging people to apply.” The application period started Oct. 4 and will remain open until the $6 million i...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — The Anchorage assembly has overridden the mayor’s veto of an emergency order instituting a mask mandate for 60 days. The assembly on Oct. 14 overturned Mayor Dave Bronson’s veto of the measure requiring masks for most everyone in indoor public spaces on a 9-2 vote. Alaska averaged about 900 new infections a day last week, down from the September surge but still high enough to lead the 50 states in per-capita COVID-19 cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost half of last week’s new cases w...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — Alaska State Troopers on Monday said a Kake man who reported missing on Saturday was found dead by a canine team searching for him. Troopers said the body of 55-year-old David Dalton was found Monday about 2.5 miles from where his pickup truck was parked near Sitkum Creek, south of Kake, on Kupreanof Island “It appears that Dalton succumbed to the elements,” troopers wrote in an update posted to their webpage. The body has been sent to the medical examiner’s office in Anchorage for an autopsy. Dalton was last seen Friday...
JUNEAU (AP) — A federal report aimed at improving aviation safety in Alaska recommends improvements in providing weather information to pilots and continued work to update maps with information on mountain passes, among other steps. The Federal Aviation Administration, which released the report Oct. 14, said it will establish a team to outline plans for implementing the proposals. Several of the recommendations are already underway, the agency said. The report comes after the National Transportation Safety Board in early 2020 called for a c...
BOSTON (AP) - The wreck of a storied military ship that served in two World Wars, performed patrols in waters off Alaska for decades, and at one point was captained by the first Black man to command a U.S. government vessel has been found, the Coast Guard said Oct. 14. A wreck thought to be the U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear, which sank in 1963 about 260 miles east of Boston as it was being towed to Philadelphia, where it was going to be converted into a floating restaurant, was located in 2019. But i...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — An Alabama man accused of using pepper spray and throwing a metal rod at law enforcement officers protecting the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection has been arrested in Alaska, according to court documents filed in federal court. The FBI took Christian Manley into custody last Friday in Anchorage. During an arraignment Tuesday, a judge set a detention hearing for Thursday afternoon. Authorities did not disclose why Manley was in Alaska. He faces several charges, including assaulting or resisting officers using a d...
The borough has reported 11 new cases of COVID-19 since Saturday -- the majority of which are community spread. Wrangell had just two COVID cases in the first 22 days of October, The first announcement came Saturday with three cases, all Wrangell residents. The borough reported six more cases on Sunday and one more on Monday, "a close contact of a previously identified case." Then one more on Tuesday, also a close contact of a previous case. All of the individuals went into isolation after their positive test results, the borough reported....
The school board on Monday night reviewed an updated COVID-19 mitigation plan which now allows student-athletes to go mask-free during training and while competing against other schools. Mask-wearing and social-distancing guidelines remain in place if athletes are sitting on the sidelines or not actively engaged in play. The updated policy does not change the requirement for face masks in classrooms and elsewhere in school buildings. “The mitigation plan … we are looking at it and making adjustments as we move forward as situations cha...
Mason Villarma is good at math. "It's therapeutic, in a way. It always works out," Villarma, the borough's new finance director, said. The Gonzaga 2020 grad has plans to work out the borough's books after filling the position - which was vacant for about eight months - in September. After he snagged an internship with Big Four tax audit firm KPMG in Spokane, Washington, last year, the firm hired Villarma to work in Seattle. Then the pandemic struck right in the heart of his employment. Like so...
A group of Wrangell High School students saw a problem and decided to do something about it. Those students wanted to make the school warmer and more inviting. They created BASE - Building A Supportive Environment - a program aimed at inclusivity and helping each other. It's grown from decorating the halls to making sure other students get needed food, recognizing staff, and even securing money to make microloans on a global scale. The year before COVID-19 hit, several students attempted or...
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A customs dispute at the U.S.-Canada border in Maine is threatening America’s supply of Alaska pollock used for popular products such as fish sticks and fast-food sandwiches. The pollock has a complicated supply chain. After being caught offshore Alaska, the fish are transported by ship to New Brunswick, Canada, near the border with Maine. Then they’re loaded onto rail cars for a brief trip down 100 feet of track in Canada, before being put on trucks and crossing the border into the U.S. for processing. U.S. Custo...
The borough assembly approved a one-acre tidelands lease to Canoe Lagoon Oysters at its Tuesday night meeting. Co-owner Brian Herman said the business would use the intertidal area in front of the former airplane pullout at 4 Mile Zimovia Highway to raise oysters in floating containment bags and hold them for sale. Having the site in Wrangell would allow the operation to bring maturing oysters over in good weather from the existing farm on the Blashke Islands, established in March 2020, making it easier to harvest the oysters when bad weather...
None of the four contested races in last week’s municipal election were close, though the number of voters who cast ballots compared to last year was about as close as it can get. Last year’s municipal election tallied 485 voters. This year’s total was 486. “Yes, you are reading that correctly, we had one more voter this year than we had last year,” Borough Clerk Kim Lane reported to the assembly this week. The assembly certified the results Oct. 7, after the canvass board had counted early and absentee votes and resolved several questione...
By the time they are done touring the state on Nov. 1, the Alaska Redistricting Board will have visited 24 communities to gather public comments on six proposed maps for redrawing boundaries of every legislative district in the state. On Oct. 7, four of the five board members met with community members in Wrangell at the Nolan Center to explain the maps and how the boundaries were determined. The board will consider the information from its community meetings to decide on its final maps by the Nov. 10 deadline. When completed, each of 40 state...
Wrangell’s Tent City Days start Friday and run through Sunday, with 20 events scheduled for the fall festivities that come a day before Alaska Day on Monday, which celebrates the U.S. purchase of the territory from Russia in 1867. In keeping with the historical theme, there are some gold rush-named activities among the varied three-day schedule. And in keeping with COVID-19 safety, organizers advise on the event’s Facebook page: “Please mask up. Follow state/local health mandates. Don’t feel well? Stay home and call your medical provide...
Dialing a number within the 907 area code will soon require all 10 digits of a phone number — that’s the number along with the area code. Starting on Oct. 24, under a new federal requirement, it will be mandatory to dial all 10 numbers for calls within the same area code in more than six dozen area codes around the country. Although people can already dial all 10 digits to complete a call, the requirement won’t be hard-coded until the mandatory date. After Oct. 24, callers may not be able to complete a call by dialing only seven digits and c...
Devyn Johnson grew up playing sports in Wrangell. She didn't think about fitness until she was an adult – who, like a lot of people, gained the "Freshman 15" after high school, that bit of extra weight which comes after college starts, the responsibilities of adulthood creep in and high school gym class and sports are in the rearview mirror. So, she started to jog. A half mile at first, and then it stretched out from there into longer distances. Jogging turned into a love of working out. "I l...
Melissa Curttright has been a registered nurse for 16 years - the past two weeks in Wrangell. Like so many other hospital workers, the pandemic changed her plans. The 52-year-old RN from Oklahoma City said she saw 75% of her hospital's intensive-care unit staff leave, and then she took to the road. She's been traveling now for almost a year. Wrangell is her latest assignment through SnapNurse, an Atlanta-based nurse staffing agency, after Los Angeles. Alaska has contracted with an Atlanta...
Cases are starting to come down in Alaska after weeks of record-setting COVID-19 infections across the state. After averaging almost 1,250 new cases a day Sept. 21-27 — far above the numbers of the previous record of last December — the statewide average was just over 800 a day Oct. 5-11, according to the state’s COVID-19 data dashboard. That’s still significantly above the average of the past three months, when 560 new cases a day were reported. Alaska had low case counts in May, June and July, until infections increased with the spread...
Ann Hilburn began learning American Sign Language for an elective course in college, thinking it would benefit her aspirations of becoming a nurse. That class led her to change her career field entirely. "I had just fallen in love with sign language," she said. She's passing that love on to a dozen Wrangell High School students taking her class for their foreign language requirement. Hilburn is new to the district this year. It is a language unto itself, 17-year-old senior Caleb Garcia-Rangel...
A Delta Junction resident upset over the impeachment of former President Donald Trump, illegal immigration and the direction he thinks the country is headed is accused of threatening the lives of Alaska’s two U.S. senators in a series of profanity-laced voicemails that included saying he would hire an assassin to kill one. “Your life is worth $5,000, that’s all it’s worth,” the message left at the office of Sen. Lisa Murkowski said. “And as you let in these terrorists, assassins, guess what? I’m going to use them. I’m going to hire them.” Som...
