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Problems with the Alaska Marine Highway System’s operations and aging fleet are so acute that marketing efforts to potential visitors outside Alaska are being intentionally scaled back, Marine Director Craig Tornga said during an online open house on April 22. “Because of our reliability with the fleet, we have consciously pulled back our advertising in the Lower 48 because we just disappoint people right now,” he said during the hour-long event advertised as an overview of the ferry system’s pending long-range plan for the next 20 years....
Student bands and choirs will present the annual spring concert at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 7, at the high school gym. The event is free but donations are welcome. The concert will feature performances from the high school band, middle school band, jazz band, middle school and high school choir, fifth grade band and honor choir comprised of students from third through fifth grade. “We do a spring concert every year,” said music teacher Tasha Morse, who said the event has been going since long before she arrived. Morse also said musical per...
A free creative writing workshop will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 4, at the Irene Ingle Public Library. Children's book author and artist Michael Bania will help participants create "micro-stories." "The idea is to get a prompt of some sort, which I'll provide," Bania said. "You have to, in 50 words, tell a story." The author found inspiration for her 50-word story challenge through her membership with the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, a nonprofit organization t...
Three fishermen are facing federal charges of illegally transporting more than 7,000 pounds of crab harvested in Southeast Alaska to Seattle in hopes of getting better prices there. Instead, federal prosecutors say, much of the haul was wasted upon arrival in Washington state because the crab had either died or were suspected of being diseased. Corey Potter, Justin Welch and Kyle Potter were indicted last month on charges they violated the Lacey Act. The law makes it a federal crime to break the wildlife laws of any state, tribe or foreign...
Kyle Hopkins, an award-winning journalist for his reporting work on sexual assault in Alaska, will be the keynote speaker at an event for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Awareness Day at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 5, at Shakes Tribal House. Hopkins was the lead reporter on the 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning “Lawless” series published by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica. The project explored sexual assault in Alaska and why the problem was getting worse. Though his work is not focused directly on MMIP, he hopes to share the parts of...
The Alaska House of Representatives voted by a wide margin and with bipartisan support on April 26 to ban children younger than 14 from using online social media. House Bill 254, from Homer Rep. Sarah Vance, also requires companies that provide internet pornography to check whether an Alaskan viewing that pornography is at least 18 years old. The bill, which passed on a 33-6 vote, advances to the Senate for further consideration in the final two weeks before the legislative adjournment deadline. Vance said the age requirement, which also...
Wrangell Police Chief Tom Radke retired April 5 after four years in the job. He started in Wrangell at the beginning of 2020 after moving from Minnesota, where he worked in the field for almost 30 years. “Wrangell is a great town,” he said, “and it has been a great experience.” Radke and his wife are moving back to Minnesota to be closer to family. The borough is advertising for a new chief, with applications due Wednesday, May 1. The Wrangell department was in good shape when he started, he said, but he believes it is in better shape now. Du...
It began with a bottle, not in the usual way as a tragedy, but a mystery. Tinted blue and clearly old, the heavy glass bottle is imperfect with numerous bubbles frozen forever in the medium. It had an embossed brand on its body: Zarembo Springs Mineral Co., Seattle. After an impulse purchase, I still wondered, what was its story? Here is the answer. Zarembo Island is west, southwest of Wrangell. Its Tlingít name is Shtax-Noow, and before the arrival of settlers, the area Shtax héen wáan, or St...
As the state Senate is launching a legislative push intended to quickly fix a looming problem with correspondence school programs in Alaska, the House of Representatives signaled that it is so split that it may need more than a year to act on the issue. House lawmakers spent more than three hours on April 24 debating an informal declaration asking Anchorage Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman to postpone until June 2025 the implementation of a court ruling that struck down two laws which govern programs used by more than 22,000 Alaska...
Another lawsuit with implications to Southeast Alaska commercial salmon fisheries was filed last month by the Wild Fish Conservancy, claiming that hatchery programs on the Lower Columbia River are harming the recovery of wild fish runs. The complaint was filed April 17 in U.S. District Court in Tacoma by Washington state-based Wild Fish Conservancy and The Conservation Angler, based in Portland. The suit is filed against the National Marine Fisheries Service, and state biologists and fishery managers in Washington and Oregon. Matt Donohoe,...
The borough received a $50,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to put together a comprehensive cybersecurity plan. Developing a cybersecurity plan entails contracting a consulting team to help the borough conduct risk assessments and draft a comprehensive plan that will guide further initiatives like equipment and training. The grant will fund assembling a plan, after which the borough could apply for further grants to fund purchases and the implementation of the plan. Assets might include things like software, but also...
The Alaska Supreme Court overturned a 20-year-old precedent April 26 by ruling that Alaska Native tribal organizations can more easily receive the kind of sovereign legal immunity that individual tribes have. The 4-1 decision means that tribal consortiums, such as SEARHC in Southeast, which provide health care for tens of thousands of Alaskans — both Native and non-Native — are largely immune from civil lawsuits in state court, unless those consortiums waive their immunity. Under the decision, immunity is now established by a five-part tes...
The Alaska seafood industry remains an economic juggernaut, but it is under strain from forces outside of the state’s control, according to a report commissioned by the state’s seafood marketing agency. The report from the McKinley Research Group, titled The Economic Value of Alaska’s Seafood Industry, is the latest in a periodic series commissioned by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. The total economic value of the Alaska seafood industry in 2021 and 2022 was $6 billion, slightly more than the $5.6 billion tallied in 2019, the last...
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A few years back, Sage Brook Carbone was attending a powwow at the Mashantucket Western Pequot reservation in Connecticut when she noticed signs in the Pequot language. Carbone, a citizen of the Northern Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island, thought back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she has lived for much of her life. She never saw any street signs honoring Native Americans, nor any featuring Indigenous languages. She submitted to city officials the idea of adding Native American translations to city street s...
Tribal and environmental advocates calling for a crackdown on salmon and halibut bycatch are set to gain a new ally on the federal council that manages Alaska’s lucrative Bering Sea fisheries. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in March nominated Becca Robbins Gisclair, an attorney and conservation advocate, to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. If U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo accepts Inslee’s recommendation, Gisclair, senior director of Arctic programs at the environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy, would assume one of the...
The Alaska seafood industry remains an economic juggernaut, but it is under strain from forces outside of the state’s control, according to a report commissioned by the state’s seafood marketing agency. The report from the McKinley Research Group, titled The Economic Value of Alaska’s Seafood Industry, is the latest in a periodic series commissioned by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. The total economic value of the Alaska seafood industry in 2021 and 2022 was $6 billion, slightly more than the $5.6 billion tallied in 2019, the last...
A headless robot about the size of a labrador retriever will be camouflaged as a coyote or fox to ward off migratory birds and other wildlife at Alaska's second largest airport. The Alaska Department of Transportation has named the new robot Aurora and said it will be based at the Fairbanks airport to "enhance and augment safety and operations," the Anchorage Daily News reported. The department released a video in March of the robot climbing rocks, going up stairs and doing something akin to...
After 50 years, the state will no longer use wooden fish wheels to count salmon on the Chilkat River north of Haines. That leaves the Taku River, south of Juneau, as the only Southeast river where the Alaska Department of Fish and Game will operate fish wheels to scoop up salmon for research. The wheels had operated June through October in the Chilkat River about nine miles from downtown Haines since the 1970s. “It is sad — I’ve been comparing it to owning a wooden boat — it’s such a romantic wonderful thing,” said the state’s Haines fish r...
The U.S. Forest Service is working with the high school tech club on a five-year project to install and operate three cameras to provide livestreaming from the Anan Wildlife Observatory. “The goal is to have more access and be able to share this amazing place with more people,” said Claire Froelich, a conservation education specialist with the Forest Service. Thus far, the plan involves placing cameras at the upper and lower falls, even one underwater, for livestreaming to a display at the observation deck to allow for better monitoring and...
The Wrangell district has hired a new elementary school principal. Jamie Wollman, principal at the Hooper Bay Charter School in the western Alaska coastal community, is moving to Wrangell for the 2024-2025 school year. "I like to go to places that present a different challenge," Wollman said. "I love when people share that want to do exciting things for students." She was hired in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic to start up the charter school. It's open to students in grades 4 through 8 in the...
The borough assembly has approved a longer-term lease with Channel Construction at the former 6-Mile mill site where the company plans to build two 3,200-square-foot shop buildings. Under terms of the agreement approved April 9, Channel would store equipment at the site. At its expense, the company will improve the access road off Zimovia Highway with crushed rock, improve the barge landing and expand the rock fill, and seek a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit for the fill. The construction and scrap metal recycling company will lease six acr...
The borough will be reimbursed for roughly $900,000 it spent on debris removal, restoring downed power lines, overtime pay and other expenses after the deadly landslide in November. The borough’s request for federal disaster assistance for the Nov. 20 landslide was approved April 8. The federal money will reimburse the borough for its costs in dealing with the landslide, which Borough Manager Mason Villarma estimates at about $900,000. The work included installing new power poles and transmission lines; the power was out for about a week for r...
State legislators said they are unlikely to immediately act to address an Alaska Superior Court ruling that struck down key components of the state’s correspondence schools programs — and will wait for the Alaska Supreme Court to consider the issue. Speaking to reporters on April 17, Gov. Mike Dunleavy said his administration is also waiting for the high court to take up the issue. The ruling said the state’s cash payments to the parents of homeschooled students violates constitutional restrictions against spending state money on private and r...
Wrangell parents of homeschooled children enrolled in correspondence programs said they were caught by surprise when an Alaska judge ruled unconstitutional the use of state funds for such programs. The law allowed parents of correspondence students to spend their share of state education money, labeled an allotment, on “nonsectarian services and materials from a public, private or religious organization.” The judge on April 12 ruled the law unconstitutional because it allowed public funding to go to private and religious organizations. The jud...
Julie Williams will step down as school counselor for the district at the end of the school term, after two years in the job. It's the latest in several recent high-profile turnovers of key school district personnel. Secondary school principal Jackie Hanson announced her decision in February not to renew her contract for the new school year, after one year on the job. She was the district's third middle/high school principal in the past three years. Elementary school principal Ann Hilburn...
