Sorted by date Results 786 - 810 of 1731
A man who allegedly stole $58,000 from a Haines tour operator earlier this fall was apprehended Dec. 6 in Riverton, Utah, according to Haines Police. As of Dec. 13, Charles was in a Utah jail pending extradition to Alaska. Haines Police Officer Maxwell Jusi said Riverton police arrested Charles after Haines police received a tip about his whereabouts. Two Riverton police officers made the arrest at a movie theater in a shopping mall, according to a Riverton police report. One of the officers worked with an acquaintance of Charles to coordinate...
Disruptions in Alaska over the last year, some of them threatening health and safety of people, are part of the ongoing pattern of rapid warming and transformation of the Arctic, said an annual report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last December’s record-wet weather in Fairbanks, marked by crushing snow loads and winter rain that left a thick, long-lasting layer of ice on the ground, was one of those disruptions. So were the August deluge that produced the rainiest day on record in Utqiagvik, the record-setting...
There is danger lurking on the floor of the Bering and Chukchi seas for mussels, snails, clams, worms and other cold-water invertebrates, according to a new study led by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists. If climate change continues its current trajectory, the Bering and Chukchi seafloor areas will be too warm for those creatures by the end of the century. In turn, that means trouble for walruses and other marine species. Snails and mussels are particularly important to commercially harvested fish like halibut and...
WASHINGTON — Two Alaska Native villages will receive $25 million each from the federal government to help fund their ongoing efforts to relocate to safer ground. The funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law will go to Newtok and Napakiak in Western Alaska, where, as permafrost thaws and erodes, encroaching rivers threaten the communities. The communities will use the money to move essential facilities to safer ground. Eight other tribes will receive $5 million to fund planning for potential relocation, including four in Alaska: Point L...
A procession of emergency vehicles traveled through Anchorage with the body of Court Services Officer Curtis Worland on Dec. 14, a day after the 36-year-old died in a rare attack by a musk ox in Nome, where Worland worked for the Department of Public Safety for 13 years. The fatal incident happened on Worland’s property during a paid break in the work day, and as such the state considers his death to have happened in the line of duty. According to the Department of Public Safety, Worland “is the 69th Alaska law enforcement officer to die in...
SEATTLE (AP) — Cooke Aquaculture has filed an appeal against Washington state’s decision to end its leases for fish-farming using net pens in state waters. In court documents filed Dec. 14, the New Brunswick, Canada-based seafood giant said that the decision was arbitrary, politically motivated and contrary to science, radio station KNKX reported. In a statement, Cooke said it has a state Supreme Court ruling and legislative mandate on its side that supports the farming of native species. It also said that the 30-day deadline to harvest fis...
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Federal regulators have approved a plan to demolish hydroelectric four dams on a California river and open up hundreds of miles of salmon habitat that would be the largest dam removal and river restoration project in the world when it goes forward. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s unanimous vote last month on the lower Klamath River dams is the last major regulatory hurdle and the biggest milestone for a $500 million demolition proposal championed by Native American tribes and environmentalists for years. The...
After last month’s elections, the Alaska Capitol, so far, is split. Voters re-elected conservative Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy, and a centrist, bipartisan coalition is set to take control of the state Senate. The makeup of the House governing majority is still uncertain. And it will likely be weeks before the 40-member House coalesces into a new majority of 21 or more legislators. It may not even happen before the session starts Jan. 17. Election results that evenly split the House between two different factions, plus a high-profile l...
Federal legislation sent to the president for his signature directs the U.S. Coast Guard to spend $150 million to purchase a used, privately owned ice-breaking vessel to help cover operational needs until a fleet of new Coast Guard icebreakers can be built. The legislation, the annual Natural Defense Authorization Act, also includes a provision to acquire land in Juneau to build facilities for the estimated 190 Coast Guard personnel assigned to the ship, Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan said during a conference call with reporters to discuss...
Alaska Native tribes seeking better protection from the environmental impacts of Canadian mines have enlisted allies in their flight: Lower 48 tribal governments with concerns of their own about transboundary mining impacts. A delegation of tribal representatives from Alaska, Washington state, Montana and Idaho traveled to Washington, D.C., last week for meetings that pushed for action to regulate downstream effects of mines in British Columbia. The meetings Dec. 6 and 7 were with Biden administration officials and officials at the Canadian...
BELLINGHAM, Wash. (AP) — Citizen trapping of northern giant hornets in northwest Washington ended Nov. 30 without any confirmed sightings of the hornets this year, state officials said Dec. 6. The Washington State Department of Agriculture also said that no confirmed sightings of the hornets were reported nearby in British Columbia. The northern giant hornet is native to Asia and has been the target of eradication efforts after hornets were discovered in both locations in 2019. The insects are the world's largest hornets, with queens r...
For the second time ever, Alaska went a year without any fatalities in its commercial fishing industry. The U.S. Coast Guard reported that there were no operational fatalities from Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022, in Alaska’s commercial fishing industry. An operational fatality is when someone dies during the operation of a vessel at sea, including from causes like drowning, lost vessels or accidents. This is only the second time Alaska recorded a year without a death in the commercial fishing sector; the first year was in 2015. However, the f...
Alaska’s top elections administrator left her job and retired last week, after overseeing the state’s first ranked-choice elections. Division of Elections Director Gail Fenumiai, 60, has held the job since 2019, when she was appointed by former Lt. Gov. Kevin Meyer. She previously served as the state’s elections director between 2008 and 2015, and is a 20-year veteran of administering Alaska’s elections. Meyer, who announced his retirement from politics late last year and was replaced by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom on Dec. 5, attributed Fenumia...
JUNEAU (AP) — A recount of an Anchorage-area state Senate race reaffirmed Republican Cathy Giessel as the winner, while a recount of an Anchorage House race reaffirmed Republican Rep. Tom McKay as the winner. The Senate recount was conducted by the state Division of Elections on Dec. 7 at the request of Democrat Roselynn Cacy, who was the first of the three candidates in the race to be eliminated in the Nov. 8 ranked-vote contest. The other candidate in the race was Republican Sen. Roger Holland. Cacy had said she had questions about the r...
The high wages that once coaxed people to Alaska have continued to shrink compared to the rest of the U.S., due partly to a statewide recession before the pandemic and a slow recovery after it, according to a new report from the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Alaska’s average wages still outperform the rest of the country, said economist Neal Fried, writing in the agency’s latest publication of Alaska Economic Trends. They placed eighth nationally last year at $30.52 an hour, about $2.50 above the national average. But...
While Haines police investigated a theft of tens of thousands of dollars from Alaska Mountain Guides, the suspect and his wife were stopping in Las Vegas for a concert, seeing a Broadway show in New York and planning a cruise to the Caribbean, according to charging documents. Former Alaska Mountain Guides employee Dionicio Charles, 43, was charged in November with first-degree theft, scheme to defraud and misapplication of property. Police say he used the access that came with his position as finance director to wire at least $30,000 from the...
New controls on how fish are commercially harvested and more research to understand the effects of climate change in the ocean and freshwater spawning grounds are some of the key recommendations of an Alaska task force examining ways to address bycatch, the term for capture of untargeted species in commercial seafood harvests. Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who created the task force a year ago, released the group’s final report on Dec. 8. The collapse of salmon runs vital to western Alaska — and public complaints that too many salmon were being int...
A couple of Sitkans on a fishing trip in October got a surprise as they got ready to lay a skate of halibut gear in Nakwasina Sound. Their depth sounder revealed a sizable steep-sided cone on the ocean bottom at a depth of about 200 feet, and it was emitting something into the water about 12 miles north of Sitka. Jacyn Schmidt, regional geoscience specialist for the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska happened to be on the boat. Such phenomena are her field of interest, but she hadn’t expected to find an unmapped f...
A new study found that killing thousands of wolves and bears did not make for better moose hunting in a popular Southcentral game unit over nearly four decades. The study, by retired Alaska Department of Fish and Game and University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers, focused on an area between Denali National Park and the Copper River that attracts hunters from Anchorage, the Matanuska Valley and Fairbanks. The study’s authors say their findings raise questions about the state’s longtime practice of culling wolves and bears to increase deer, moo...
The National Transportation Safety Board is calling for new federal regulations to safeguard Ketchikan flightseeing tours following years of deadly crashes, several of them involving cruise ship passengers and bad weather. Seven flightseeing crashes in and around Ketchikan since 2007 have killed 31 people and seriously injured 13 others despite a longstanding voluntary safety program signed by flight companies, according to a 20-page report the NTSB released Nov. 29. The agency wants the Federal Aviation Administration to replace the voluntary...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Dec. 1 proposed restrictions that would block plans for a copper and gold mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region that is home to the world’s largest sockeye salmon run. A statement from the regional EPA office said discharges of dredged or fill material into the waters of the U.S. within the proposed Pebble Mine footprint in southwest Alaska would “result in unacceptable adverse effects on salmon fishery areas.” The rarely employed agency action would effectively veto the project b...
BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK, S.D. - Perched atop a fence at Badlands National Park, Troy Heinert peered from beneath his wide-brimmed hat into a corral where 100 wild bison awaited transfer to the Rosebud Indian Reservation. Descendants of bison that once roamed North America's Great Plains by the tens of millions, the animals would soon thunder up a chute, take a truck ride across South Dakota and join one of many burgeoning herds Heinert has helped reestablish on Native American lands. Heinert...
Alaska’s two U.S. senators joined 10 other Republicans on Nov. 29 in voting to advance legal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. The Respect for Marriage Act, which passed the Senate in a 61-36 vote, now goes to the House, which passed a different version of the bill earlier this year. The votes of both senators were expected; each senator had voted in favor of a procedural motion to advance the bill toward final passage two weeks ago. In a prepared statement, Alaska’s senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, said she was proud to vot...
A new lawsuit threatens to upend a landmark, four-decade-old revenue-sharing pact that has guided the distribution of more than $2.5 billion among Alaska’s Native corporations. The litigation stems from the 121-page, 1982 settlement agreement that has long defused financial disputes between the 12 regional Native corporations. That deal successfully outlined how the companies should share income from developing resources like forests, but didn’t specifically contemplate what should happen with money earned by preserving them. The new lawsuit, f...
The biggest fish processing plant in the Haines borough will stay closed next summer for the third straight season, OBI Seafoods’ Excursion Inlet plant manager Tom Marshall said last week, citing a low pink salmon forecast and the company’s ability to handle the regional load at its Petersburg plant. The continued suspension of processing at Excursion means the borough will see another year of low raw fish tax revenue. Haines averaged about $200,000 in taxes on fish landed locally in the five years prior to the Excursion plant’s closure, compa...