Sorted by date Results 873 - 897 of 1731
The state’s largest Alaska Native organization declared its opposition to a constitutional convention on Saturday, saying rural Alaska could have the most to lose if a convention is called. The Alaska Federation of Natives also called for a potential reduction in the amount of fish caught in Area M, a state-managed fishery off the Alaska Peninsula, in order to protect salmon runs that have crashed on the state’s two largest rivers, the Yukon and Kuskokwim. And, after passing several other measures, the organization voted in executive ses...
The Skagway borough assembly has unanimously approved spending almost $3.2 million for a temporary solution to protect cruise ships, their passengers and the dock itself from frequent rockslides. Several slides have come down this year, hitting the railroad dock and forcing the closure of the forward berth, costing the community lost tourism business. Even while using the forward berth, ships had to tender their passengers to shore using small boats from the other side of the vessel to avoid putting people the dock. This year’s slides r...
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...
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...
In what is apparently a first for Alaska, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly passed an ordinance last week that will prohibit the use of voting tabulation machines for borough elections, starting next year. The new Mat-Su ordinance, approved Oct. 4, caps off a months-long effort from a group of residents determined to ban the use of voting machines spurred on by false claims of election fraud. Last month, the assembly unanimously voted to use a hand-count to verify the results of the Nov. 8 borough election, but voting machines will still...
U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola’s “pro-fish” message was met with scrutiny at an Oct. 4 candidate forum in Kodiak that focused on the commercial fishing industry. Peltola was sworn in to the U.S. House last month after winning a special election to serve out the fourth-month remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s term. Peltola, a Democrat, now faces another election against Republicans Nick Begich III and former Gov. Sarah Palin, along with Libertarian Chris Bye, to determine who will hold Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat for the two-year term that begi...
An out-of-place Steller sea lion stopped traffic in the Prince William Sound community of Valdez last Friday morning, making for a memorable shift for patrol Sgt. Chad Clements with the Valdez Police Department. Clements said officers began getting calls about a sea lion loose on land near the harbor at around 6:30 a.m. Soon, they received a call that the sea lion had moved to the parking lot of an RV park near the local Captain Joe’s Gas Station — even farther from the water than where it was initially spotted. “It was like, ‘All right,...
Two Russians who said they fled their country to avoid military service have requested asylum in the U.S. after beaching their boat on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office said last Thursday. Karina Borger, a Murkowski spokesperson, by email said the office has been in communication with the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection and that “the Russian nationals reported that they fled one of the coastal communities on the east coast of Russia to avoid compulsory military service.” Spoke...
JUNEAU (AP) — Acting state Revenue Commissioner Deven Mitchell has been chosen as the new chief executive of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. The announcement was made Oct. 3. The corporation said in a statement that the selection “is contingent on the successful negotiation of a salary and benefits package” and that a start date has not yet been set. Mitchell has called Alaska’s nest-egg oil wealth fund the state’s “trump card” as a renewable source of revenue, the Anchorage Daily News reported. His message to the board was that he would not...
Prison reform advocates are calling on Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration to order an independent review of the state Department of Corrections. The department recently reported its 15th death this year of a person in custody death. William Hensley III, 34, died Oct. 2at Goose Creek Correctional Center in Wasilla after a month in custody. With this death, Corrections matches the highest number of in-custody deaths the department has seen in the past decade. In 2015, 15 people died in Corrections custody. “These are people and they’re dying...
Alaska has special opportunities for developing a thriving aquaculture industry, but also special challenges that stand in the way of such ambitions, according to a new strategic science plan issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The plan is intended to guide aquaculture-related research conducted over the next five years by NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center. The report focuses on “the development of shellfish and algae aquaculture, also known as mariculture.” It adds, “This plan specifically includes shellfi...
A tree and landslide debris lie across Gastineau Avenue after falling between two homes and crushing a vehicle in downtown Juneau on Sept. 26. "It looks as though it's predominantly a tree fall, a giant tree came out, took the roots out and as it came down the hill it took mud with it, but it's far more tree debris than mud debris," said Juneau emergency program manager Tom Mattice. "We're digging into it now but it was definitely a big tree fall and not our typical mudslide event." No one was...
WASHINGTON — Alaska’s U.S. senators want to rename an active volcano in the Aleutian Islands after the late U.S. Rep. Don Young. The longtime congressman’s former peers, Republican U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, say Young is a fitting namesake for a volcano. The one they hope to rename Mount Young is currently called Mount Cerberus. “My goal is that we not only pay tribute to a great man who did so much for our state, but that it ensures that what he has done for Alaskans is not forgotten,” Murkowski said in a statement. “Don Youn...