Foxes!

FEBRUARY 5, 2010 - 6:04 PM

Foxes outside the entrance to the Unalaska Public Library on Feb. 1, in the Aleutian Islands. The foxes are regular visitors outside the library. The library is seeing a surge in users of public Internet computer terminals, as fishermen and processors surge into town for the busy winter groundfish and crab seasons in the nation's busiest fishing port, Dutch Harbor. Photo by Jim Paulin.

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Send-off party today for Olympian Callan Chythlook-Sifsof

FEBRUARY 5, 2010 - 1:33 PM

Callan Chythlook-Sifsof, No. 5, from Girdwood competes in the 10th annual ESPN Winter X Games at Buttermilk Mountain in Aspen, Colo., in 2006.

Wanna meet Olympian Callan Chythlook-Sifsof and wish her luck in the 2010 winter games?

There's a send-off party for the snowboarder from to 4:30 to 7 p.m. today at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium building. (4000 Ambassador Drive, next to ANMC.)

Chythlook-Sifsof is believed to be the first Alaska Native to compete on an Olympic team.

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A runway on the ocean: Plane service returns to Diomede

FEBRUARY 4, 2010 - 7:27 PM

Photos by Sandra Quinn. "We had the first plane land last Wednesday! Lots of ice between Big Diomede and Little Diomede," Quinn writes.

Villagers heading out to meet the first plane to land in Diomede in two years.

The tiny Bering Strait village that became stranded when it lost passenger flight service for months last year is now enjoying regular plane service.

Fixed-wing planes began landing this week on a makeshift runway of flat sea ice outside Diomede, says teacher Willis Ferenbaugh.

That’s a big deal, considering the ice wasn’t good enough to build a runway last year, and normally the only way to fly in out of the village is by helicopter.

“I don’t know if they had to do any grooming …the place where the planes are landing is just a really flat expanse of the ocean,” said Ferenbaugh, who is spending his second year in the Ingalikmiut Eskimo village.

Diomede is roughly two miles from Russia. The runway sits about a quarter mile from town across jumbled ice, the teacher said.

Last year, the company that provides mail service by helicopter stopped taking passengers to and from Diomede for as many as six months. Ferenbaugh said passenger flights on an Evergreen helicopter returned around Dec. 19.

“At least some passengers were making it on and off on the mail flights,” said the teacher, who reached the island on a crab boat from Nome while the village was marooned.

To prevent the island from becoming stranded again in the future, Sen. Mark Begich has suggested the feds and the state split the cost of subsidizing passenger helicopter flights to the village.

The total bill could be up to $5,000 per person, per year, based on estimates e-mailed by the governor's office last month.

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Game Board round-up: New rules for potlatch hunts, exotic pets

FEBRUARY 3, 2010 - 4:26 PM

Edith Wilson asked the Game Board to legalize her cat Cleo at this weekend's meetings in Anchorage. Board member Ben Grussendorf said he has "an old yellow beat-up Tom cat" that would love to meet the hybrid.

The Board of Game voted this week to allow Alaskans to own watered-down hybrids of wild cats while rejecting calls to legalize monkeys, finches, sloths, wallaroos and other exotic pets.

In fact, if you've got a chimpanzee in the basement, better tell the Department of Fish and Game soon. The board voted to make chimps illegal, but if anyone actually owns one in Alaska, they can likely get grandfathered in with a little paperwork.

The new pet rulings came during a four-day meeting on statewide hunting rules that wrapped up Monday in Anchorage. The Game Board also voted to allow hunters to kill moose and other game for Alaska Native funeral and memorial potlatches in popular hunting grounds such the Valley and eastern Interior, while tightening reporting requirements for those hunts.

The board delayed a decision on adding a predator control program in the northern Alaska Peninsula.

The state revisits the so-called “clean list” of legal pets every four years. Despite the addition of some hybrids, some cat-lovers aren’t declaring victory.

"We got a crumb ... I don’t see how it’s going to work," said Joann Odd, who lives near Ninilchik and co-sponsored one of the hybrid cat proposals.

One problem, she said, is that the law appears to require too much paperwork from hybrid owners, who must show their animal is at least four generations removed from any wild ancestors.

Remember Earl the Bengal?

His owners said he’s a seventh-generation hybrid, meaning he’d be legal with the right documentation. Simon the Savannah, however?

Bob Hallinen / Anchorage Daily News Simon, a Savannah cat, Nov. 7, 2008 in west Anchorage

He’s the hybrid that was ordered to be deported back in late 2008, spurring efforts to legalize hybrids statewide. Simon was reportedly a quarter serval, meaning he’d still be illegal under the new rules.

By the state’s math, a fourth-generation hybrid would be more than 6 percent wild.

“The great-great grandchildren of the breeding of a wild cat would be the first one that would be eligible,” said Dale Rabe, deputy director for Fish and Game's Wildlife Conservation.

The vote was a close one: 4 to 3.

“If the regulations had been less stringent, it would have been a failed effort,” Rabe said.

SALVAGE REQUIREMENTS

As the trial began this week for the remaining Point Hope caribou hunters accused of wasting caribou meat in 2008, the board voted against a related proposal that would have loosened requirements for salvaging game. The proposal was originally a regional request by the Arctic Advisory Committee, who proposed allowing hunters to leave meat that they considered diseased.

The board in November delayed that request to the Anchorage meeting, considering it a statewide issue.

But over the weekend, North Slope Borough biologist Brian Pearson told the board that the regional advisory council didn’t intend for the rule to be applied statewide and didn’t support it as such.

In voting down the proposal, “several board members pointed out that they heard virtually no other testimony in favor of it,” said Fish and Game spokesman Bruce Bartley.

POTLATCH MOOSE

The Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that the state must allow people to take game for religious ceremonies. But there’s been confusion over the state law, which appeared to ban potlatch kills in non-subsistence areas. Those areas are generally the most populated in the state and include Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, Fairbanks and parts of the Valley.

The board voted 6-1 to clarify the rules, making it clear you can kill game for funeral and memorial potlatches in non-subsistence areas while adding new reporting requirements. Beginning July 1, hunters will have to get approval of an Alaska Native tribal chief, village council president, clan leader or other official, said Deputy Fish and Game Commissioner Pat Valkenburg.

The hunter and the village or tribal official will be required to carry a “ceremonial harvest report form” from Fish and Game for kills in non-subsistence areas and in the Nelchina Basin, where Ahtna Inc. sought to play a larger role in oversight of potlatch hunts.

“The village chief will be the one that gives the permit to the individual and then the village chief will turn around and report the permit to fish and game," said Board chairman Cliff Judkins.

Valkenburg explains:

“What we’re trying to do is accommodate both the concerns of the Anchorage, Mat-Su and Fairbanks advisory committees, where they see this an essentially unsupervised, open-ended way for people to harvest more moose – especially in their areas where competition for moose is fairly high. ... But also to accommodate Native concerns that they need to be able to take moose in non-subsistence areas to have a reasonable accommodation.

"And then also to accommodate Native concerns that they want it to be organized," he said. "They where as much in favor of having more organization to the thing as the department was.”

In all areas of the state, Alaska Native leaders will be required to keep records of potlatch kills and provide them to Fish and Game upon request, Valkenburg said. The Department will keep a list of areas where potlatch hunts will still be off limits because of low game numbers.

PREDATOR CONTROL

The board also rejected a proposal that would have barred non-residents for hunting in predator control areas where subsistence needs aren’t being met, according to The Associated Press:

Supporters of the proposal said it would have reserved moose and caribou for Alaska residents in areas where predator control is operating. Supporters pointed out that Alaska law mandates that moose and caribou be a priority subsistence resource for Alaska residents.

But the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said it is an allocation issue the board should decide on a case-by-case basis.

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Point Hope caribou case: Remaining hunters on trial

FEBRUARY 3, 2010 - 10:42 AM

The trial for the remaining three hunters accused of wasting caribou began in Point Hope Tuesday. Check out the coverage:

-- Native hunting rights argued in Point Hope caribou trials (Alaska Dispatch)

-- Caribou killing trial begins in Point Hope (Alaska Newspapers Inc.)

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'Deadliest Catch' captain suffers stroke

JANUARY 30, 2010 - 3:58 PM

One of the stars of the reality show "Deadliest Catch" suffered a stroke yesterday while in port at St. Paul Island, according to Web sites associated with the show.

An engineer found Cornelia Marie captain Phil Harris on the floor of his stateroom, according to the Cornelia Marie Web site. He was immediately taken to a clinic in St. Paul -- the same place he was treated for a blood clot two years ago -- and flown to Anchorage for treatment, the site says.

"Phil is at a good hospital and receiving the best care possible," wrote Morgan Howard, the son of Cornelia Marie Devlin, majority owner of the F/V Cornelia Marie.

"My mother ... and Jake Harris are with him at the hospital. Josh is staying on the boat to help the new relief skipper who is flying out there today. The boat is in the harbor now, but needs to be able to leave in case the ice shifts and moves in," Howard wrote.

Harris was in port, off-loading his boat at the time of the stroke, according the Discovery Channel Web site.

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An obituary: Jerel Redfox

JANUARY 24, 2010 - 8:03 PM

On Saturday, 21-year-old Jerel Redfox of Mountain Village died outside Nenana on the Parks Highway.

This note is from his family:

Jerel Jacob Redfox was born to Christopher and Carol Redfox of Mountain Village on May 21, 1988 at Anchorage, Alaska.
Jerel left us to be with the Lord, his maternal grandparents Aldrick and Cecilia Beans of Mountain Village and paternal grandfather Alfred Redfox of Emmonak. Jerel will be greatly missed by his family and friends, but we are relieved that he is waiting and watching us from the heavens above. Jerel left us at a young age, but he conquered so many great things in his short life he spent with us. Jerel will be missed but we know that he is in a better place, and living a better life. Jerel is survived by his parents Chris and Carol Redfox, brother Christopher Redfox II, sisters Tasha Redox and Deanna Heckman brother in law Arthur Heckman Jr and nephew Arthur III, girlfriend Theresa Lord and Daughter Desiree Redfox of Nenana, Grandma Cecilia Redfox of Emmonak, and many Aunties, Uncles, Cousins, and Friends.
We all love and miss you forever and always.
The family has set up the Jerel Jacob Redfox memorial fund at Wells Fargo, account No. 7734494623

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Troopers: Bodies discovered after Sand Point plane crash

JANUARY 24, 2010 - 6:06 PM

Emily Lewis. Photo courtesy of Ellie Materi.

Ameer Ali

Searchers today found the underwater wreckage of a plane that crashed near Sand Point with two bodies still strapped inside, troopers say.

Pilots Ameer Ali, 28, and Emily Lewis, 23, had been missing since the ACE Air Cargo Beechcraft 1900 they were flying went down around midnight Thursday. The plane was carrying fish and mail to Anchorage.

Shortly before noon today, searchers discovered what appeared to a part of the plane, said troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters. A diver soon found two bodies inside, she said.

Ali was the pilot and Lewis the co-pilot. While Peters said the bodies most likely have not been identified yet, there was no one else on the plane according to rescuers.

The Coast Guard called off its search for survivors Friday night, but today representatives for ACE Air Cargo and an insurance company continued to look for wreckage, said Aaron Sauer, an air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board.

Searching a grid with boats, they found portions of the airplane in about 30 to 40 feet of water, Sauer said. "Two individuals were removed from airplane wreckage out there and that is all being coordinated with the local authorities."

Officials couldn't say precisely where the craft was found, though Sauer estimated it was maybe two miles north of the Sand Point airport.

"They have suspended operations for the evening and they’re going to be continuing the recovery of the aircraft beginning tomorrow morning," he said.

A family spokesperson for Lewis sent this message to media today:

"(Emily) grew up in the Seattle area and recently moved to Alaska to work as a pilot. She was engaged to be married this year. Emily was a funny, sweet, wonderful person who always loved flying. She will be very much missed by her family and friends."

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Alaska Census jobs among the highest paid in U.S.

JANUARY 24, 2010 - 1:01 PM

Real quick: I talked to U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Groves this morning in Anchorage as Census officials prepared to head to Noorvik. They'll launch the 2010 count there tomorrow.

About 2,000 people are being hired for the Census effort in Alaska, with nearly half of the jobs in villages across the state, he said.

The Census taker jobs pay $25 an hour, which is one of the highest rates in the country along with places like New York City and the Bay Area, the officials said. In some regions, the same job pays a little more than $8 an hour.

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Coast Guard: No plans to resume search for pilots today

JANUARY 23, 2010 - 1:32 PM

Emily Lewis. Photo courtesy of Erin Staffeld.

...

Ameer Ali. Photo courtesy of Stewart Turner. Turner writes: "(Ali is) on the left. We were just at a cabin on a camping trip. ... Ameer's the kind of guy who would take the shirt off his back for his friends."

The Coast Guard today has no plans to resume searching for the two pilots on board a cargo flight that crashed near Sand Point, a spokesman says.

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The Kotzebue diaries: Chickens, guns & grub

JANUARY 22, 2010 - 6:13 PM

Blogger Saima Johnson, 28, of Kotzebue, holds a bag of feed and oyster shells that she recently purchased in Anchorage for her Kotzebue chickens. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)

By KYLE HOPKINS
khopkins@adn.com

After baking peanut butter cookies all morning at her mother’s house in Kotzebue, Saima Johnson stepped in to the ice fog to check on her chickens.

She’d ordered the hens as chicks five months before from the Triple D Farm and Hatchery near Wasilla — the one made famous in a news clip of former Gov. Sarah Palin talking to reporters as a man slaughtered a turkey in the background.

The $2 chicks arrived by mail in a cardboard box. As they grew, neighborhood kids told Johnson they’d never seen a live chicken before in the northwest Alaska city of 3,100.

Now it was mid-December. Saima entered the plywood coop as birds crowded the door, eager to eat snow. It took a moment to notice the dozen eggs, brown and green, dotting the nests. Finally, her “tundra chicks” were laying.

Another milestone in the adventures of a self-described “chicken momma” at the top of the world. Another blog entry in the making.

Witness: Tundra Chicks.

Saima, her sister and boyfriend belong to a small band of Kotzebue bloggers chronicling life above the Arctic Circle. Their Web sites are a diary of rural Alaska in 2010, as seen by 20- and 30-somethings who balance games of Halo 3 with ptarmigan hunts, and white collar jobs with ivory carving.

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"Breathe In"

JANUARY 21, 2010 - 2:49 PM

Looking to reduce alcohol-related deaths and accidents in their region, a group of Bethel 8th-graders suggests putting breathalyzers on snowmachines. All to the tune of MJ's "Beat It." Sha-mon and listen:

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Opinion: What the Massachusetts race means for Alaska

JANUARY 20, 2010 - 3:18 PM

Wilson Justin, vice president and health director at Mt. Sanford Tribal consortium, on Republican Scott Brown's victory in the Massachusetts Senate race and what it means for Alaska:

Well the President got the boulder all the way up to the top of the mountain, then it rolled all the way back down to the bottom again there in Massachusetts. The election of a Republican Senator in Massachusetts means Indian country can forgo consideration of all kinds in the next six years in the Health business. On a larger scale of course its the National Health Care Legislation that is the victim here as is the middle class in the economic sector. But I can't help but point out that the playing field was in danger of being leveled out in favor of the small providers and very rural hamlets, communities and Tribes via the Health Care Legislation. All that in my estimation is gone now and we're back to the good ole boys in the backroom routine and the issue of putting us nobodies into the American mainstream is just another pipedream gone up in smoke. Well the President came close, I could see the far mountains and see the wind kicking around the peaks for a very short while until the unnatural law that operates on behalf of the predators who run our nation kicked in, and that as they say was that.

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Advisory vote: Bethel voters say they don't want bars, liquor stores

JANUARY 20, 2010 - 9:52 AM

The city of Bethel may be "wet" now, but voters there don't want a liquor store. They don't want a bar. They don't want a restaurant selling alcohol, and they don't want the city to sell booze either.

That according to unofficial results from an advisory vote on alcohol yesterday in the Western Alaska hub of 5,700 people.

Tuesday's vote doesn't change local laws, but was meant to clarify what voters had in mind back in October when they lifted a long-standing ban on alcohol sales in the city.

With several local businesses trying to get liquor licenses from the state, the City Council voted 5-1 last week to ban liquor stores and bars from opening within 300 feet of schools and churches.

Bethel is a shopping, medical and social service hub for dozens of smaller communities that prohibit liquor. The region has long struggled with high rates of alcohol related accidents, deaths, crime and suicide.

The latest round of alcohol votes have been confusing for voters.

Supporters of the effort to remove the liquor restrictions said they didn't really want alcohol sales in Bethel, but wanted to be free from what they saw as ever-tightening state regulation and oversight of damp communities.

Voter turnout Tuesday was about 23 percent -- down from roughly 32 percent in October, according to Bethel city numbers.

Turnout may have been lower than expected because the vote is advisory only, said City Clerk Lori Strickler. She estimates the election will cost the city roughly $6,000.

Here are Tuesday's unofficial results, with 96 absentee and questioned ballots remaining to be counted. Note that voters even rejected the idea of a city-run bar or liquor store, which is what Kotzebue is doing:

Proposition 1: Should the City of Bethel support a liquor license application for a liquor store within the City of Bethel?
Yes: 257
No: 456

Proposition 2: Should the City of Bethel support a liquor license application for a bar within the City of Bethel?
Yes: 190
No: 524

Proposition 3: Should the City of Bethel support a liquor license application for a restaurant or eating establishment within the City of Bethel?
Yes: 259
No: 452

Proposition 4: Should the City of Bethel support a liquor license application of any other type within the City of Bethel?
Yes: 205
No: 496

Proposition 5: Should the City of Bethel support the City to apply for a liquor license and the operation of a city owned liquor store?
Yes: 304
No: 396

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John Baker, of Kotz, wins Kusko 300

JANUARY 17, 2010 - 8:01 PM

Check it out at the Kuskokwim 300 Web site.

It's Baker's first win. Martin Buser finished second, Lance Mackey third, according to the site.

Find a few photos from the race, by Iain Foulds, here on Flickr.

Kuskokwim 300 Finish from Chris Ho on Vimeo.

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Now on your phone: Juneau police

JANUARY 17, 2010 - 7:26 PM

Fellow iPhone nerds, FYI: I've been using an app called "Police Radio" for the last couple months to listen to Anchorage police-scanner traffic. Now Juneau police are online too. The app I bought was 99 cents, though there are a few to choose from. Let me know if you find a free one.

Here's hoping Fairbanks, Bethel, Barrow and other hubs go online soon.

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Safety dance

JANUARY 16, 2010 - 10:16 PM

Spent the morning at the Anchorage Robot Rendezvous, where teams from Kasigluk, Newtok and other villages competed with young programmers around the state.

Here's the Newtok Yungaqs performing a dance they made about bicycle safety. (Newtok has no roads, only boardwalks. And those are missing boards.)

What's that got to do with robotics? The competition was also about coming up with ways to improve transportation in your home town.

The team describes the dance:

"The Yup'ik dance is a story; most of the other Yup'ik songs are stories and that's why we chose the Yup'ik song. We have even practiced and shared it with people in our community, some of our elders, we danced it at our assembly, and we even shared with the ASB members. We have had a lot of fun doing it and many of the students in the school now know the dance since they joined us in practices for the fun of it. The Yup'ik dance is like this, we are having fun biking around until we crash without any safety gear on and then we start crying home to our mom and we pick up our bike. Then we go biking again, but this time we are using our safety gear when we crash, get on our bikes again and go have fun."

Meantime, this thing was patrolling the lobby:

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Feds declare fisheries disaster for Yukon kings

JANUARY 15, 2010 - 11:01 AM

UPDATE: Read the Commerce Secretary's letter to Gov. Parnell.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke declared a commercial fishing disaster for Yukon River king salmon Friday following two years of poor runs, fishing restrictions and bans.

“Communities in Alaska along the Yukon River depend heavily on chinook salmon for commercial fishing, jobs and food,” Locke said in a statement from the Commerce Department. “Alaska fishermen and their families are struggling with a substantial loss in income and revenues.”

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There's no such thing as fast-paced when it comes to subsistence politics

JANUARY 14, 2010 - 6:37 PM

A truck parked outside today's meeting on overhauling federal subsistence management.

It was at the AFN convention in October when the Interior Department announced that federal oversight of subsistence was "broken" and pledged to rethink the program. At the time, the idea was for the feds to do a rapid review in hopes of making changes as early as this week's Federal Subsistence Board meeting.

Things are taking longer than expected.

"The more we talked to people, the bigger the challenge grew ... The expectation that the process could be done more quickly than it has gone was overly optimistic. Perhaps too aggressive," said Kim Elton, Department of Interior’s Director of Alaska Affairs.

Elton and Pat Pourchot met with regional subsistence advisers today to talk about possible changes to the program. While the Interior Department had asked for nominations for a new board chairman back at AFN, Elton said that selection process hasn't started yet.

(Though they have received 15 or 16 names.)

Meantime, here's a quick interview with Bristol Bay Borough Mayor Dan O'Hara, whose been serving on these advisory councils since they were created. He's pushing for the subsistence board to get involved in predator control:

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'I Am Eskimo'

JANUARY 13, 2010 - 9:21 PM

With some fantastic photos and first-person reports from across the state, the 'I Am Eskimo' Facebook group has quietly amassed nearly 4,000 members.

In this quick e-mail interview, creator George Sookiayak of Anchorage explains how:

Q:Where did you grow up and what do you do now?
A: I grew up around Western Alaska, Shaktoolik, Unalakleet, Mekoryuk, and Nome. I moved here to Anchorage in 1992 and attended Clark Junior High. I moved to Nome in 1994 and attended Nome-Beltz my freshman year of high school. I finished high school in my hometown, Shaktoolik.

Currently working here in Anchorage as an IT Tech Support Specialist for Bering Straits Native Corporation, and also do freelance web design trough my website, www.a0506.com.

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