Photo of the Month Ketchikan: Public Meetings Ketchikan: Upcoming Events Historical Ketchikan June Allen Dave Kiffer Louise B. Harrington Ketchikan Weather Ketchikan's Forecast Ketchikan's Historic Weather Nat Weather Service KTN Ketchikan Tides & Currents Search the News Ketchikan Alaska Sitnews RSS widget

Fish Factor: Northern Edge; High prices for halibut; and Herring hauls By LAINE WELCH - The required permits are not yet in hand, but the U.S. Navy is moving full steam ahead on its plans to conduct war training exercises in the Gulf of Alaska for two weeks in early May.

Meanwhile, nine coastal communities have so far signed resolutions asking the Navy to instead conduct its training between September and mid-March, times that are less sensitive to migrating salmon, birds and marine mammals. Several more communities have indicated they will do the same by month’s end.

“It’s not that we don’t want the Navy to do their training – it’s the time and locations,” said Emily Stolarcyk, program director for the Eyak Preservation Council of Cordova.

“The community resolutions say that we are the people who depend on commercial, subsistence and recreational fishing,” she added. “The Navy exercises are planned during the most important breeding and migratory periods for salmon, birds, whales and marine mammals. About 90 percent of the training area is designated as essential fish habitat for all five species of Pacific salmon. May is the worst time to be doing this.”

In the 43 years that the Navy has conducted war games in the Gulf, only twice have they occurred in May (2007, 2008).

The Northern Edge joint training exercises include nearly 6,000 military participants “on and above central Alaska ranges and the Gulf of Alaska” according to the Alaskan Command Office of Public Affairs at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.

The Gulf portion includes an area from 12 miles off the Kenai Peninsula to 140 miles out. Live weapons will be used in and above the water. No independent observers will be allowed to participate.

The Navy does not yet have a required letter of authorization to proceed from the National Marine Fisheries Service, nor have they published a final record of decision. The paperwork is “forthcoming” according to Navy documents dated July 2016, the most recent updates describing the training exercises.

The Eyak Preservation Council is sending letters to all Alaska fishing permit holders asking them to contact decision makers about moving the time of the Navy training.
“It contains a letter for fishermen to sign and send to U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) with an option to send a courtesy copy to the NMFS and Pacific Command,” Stolarcyk said.

Last September, Murkowski wrote a strongly worded letter to the Secretary of the Navy stating that they needed to do a better job of involving local communities and “listening to stakeholders.”

Senator Dan Sullivan also has encouraged more direct engagement with Alaskans to “clear up some of the confusion and misinformation being circulated.”

“As an Alaskan, Senator Sullivan understands the importance of our fisheries and our coastal communities, and would never support an exercise that he believed would adversely affect Alaska’s fish stocks or prevent fishermen from doing their jobs,” Sullivan’s office said in an email message. “The Senator will continue to encourage productive and science-based dialogue between the U.S. military and Alaska’s coastal communities.”

Despite the non-committal responses, Stolarcyk remains hopeful that the congressional delegation and the Navy will hear the unified voice of coastal Alaskans.

“This is the water that we depend upon at the time we depend on it most,” she said.

“I am hopeful they can understand that it’s not just about what they need – it’s about including the needs of communities that depend on these waters for sustenance." - More...
Monday PM - March 27, 2017

Alaska Science: Squirrels somehow predict seed bonanza By NED ROZELL - Stan Boutin has climbed more than 5,000 spruce trees in the last 30 years. He’s fallen only once, and he has often returned to the forest floor knowing if a ball of twigs and moss contained newborn red squirrel pups. Over the years, those squirrels have taught Boutin and his colleagues many things, including their apparent ability to predict the future.

A red squirrel pauses on a tree. A researcher in the Yukon has discovered that red squirrels increase their litter numbers in summers before white spruce trees produce more seed cones, the species’ primary food.
Photo by Ned Rozell

Boutin, of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, was in Fairbanks recently to give a lecture on one of the easiest-to-find animals in the boreal forest. The square-jawed biologist is perhaps the world’s foremost expert on red squirrels.

By marking squirrel pups with ear tags over the years, he and his helpers have gotten to know the entire red squirrel population of a square kilometer of boreal forest between Haines Junction and Kluane Lake in the Yukon.

Here are some insights from three decades of observations of more than 10,000 individuals:

Though one squirrel on his plot lived to be nine years old, few live past four. Most don’t survive their first year.

Squirrels spend their entire lives in a small patch of forest surrounding a midden, a pile of spruce cones with tunnels and chambers throughout.

When squirrels rattle off their call, they are signaling their possession of a small territory centered on a midden.

Mother squirrels sometimes bequeath their territory to a pup and move one or two territories over where there is a vacancy. - More...
Monday PM - March 27, 2017

COLUMNS - COMMENTARY

Most Americans know that they can speak their mind in the public square, thanks to the First Amendment. Speech on social media, however, can be censored because private companies own those cyber spaces.

But a recent U.S. Supreme Court oral argument suggests Twitter’s practice of banning controversial right-wing pundits could be deemed illegal.

During a Feb. 27 hearing involving the constitutionality of a state social media law, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that Twitter and Facebook had become, and even surpassed, the public square as a place for discussion and debate.

“Their utility and the extent of their coverage are greater than the communication you could have ever had, even in the paradigm of public square,” he said while hearing arguments in Packingham v. North Carolina.

A majority of justices agreed. “The President now uses Twitter … everybody uses Twitter,” observed Justice Elena Kagan. “All 50 governors, all 100 senators, every member of the House has a Twitter account. So this has become a … crucially important channel of political communication.” - More...
Monday PM - March 27, 2017

JOHN L. MICEK: Congress Hits Ctrl-Alt-Del on Your Privacy - Governments and legislative bodies often do profoundly stupid things.

But lately, it seems like we've been living through a veritable bumper crop of dumb.

There's the multiple-car pileup that passes for our national debate on healthcare reform. Or consider the badly penned Russian family novel that is the Trump administration.

But in a little noticed vote this week, the U.S. Senate became the undisputed title-holders of dumb, undertaking an action so arrogant in its overreach, so profoundly offensive in its intent, and so violative of fundamental privacy rights that it's a wonder that enraged voters aren't marching on the Capitol, holding their iPhones aloft like torches.

If you missed it, here's what happened: The Republican-controlled chamber gutted a key consumer protection and passed a bill that would allow your Internet-service provider to sell your browsing history to all comers.

Without your permission. - More...
Monday PM - March 27, 2017

PHIL KERPEN: Trump Should End Illegal Obamacare Exemption for Congress - The House effort to repeal and replace Obamacare flamed out in spectacular fashion and leaders in Congress seem content to move on to other issues.But the American people continue to suffer with skyrocketing premiums and ever-smaller provider networks. About a third of the counties in America have only one insurance company left in the marketplace.Doing nothing is an unacceptable option.

So before the president moves on to the other issues on his ambitious agenda, there is one game-changer he can personally put into the mix to give Congress a powerful incentive to get its act together and move a repeal bill forward that can command majority support: end Congress's illegal Obamacare exemption and force members and their staff to live under the law as long as the rest of America has to.

When Congress was debating Obamacare, one of the persistent demands from the American people was that if Congress is redesigning the health care systems for millions of others, they should subject themselves and their staff to their own handiwork.The demands worked, and before Obamacare passed the Senate in 2009, a provision was added, Section 1312(d)(3)(D), that requires members of Congress and their staff to buy health insurance through Obamacare exchanges and provides no taxpayer assistance beyond the income-related subsidies available to all eligible Americans. - More...
Monday PM - March 27, 2017