When Fur Farming was Alaska's third biggest industry; Hundreds of farms dotted islands in Southeast
By DAVE KIFFER
Charlie Zimmerman with foxes, per Paul Converse
Brothers Island
Collection Name: Fox Farms in Southeast Alaska
Photograph Collection, ca. 1927. ASL-PCA-331
Courtesy: Alaska State Library - Historical Collections

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Ketchikan Historical: When Fur Farming was Alaska's third biggest industry; Hundreds of farms dotted islands in Southeast By DAVE KIFFER - Every so often, when exploring a remote island in the Alexander Archipelago, one can come upon aset of puzzling remains.

Fences and wire and sometimes dozens of rotting cages near broken down houses or occasionally larger buildings. It is the remains of what once was the third largest industry in Alaska. One that burst on the scene in the 1920s and had pretty much disappeared in barely a decade, leaving only the debris of numerous get rich quick schemes that never did.

In the 1920s, one of the most common mammals in Southeast Alaska wasn't even a native species. There were more than 10,000 arctic or blue foxes in hundreds of small island farms from Dixon Entrance to upper Lynn Canal and Yakutat. Their forebearers had been brought south from northern Alaska to breed and make money.

Later, many of the farms would switch to native mink species because of changes in public taste after the Depression and the simple fact that mink were smaller. easier to handle, and lent themselves to larger, cage farms.

A booming world-wide economy in the so-called Roaring Twenties fueled a market for fur and that market drove hundreds of Alaskan entrepreneurs into fur farming, an industry that promised "get rich quick" but ended up delivering on "get poor quicker" before it flamed out when the Great Depression hit in the 1930s. The fur farm industry boomed and then busted when pelt prices dropped by 90 percent worldwide.

The fur industry was what had originally attracted Russians to Alaska in the 1700s but while there was some hunting of Aleutian and southwestern foxes, most of the Russian interest was in fur seals. As the fur seal and sea otter numbers began plummeting in the early 1800s, the first rudimentary fox farms began to pop up in places like Kodiak and Cook Inlet as the Russians captured wild foxes and held them in pens.

The idea was fairly simple. Bring a number of "breeding pairs" to a secure location, often a small, isolated island. The pairs would breed and soon the population would double and then triple. By 10 months of age, the younger foxes, called kits, could be sold for their fur. The foxes grew quickly in the Alaskan environment and, depending on the color of their fur, the pelts could be worth hundreds of dollars each.

The 1929 book "Alaska" by Lester Henderson reports on some of these earliest efforts for commercialize the breeding, back just after the turn of the 20th Century. Most were unsuccessful because large amount of food was needed to support the farms, some of which had 50 or more breeding pairs. Most of the remote islands where the fox corrals were located did not have enough natural food sources for that many foxes. It was expensive to ship in feed and many farmers tried to supplement the feed by netting large numbers of salmon. One fur farmer, near Juneau, reported to federal officials that it took upwards of 400,000 pounds of salmon each year to keep his charges fed.

For the first 40 years of American control of Alaska, there was little interest in fur farming, but then a rise in fur garment prices around the turn of the 20th century changed things. In 1904, the US Commerce Department began allowing potential fur farmers to lease small islands along the coast of Alaska for farms that would encompass the entire island and not require pens to hold the animals in.

A decade later, in 1914, E. Lester Jones, a deputy commissioner in the US Department of Commerce. visited Alaska primarily to report to Congress on the various fishing industries, but he also looked into the nascent fur farm industry. He noted that - in the territory - fur farming - then primarily fox farms - was "creating more than ordinary interest."

But he also saw some negatives as the industry tried to grow.

"Owing to the fact that few of the men who have engaged in this business have sufficient knowledge of the conditions necessary to raise foxes in captivity successfully, there have been many failures and few successes," Jones reported in December of 1914, adding that because of high prices "men have been misled into thinking that all they had to do was purchase a few   foxes and soon begin to reap the benefits by receiving large sums for their sale."

Jones noted that even though some had received large sums for prime animals it was not a sign of a healthy market condition. He compared it to seeing a dog breeder get a huge return on puppies from a championship dog and then assuming all that all puppies would get a similar return. He said approaching the market from that standpoint would only bring disaster.

Jones noted that anyone interested in fox farming had: - More...
Sunday PM - September 12, 2021

Passing Through
It's not unusual for black bears to wander peacefully through yards.
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Fish Factor: After weeks of inquiries and FOIRs, Governor announces his choice of Board of Fisheries seat By LAINE WELCH -  It took freedom of information requests, weeks of queries to administrators and more than three months past a legal deadline for Governor Dunleavy to finally release his choice for a Board of Fisheries seat.

Dunleavy announced on August 27th his appointment of INDY Walton of Soldotna to fill the vacant seat on the seven-member Board that directs management of subsistence, personal use, sport and commercial fisheries in state waters out to three miles. The vacancy came 115 days after the Alaska Legislature on May 11 rejected his choice of Abe Williams, a regional affairs director for the Pebble Mine.

Alaska law states that the governor must submit a new name to the Legislature within 30 days for confirmation, but Dunleavy moves to his own legal drummer and 15 candidates remained under wraps from the public although all applied for the BOF seat in June. 

In a statement the governor said Walton has 37 years of commercial salmon fishing experience at both Kodiak and Bristol Bay. He is a partner at Last Cast Lodge in Igiugik and has worked as a financial adviser with Edward Jones Investments for 19 years.        

Court records show that Walton was charged with two closed waters fishing violations in 2005 and 2012 although the fines paid weren’t immediately available, reported KSTK  in Wrangell. Two Bristol Bay boats, Sniper and Turbo, are registered in his name.

Frances Leach, outgoing director of United Fishermen of Alaska, said in a statement that UFA “is excited” to work with Walton who is “a strong anti-Pebble Mine voice and is spoken of highly by his fellow Bristol Bay fishermen.”

But Representative Bryce Edgmon (I-Dillingham) said Walton’s appointment could be controversial when he’s up for legislative confirmation next year due to his support for scrapping the law that limits Bristol Bay to 32-foot vessels.

“If that’s the case, he’s going to encounter a lot of resistance from year-round residents of the Bristol Bay region. We’ve fought long and hard to keep the 32-foot limit in place. Because otherwise, local fishermen, particularly our village fishermen, would be disenfranchised and wouldn’t be able to compete,” Edgmon told KSTK. - More...
Sundaty PM - September 12, 2021

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Alaska - Nationwide: Tribal institute releases report examining effects of climate change on Indigenous peoples, lands and culture - Researchers from the Institute of Tribal Environmental Professionals last week launched the State of Tribes and Climate Change (STACC) report, which examines the disproportionate effect climate change has on Indigenous lands and people and the added strain tribes experience as they respond to damaging climate events, which are increasing in frequency and severity.

The STACC report builds on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released Aug. 9. ITEP, which is a tribal institute at Northern Arizona University, brought together with more than 90 authors representing diverse entities and perspectives to create this report, which includes not only research into the effects of climate change but also the voices of Indigenous people who are on the front lines in experiencing and responding to climate disasters.

This report is the first of its kind to be produced in the United States.

“We wanted to change the discourse in this arena and ensure the tribes had their voices and recommendations amplified,” said Ann Marie Chischilly, ITEP director and interim vice president of the Office of Native American Initiatives at NAU. “It’s my hope that the federal government and its partners will take this report and support tribes more directly.”

ITEP’s Tribes & Climate Change Program spearheaded this report by convening the author team including 34 tribal authors who provided personal narratives. Nikki Cooley, the climate program’s co-manager, testified in front of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis in July and shared key findings and recommendations from the STACC report. Those findings include the need for greater meaningful participation of Native American and Alaska Native researchers and communities in future climate assessments as well as looking more closely at the on-the-ground work tribes are doing every day.

“Tribes are investing efforts in adaptation planning and projects to keep their communities, ecosystems and people healthy,” she said. “In doing so, they are implementing the most cutting-edge work on climate. Tribal nations are actively creating climate vulnerability assessments, adaptation plans, and hazard mitigation plans. Protecting traditional knowledges is an important part of these processes. Locally relevant and regionally specific information is needed to understand local climate impacts and develop solutions that incorporate local, traditional and western knowledge for holistic solutions.” - More...
Sunday PM - September 12, 2021

Climate change threatens seal hunting by Indigenous Alaskans
By HEATHER MCFARLAND
Roswell Schaffer Sr., an Iñupiaq elder and hunter from Kotzebue who co-authored a recent study of ice season changes, hunts for bearded seals in May 2019.
Photo courtesy of Sarah Betcher, Farthest North Films.

Alaska: Climate change threatens seal hunting by Indigenous Alaskans By HEATHER MCFARLAND - Climate change has severely reduced the length of the seal hunting season in a rural Alaska village, potentially threatening a key feature of the community’s Indigenous way of life.

The Iñupiaq people of Kotzebue have depended on bearded seals, called ugruk in Iñupiaq, for food and clothing for generations. A new study led by Indigenous hunters, the Native Village of Kotzebue and scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks shows that over the past 17 years, the seal hunting season shrank about one day per year. Sea ice decline is a major cause of the shrinking season.

Both ugruk and hunters are closely tied to specific sea ice conditions. In spring, ugruk follow the melting Chukchi Sea ice edge northward during breakup and enter Kotzebue Sound. Inside the sound, ugruk rest on persistent chunks of floating ice, called floes, while feeding on abundant fish, shrimp and clams.

“Kotzebue Sound provides important spring habitat for bearded seals, with ice floes as platforms for seals to rest on between foraging bouts,” said Donna Hauser, marine mammal biologist at the UAF International Arctic Research Center and co-leader of the research. “We learned from our Kotzebue research partners that hunting ugruk is actually like hunting the right kind of ice.”

Hunters safely and predictably found ugruk on these resting platforms in the past. The study combined hunters’ knowledge of the ice conditions needed for ugruk hunting with data from satellite images. The results showed that the necessary ice floes now melt from the Kotzebue Sound roughly 22 days earlier than they did in 2003, the first year of the study.

“We used to hunt ugruk into July when I was growing up back in the 1950s,” said Bobby Schaeffer, a Kotzebue elder, hunter and co-author of the new paper. “People would be out there during Fourth of July celebration because there was so much ice. Now sometimes we’re done before June comes around.”

While the hunting season is pushed to a close about 26 days earlier on average than in the past, hunters are not necessarily able to begin hunting any earlier. The season’s start timing is driven by the arrival of seals and a hunter’s ability to launch boats through a channel in the ice that opens in front of Kotzebue.

Squeezing the hunting season into a shorter window means that there is less flexibility for hunters.

“Now in some years there is only a good weekend or two, and, if people want to maximize their opportunity, they have to prepare before the season even starts,” said Alex Whiting, director of the Native Village of Kotzebue’s Environmental Program and co-leader of the research.

Whiting’s weekly observations of the local weather, ugruk activity and hunting pursuits of Kotzebue residents helped to quantify the shrinking ugruk hunting season.

Whiting said he was inspired to start a journal in 2002 after reading records of Alaska from the early 1900s. - More...
Sunday PM - September 12, 2021

Fish Factor: Survey Results Indicate Crab Stocks Down Substantially By LAINE WELCH -  Alaska’s Bering Sea crabbers are reeling from the devastating news that all major crab stocks are down substantially, based on summer survey results , and the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed for the first time in over 25 years.

That stock has been on a steady decline for several years and the 2020 harvest dwindled to just 2.6 million pounds.

Most shocking was the drastic turn-around for snow crab stocks, which in 2018 showed a 60% boost in market sized male crabs (the only ones retained for sale) and nearly the same for females. That year’s survey was documented as “one of the largest snow crab recruitment events biologists have ever seen,” said Dr. Bob Foy, director of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council’s Crab Plan Team.

Again in 2019, the “very strong” snow crab biomass was projected at over 610 million pounds, and the catch was set at a conservative 45 million pounds for the 2020 fishery. No Bering Sea crab surveys were done that year due to the Covid pandemic, but the 2021 results indicated the numbers of mature male snow crab had plummeted by 55%. 

 The stock “seems to have disappeared or moved elsewhere,” said Jamie Goen, executive director of the trade group, Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers  (ABSC). The snow crab catch for the upcoming season could be down by 70% and the stock could be classified as “over-fished,” she said, adding that no decisions will be made until the data undergo more scrutiny by plan team and Council scientists.

ABSC estimates the closure of the red king crab fishery and a reduced snow crab catch could cost harvesters well over $100 million. The hit will be felt by roughly 70 vessels, over 400 fishermen, and the processors and fishing communities that rely on the Bering Sea crab revenues.

The crabbers want “bold action” from federal fishery managers. They are calling on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) and NOAA Fisheries to conserve crab habitat and spawning grounds highlighted by scientists over 10 years ago with little resulting action.

The crabbers also want managers “to create meaningful incentives to reduce crab bycatch in other fishing sectors, to reduce fishing impacts on molting and mating crab, and to estimate unaccounted for bycatch from unobserved fishing mortality from bottom and pelagic (mid-water) trawl nets, as well as pot and longline gears.”

Boats fishing the Bering Sea are required to have 100% observer coverage to track what is retained and what is tossed over the side, but it’s what is not observed that most concerns the crabbers. And what goes unseen is not factored into stock or bycatch assessments.

The Magnuson-Stevens Act, the primary law governing marine fisheries management in federal waters (from three to 200 miles out), defines unobserved mortality as “fishing mortality due to an encounter with fishing gear that does not result in capture of fish.”

In a February letter to the NPFMC , ABSC highlighted studies showing “that 95-99% of crab in the path of trawl gear go under the footrope escaping capture and some portion of those likely die after contact with the fishing gear. Given this number compared to what is observed as bycatch, the potential for unobserved mortality of crab could be millions of additional pounds of dead crab bycatch.” 

A February report  by NPFMC scientists, which (unsuccessfully) proposed an amendment to the management plan for crab bycatch in the Bering Sea groundfish trawl fisheries, stated: “Crab may actively escape capture from trawl gear, as they can slip under the trawl itself, or over the sweeps, but the damage from the gear results in mortality or delayed mortality due to injuries. The potential for unobserved mortality of crabs that encounter bottom trawls but are not captured has long been a concern for the management of groundfish fisheries in the Bering Sea.” (Witherell and Pautzke, 1997; Witherell and Woodby, 2005).

The report said that “the majority of trawl caught crab PSC (prohibited species catch) occurs when vessels are targeting yellowfin sole. This is the case across all crab species.”  - More...
Sunday PM - September 12, 2021

PETER FUNT: PAY OR PUNISH THE UN-VAXED? - When society seeks to influence behavior, is it better to pay people to act a certain way, or to penalize them if they don’t? The pandemic and the urgent need for COVID-19 vaccinations brings the question into focus.

American Airlines offers employees an extra day of paid vacation if they get the shots. Delta Airlines, on the other hand, warns employees they will be charged a $200 monthly penalty on their health plan if they don’t get jabbed.

Kroger, the nation’s largest supermarket chain, gives employees $100 for proof of vaccination. But professional basketball players employed by the New York Knicks, Brooklyn Nets and Golden State Warriors learned recently they will not be allowed to play in home games this season if unvaccinated, and face possible fines or loss of pay.

A few companies are literally trying it both ways. Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, will require employees at its corporate offices to be vaccinated, while making it optional for in-store workers — but offering them $150 if they choose to get the shots.

Much as I applaud the intentions of businesses and governments that offer monetary inducements for getting the shots, I think it’s unwise. We don’t pay motorists to stop at red lights, we fine them if they don’t. Companies don’t give bonuses to employees who refrain from harassing coworkers, they discipline the offenders. - More...
Sunday PM - September 12, 2021

MICHAEL REGAN: AMERICA MOURNED THE ANNIVERSARY OF 9/11. THE TALIBAN CELEBRATED. - As the country sadly marked the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks on Saturday, I was thinking about where America was 20 years ago and where it’s headed.

In the weeks and months following the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans at the Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa., Americans were united in a way it’s hard to imagine today.

Patriotic country songs were written about America and what it stands for – positive, uplifting songs – and everyone in New York City and Washington promised to rebuild the fallen towers even taller.

Politically, we were all singing from the same bipartisan hymnal: We had to strike back quickly and severely punish the Islamist terrorists who did us harm.

Every politician in Washington – even career non-interventionist Ron Paul – called for kicking al-Qaeda’s butt by destroying their training camps and “headquarters” in Afghanistan. - More...
Sunday PM - September 12, 2021

FINANCIAL FOCUS: Help grandkids prepare for the future Provided By BEN EDWARDS, AAMS® - If you’re a grandparent, you don’t need Grandparents Day, observed on Sept. 12, to remind you of the joys of having grandchildren. Yet, you might want to use this day as an opportunity to think about ways to help provide for your grandchildren’s future.

The type of gift or support you provide will be different at various stages of your grandchildren’s lives. Here are a few suggestions:

When they’re born…

• Open a 529 plan. It’s never too early to start saving for college or other types of advanced education. To help your grandchildren meet these costs, you could invest in a 529 education savings plan, which offers potential tax advantages if the money is used for qualified education expenses. If the grandchild for whom you’ve established the account ends up not using it, you can change the beneficiary to a qualified family member of the original beneficiary. (Be aware, though, that a 529 plan could affect your grandchild’s financial aid prospects.) If your grandchild doesn’t go to a college or university, a 529 plan can also pay for expenses related to apprenticeship programs offered through trade and vocational schools and registered with the U.S. Department of Labor. - More...
Sunday PM - September 12, 2021

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