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Southeast Alaska: Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest exempted from national “roadless rule” By MARY KAUFFMAN - The Trump administration is opening up over half of the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska to logging and road construction, according to a final rule the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) posted Wednesday.

Becoming effective yesterday when published in the Federal Register, the finalized rule will allow commercial logging companies to construct roads and harvest timber in about 9.4 million acres in one of the planet’s biggest temperate rainforests, removing protections put in place in 2001 during the Clinton administration via the Roadless Area Conservation Rul

Wednesday's announcement o fthe final federal action exempting Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest from a national “roadless rule” represents hard-won liberation from inflexible federal mandates and a victory for the people of the state, said Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy. 

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture has again acknowledged that the Tongass should be exempt from one-size-fits-all-national roadless policy,” said Alaska Governor Michael Dunleavy. “This will help build community resilience and support economic recovery in a region that’s been hit hard by the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on tourism and other industries relying on responsible use of our natural resources and beauty.”

“It is immensely gratifying to see the Trump Administration act on what I and four previous governors have so long argued: Alaska is a unique land whose potential for our state and nation can best be realized only when we’re free from the unthinking application of one-size-fits-all national rules, in violation of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and the Tongass Timber Reform Act,” said Governor Dunleavy.

“The Tongass is home to many Alaskans who want what most Americans take for granted—the opportunity to live, work, and raise their families in the communities in which they grew up,” said US. Senator Lisa Murkowsk (R-AK)i, Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “A full exemption from the Roadless Rule means access to more affordable and renewable energy to power homes and schools, access to technology at a time when more Americans are logging online for health care and education, and access for transportation and recreation to promote jobs and economic activity in the region—all while ensuring continued good stewardship of our lands and waters. I thank the USDA and Forest Service team for recognizing that one-size-fits-all federal policies are not appropriate in Alaska, and sometimes simply do not fit at all.”

“Alaskans in Southeast have seen their opportunity to harvest timber, advance vital renewable energy and mineral projects, build basic infrastructure and connect communities stifled for too long as a result of the 2001 Roadless Rule,” said U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-AK).

Sullivan said, “These opportunities are finally back on the table with the finalization today of a full exemption for the Tongass from this overly-burdensome and out-of-touch regulation. I will always fight to take control from bureaucratic D.C. agencies and put it into the hands of Alaskans who rely on our lands to make a living and understand intimately the important balance of conservation and local economies. I commend Secretary Perdue and the administration for working closely with Alaskans throughout this process and bringing us to this historic day.”

“This is a great day for the State of Alaska, our economy, and Alaskans' right to govern themselves,” said Congressman Young (R-AK). “For years, I have said that the one-size-fits-all Roadless Rule was a disaster for Alaska."

Young said, "This Congress, I have been working closely with the President and senior White House staff to secure a Roadless Rule exemption for the Tongass. Not only has the Roadless Rule put an unconscionable economic and social burden on Southeast Alaska, it also violates ANILCA and the ‘no more’ clause by locking up land from the people of Alaska. Today's ROD is incredible news for our state and our economy, particularly in Southeast. I want to thank the Administration for working with me, our Congressional Delegation, Governor Dunleavy, and, most importantly, for listening to Alaskans. We know that this is the right thing to do, both for our economy and the health of our forests. I very much look forward to lifting the Roadless Rule and unleashing our state’s full potential. In Congress, I will always stand up for our right to manage our own lands.”

Imposed by then-President Clinton, the 2001 Roadless Rule prohibited road building and timber harvest, with limited exceptions, on Forest System lands managed for multiple use. Aimed at limiting logging impacts, the rule’s collateral damage included blocking other uses that could benefit from roads, including recreation, mineral development, tourism, subsistence and sport hunting, extension of utilities, search and rescue activities, and more.

After the state petitioned to exempt 9.2 million acres of the 17-million-acre Tongass from the rule in 2018, the Forest Service began an extensive environmental review process to guide creation of a new, state-specific roadless rule. As part of that process, the state established the Alaska Roadless Rule Citizen Advisory Committee to involve representatives of Southeast Alaska’s various interests, including Alaska Natives.

Last month, the Forest Service issued its final environmental impact statement, identifying a full exemption from the national roadless rule as its preferred alternative. Its issuance of a final Record of Decision (ROD) and the final Alaska Roadless Rule today formally establishes the rule as federal policy, effective immediately upon publication in the Federal Register.

Quoting a news release from Governor Dunleavy, final implementation of the Alaska Roadless Rule eliminates regulatory uncertainty that had inhibited many previous potential activities in the Tongass, and opens the way for a variety of projects, which themselves will be subject to rigorous federal permitting processes under the National Environmental Protection Act.

"It’s clear that this decision is what the Forest Service essentially admitted it to be in its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) - a politically mandated choice that ignores Southeast Alaskans, fishermen, Tribes, hunters, businesses, subsistence users and the vast majority of public comment in Alaska and across the nation,” said SalmonState executive director Tim Bristol.

Bristol said, “This decision is an ill-fated attempt to create a past that collapsed on itself, and ignores the actual, articulated needs of Alaskans, as well as the innovative leadership we need to be able to adapt to the challenges climate change presents.”

"96 percent of comments, overall, and 90+ percent of local, in-person subsistence testimony was in favor of maintaining protections for the Tongass. In addition, every single Tribe has resigned as a cooperating agency in protest over the way their valuable input has been ignored in this process. In a letter renouncing their status as cooperating agencies to the Forest Service Oct. 13, five Tribes wrote that “our participation in this process has not actually led to the incorporation of any of our concerns in the final decision. We refuse to endow legitimacy upon a process that has disregarded our input at every turn." said Bristol.

Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska program director, Defenders of Wildlife, released a prepared statement saying, “The U.S. Forest Service has taken an ax to one of the most popular and effective measures we have to conserve our national forest lands. Stripping roadless protections will destroy habitat for species like northern goshawks, brown and black bears, and the Alexander Archipelago wolf. With nearly 1 million visitors a year, clearcutting the forest will jeopardize wildlife and the real economic drivers of Southeast Alaska - fishing and tourism.”

Adam Kolton, Executive Director, Alaska Wilderness League released a prepared statement Wednesday saying, “In yet another sweeping attack on an iconic American landscape, the Trump administration today removed two-decade old protections for old-growth trees and habitat in the Tongass National Forest. This presidentially directed move, to gut roadless protections for our nation’s largest and most biologically rich national forest, is a calamity for our climate, for wildlife and for the outdoor recreation economy of Southeast Alaska."

“This new Trump plan sets in motion the potential clearcutting and export of centuries old Sitka spruce, cedar and western hemlock trees, unleashing the equivalent of two million cars worth of carbon pollution while costing American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in new subsidies for logging road construction," said Kolton.

Kolton said, “Stewarded by the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples for millennia, and set aside as a national forest by President Roosevelt in 1907, the Tongass is America’s Amazon. Its lush islands, towering trees, glacial fjords and estuaries support some of the highest concentrations of bald eagles, brown bears and wild salmon anywhere in the world.

“Taking an axe to old-growth protections for the Tongass is among the most reckless and irresponsible of the Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks. It’s bad news for hunters and anglers, for the tourism and fishing industries in Alaska, and for anyone who cares about protecting our planet’s biodiversity and climate,” said Kolton. - More...
Friday AM - October 30, 2020

A real “Schooner of Beer”; Ketchikan’s floating brewery operated for nearly a decade
By DAVE KIFFER
The Alumna, a wooden four-masted schooner built in 1901 by KV Cruse in the Simpson Shipyard in Coos Bay, Oregon.
Dave Kiffer Photo Collection

Ketchikan: A real “Schooner of Beer”; Ketchikan’s floating brewery operated for nearly a decade By DAVE KIFFER - For a town that loves its alcohol as much as Ketchikan does, it is somewhat surprising that there have been only a few efforts to commercially brew alcohol in Ketchikan. A decade ago, a brewery operated briefly in the Downtown area on Mission Street and in the past couple of years, two brewing operations have either opened or announced plans to.

There have certainly been plenty of "home brewers" in the First City over the decades, but commercial operations have been rare. One of the most notable was the Pilsener Brewing Company of Alaska, which operated here from 1935 until 1943, when it became impossible to get the raw materials to operate because resources were going to the war effort in World War II.

Much of the details of the Pilsener Brewing Company's operations are lost in the fog of history. What remains are the ads that it placed in the local papers, the Daily Fishing News and the Chronicle. And every so often an old bottle with the company labels such as Alaska Lager Beer or Golden Rhine Beer or Snowcap Pilsener Beer shows up on EBAY or some auction site.

There are also the memories of Ketchikan old-timers, such as bush pilot Herman Ludwigsen, 92, who moved to Ketchikan as a nine-year-old in 1936.

Ludwigsen remembers the brewery was across the street from his home near 1500 Tongass Avenue, next to Columbia Cleaners and Edwards Wire Rope.

"This big German guy owned Golden Rhine," Ludwigsen said recently. "He saw that I was a young, growing up punk, so he gave me a bunch of free beer tickets to take down to the Alaska Steamship Dock and give to everybody. I can remember that real well, I remember walking in there (the brewery) and upstairs it smelled awfully good."

Files at the Tongass Historical Museum contain a single article about the Pilsener Brewing Company. The headline “Brewery Ship Expected From South” focuses on the brewery’s interesting historical oddity. Part of its operations were on a converted sailing ship.

The article, in the Ketchikan Chronicle on November 9, 1934, noted that the $175,000 operation was led by Brew master Konrad Lux and was funded by the Pilsener Brewing Company of Washington.

“Indications from orders placed for the locally-produced beer lead the enterprisers to advance the opinion that the firm is assured of success,” the Chronical reported. “Orders have been coming in from the entire coastal portion of the territory.”

The story notes that it is cheaper to produce the beer locally than it is to ship it in and that the territory can expect between $20,000 and $35,000 annually in tax revenue from the operation. Federal taxes could generate between $40,000 and $50,000 as well. Local taxes would be between $200 and $300 daily, the company estimated.

The ship, the 215-foot Alumna, was previously engaged in the timber hauling trade, the Chronicle noted. That is an important point because some more recent local references to the brewery ship refer to it as a different sailing ship, the Meteor. - More...
Friday AM - October 30, 2020

Steller sea lions and mercury
By NED ROZELL
A male Steller sea lion raises its head amid others on Southeast Alaska’s coast.
Photo by Michelle Trifari

Alaska: Steller sea lions and mercury By NED ROZELL - Within their bulbous bodies, Steller sea lions of the western Aleutian Islands seem to carry more mercury than sea lions closer to mainland Alaska.

By looking at tiny bits of fish and squid, a graduate student is trying to find out where that mercury is coming from.

Steller sea lions drape their chocolate bodies over rocks lining the Alaska coast. From those rocks, they plop into deep ocean water and suddenly become graceful, among the most powerful swimmers in the sea.

Full-grown male Steller sea lions are heavier than the largest bull moose and can live 20 years. Females weigh half as much, despite being just a few feet shorter than the 11-foot males.

Numbers of Steller sea lions in the western Aleutian Islands of Alaska crashed in the 1970s and 1980s. Government officials listed them as endangered in 1997. Sea lion groups in other areas of Alaska are not endangered, but there is something going on with sea lions in the western end of the Aleutian arc, near Attu, Shemya and Buldir islands.

Michelle Trifari, in her work for a master’s degree, will try to tease out the answers in labs at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Using samples of fish and squid netted during commercial fishing trawls from 2013 to 2015, Trifari will “work down their food chain to try to figure out where the mercury might be entering,” Trifari said.

Mercury — an element released when we burn gas and oil, as well as when volcanoes erupt and permafrost thaws — in high concentrations is bad for living things like Steller sea lions and people.

Scientists found 10 percent of the sea lion pups they worked on at western Aleutian rookeries had mercury in their hair exceeding toxic levels. They also found mercury levels in Pacific cod and arrowtooth flounder were much higher in the western Aleutians than the same fish sampled in the central Aleutians, around Adak and Amchitka. - More...
Friday AM - October 30, 2020

Ketchikan: When JFK Came to Ketchikan; Future president was most likely laying the groundwork for his eventual campaign By DAVE KIFFER - Among Ketchikan residents of a certain age there is a strong memory of John F.   Kennedy coming to Ketchikan in 1960 and speaking to a packed audience at the Coliseum Theater shortly before he became President.

The event itself did happen, but Kennedy  wasn't yet running for President when he visited Alaska for the first time.

On November 10, 1958, Kennedy  stepped off a Pacific Northern airplane from Seattle at Annette Island. He was flown to Ketchikan on Grumman Goose piloted by Bob Ellis.

Ellis - with help from local Democratic leader W.O. "Bo" Smith - introduced Kennedy  to the more than 500 people who crowded into the Coliseum Theater to hear the young US Senator from Massachusetts speak.   Kennedy  had just been reelected to the US Senate by what was then the largest margin in Massachusetts history and was being touted as a likely contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960. 

Politlcs was the heart of Kennedy's Alaska visit - which would also include stops in Juneau, Anchorage and Fairbanks. But he was looking toward an election on November 25 and not the presidential race in 1960, although that was likely in the back of his mind at the time.

Kennedy was in Alaska to speak in support of the two long-time Alaskan politicians who were seeking to become Alaska's first US Senators in January of 1959, longtime territorial Governor Ernest Gruening and longtime Alaskan delegate to Congress, E.L. "Bob" Bartlett. 

Alaska was sent to become a state on January 3rd and   Kennedy  wanted to make sure the Alaskan Senatorial Delegation was firmly Democratic.

The fact that the most prominent politicians in the soon to be state were Democrats seems far-fetched 60 years later, but Alaska was perceived as a "blue" state in its early years. In fact, Alaska statehood was delayed in the 1950s, because Republican politicians in Congress objected to a "Democratic" state being added. It wasn't until Hawaii - then a solid GOP stronghold - was ready to statehood that the two were voted in as a "package deal" to not upset the political calculus in Washington D.C.

Kennedy's 1958 arrival in the First City was heralded with a front-page story and photo in the Thursday , November 6, edition of the Ketchikan Daily News.

The story of speech also received coverage in the afternoon edition of the Monday November 10 edition of the Daily News. But it was not the lead story.

The Daily News used a rare full-page headline to announce to its readers "Fish Traps to be Abolished."

The federal government - after supporting the use of the traps for decades - was finally bowing the concerns of most Alaskans who had opposed the traps for many years. But it was a somewhat empty gesture. The Alaska Constitutional Convention, which was soon to be the basis of the new state government in January, had already declared that fish traps - except those on Native land - would be abolished when the state took over management of its fisheries.

Still, the  Kennedy  visit was front page news in the local newspaper under the headline "New State Should Join Democratic Trend - Kennedy". - More...
Friday AM - October 30, 2020

Analysis: Why sleep experts say it's time to ditch daylight saving time By MICHAEL S. JAFFEE - For most of the U.S., the clock goes back one hour on Sunday morning, Nov. 1, the “fall back” for daylight saving time. Many of us appreciate the extra hour of sleep.

But for millions, that gain won’t counter the inadequate sleep they get the rest of the year. About 40% of adults – 50 to 70 million Americans – get less than the recommended minimum seven hours per night.

Some researchers are concerned about how the twice-a-year switch impacts our body’s physiology. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the largest scientific organization that studies sleep, now wants to replace daylight saving time with a move to a year-round fixed time. That way, our internal circadian clocks would not be misaligned for half the year. And it would eliminate the safety risk from sleep loss when transitioning to daylight saving time.

I am a neurologist at the University of Florida. I’ve studied how a lack of sleep can impair the brain. In the 1940s, most American adults averaged 7.9 hours of sleep a night. Today, it’s only 6.9 hours. To put it another way: In 1942, 84% of us got the recommended seven to nine hours; in 2013, it was 59%. To break it down further, a January 2018 study from Fitbit reported that men got even less sleep per night than women, about 6.5 hours.

The case for sleep

Problems from sleep shortage go beyond simply being tired. Compared to those who got enough sleep, adults who are short sleepers – those getting less than seven hours per day – were more likely to report 10 chronic health conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, obesity, asthma and depression.

Children, who need more sleep than adults, face even more challenges. To promote optimal health, six- to 12-year-olds should sleep nine to 12 hours a day; teens from 13 to 18, eight to 10 hours. But a Sleep Foundation poll of parents says children are getting at least one hour less than that. And researchers have found that sleep deprivation of even a single hour can harm a child’s developing brain, affecting memory encoding and attentiveness in school.

Sleep impacts every one of our biological systems. Serious consequences can result with poor sleep quality. Here’s a short list: Blood pressure may increase. Risk of coronary heart disease could go up. Our endocrine system releases more cortisol, a stress hormone. We become more aroused by “fight or flight” syndrome. There’s a reduction of growth hormone and muscle maintenance. There’s a higher chance of increased appetite and weight gain. The body has less glucose tolerance and greater insulin resistance; in the long term, that means an increased risk for Type 2 diabetes. - More...
Friday AM - October 30, 2020

Political Cartoon: Campaign anxiety
By John Darkow ©2020, Columbia Missourian
Distributed to paid subscribers for publication by Cagle Cartoons, Inc.