Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 390
Sarah Fine-Walsh Sarah Fine-Walsh moved to Petersburg six years ago, to her husband's hometown, and said she still feels lucky to live here. "I pinch myself a lot, especially on a beautiful sunny day when it's flat calm," she said at the candidates forum. That feeling is why she is running for one of two three-year seats on the Petersburg Borough Assembly. "When you feel really, really lucky to live somewhere, the least you can do is give back using the skills that you have to contribute and mak...
Jeigh Stanton Gregor Jeigh Stanton Gregor is seeking another three-year term on the Petersburg Borough Assembly, where he said he has served "a little over a decade now, in total." "I think I'm easy to work with. I'm approachable," he said at the assembly candidates forum. "If re-elected, I will work hard for everyone, whether they vote for me or not." He and his wife, Lea, have been married 19 years and own True North Counseling and Consultation, a private counseling practice. They have two...
The U.S. Forest Service has extended its public comment period on its proposal to rescind the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which it announced on Aug. 18. Originally a 30-day comment period, the Forest Service is now offering a total of 45 days to offer input on the proposed repeal and draft environmental statement. This makes the new deadline Oct. 6. Nathan Newcomer, the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council's Tongass Campaigner, said that while it's good the public was given more time, traditionally the Forest Service has provided 90 days...
The Southeast Regional Advisory Council for the Federal Subsistence Board will meet in Gustavus Oct. 20-22 and Heather Bauscher will be there with her newest cohort of students. Bauscher has led students through federal subsistence meetings since 2016 – but this time she's attending as a national award-winning teacher and community engagement specialist. Over the summer, Bauscher and her colleague Ashley Bolwerk won the National Rise to the Future Public Awareness Award from the U.S. Forest S...
"Great news," said Anna Belback, a natural resource technician with the U.S. Forest Service Wrangell Ranger District. Surveyors have not found any invasive European green crabs in their shoreline walks and traps on the northwest coast of Etolin Island. Even more good news: None of the destructive crabs have been found around Anan Bay either, reported Paul Robbins, public affairs officer for the Tongass National Forest. "It was really good habitat in general for crabs that like intertidal areas,"...
The Rainforest Festival returns to Petersburg Sept. 10-13 for its 19th year, with a lineup organized around island biogeography — the study of how wildlife reaches, adapts to and lives on island systems like the ones that define Southeast Alaska. “We have this really unique system of islands that we live on in Southeast Alaska,” festival volunteer Sunny Rice said. She pointed to the Coast Range walling the region off from the rest of the continent, and to the rivers that thread the mainland to the islands — “big rivers … that serve as corridor...
The U.S. Forest Service filed a proposal to rescind the national 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule last Tuesday. The agency is seeking public comment on the rescission and draft of an environmental impact statement until Sept. 21. More information is available on the Forest Service Roadless Areas webpage. The 2001 Roadless Rule includes 45 million acres of the 193-million-acre National Forest System — about 9.3 million acres of which is the Tongass National Forest. The rule established broad prohibitions on road construction, road reconstruc...
Alaska lost a higher percentage of its federal workforce last year than almost all U.S. states to sweeping Trump administration cuts, according to a newly published analysis by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. By the end of 2025, Alaska’s federal workforce was 10.5% smaller than it had been at the end of the prior year, according to the analysis, published in Alaska Economic Trends, the monthly magazine of the department’s research section. In the fourth quarter of 2025, after many workers accepted buyouts or early ret... Full story
Independent U.S. House candidate Bill Hill brought his campaign to Petersburg last week, fielding questions at a Q&A session hosted at the Harbor Bar and later sitting down with the Petersburg Pilot to make his case for unseating first-term Republican Rep. Nick Begich III. Hill, a lifelong Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and retired school superintendent from Naknek, is running as an independent in a race he now frames as effectively two-way, after Democrat Matt Schultz ended his campaign and...
Hunters, recreational users and people who just want to enjoy the quiet and lake view should be able to reserve the new U.S. Forest Service cabin at Little Lakes, near the Long Lake trailhead in the middle of Wrangell Island, by this fall. Construction started in May - a little later than planned, due to heavy snow at the site - and the Forest Service is looking forward to completion by the end of September, Tory Houser, Wrangell District ranger, said last week. The Áax'w Sáani Cabin - Tlingit f...
Saturday morning, bike racers began peddling the 24 mile course in Petersburg's first annual "Trekkin' Through the Tongass" bike race. 10 total participants raced through the Forest Service roads, five solo riders and one team. Petersburg Parks and Rec, Emergency Medical Services, Forest Service personnel, and friends and family of the racers came together to make the event a morning well spent. "I just couldn't be happier as an organizer. And then I was really pleased," Scott Burt, who...
Alaska U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski announced last week that her bill allowing five Alaska Native communities in Southeast Alaska to receive land entitlements passed out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The legislation, called the Alaska Native Landless Equity Act, would allow Haines, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, and Tenakee to form Alaska Native corporations and receive 23,040 acres each — or one township — of federal land. Those communities were excluded from the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA, when it... Full story
Petersburg Parks and Rec will host an approximate 24-mile bike race on Saturday, July 25. The race will both begin and end at Blind Slough, at 9 a.m., with check-in beginning at 8 a.m. Racers can either register as a relay team (up to 5 members) and split the race up, or register individually and do the entire race solo. "There's some areas with significant elevation gain, but if you break it up on a team, it makes it more doable or palatable," said Scott Burt, a Parks and Rec employee who...
Hello Market Friends To the Editor: We are thrilled to announce Bekah Gumz as the Market Manager of summer 2026! Bekah spearheaded The Market as the manager in 2024 and has participated as a vendor. She brings her interest in the arts and community to the role and we look forward to a wonderful season with her at the helm. Season details and Vendor Applications will be confirmed and available ASAP! This has been a particularly tough set up year for The Market Board and we appreciate your patience as we navigate the unpaid work of creating a...
Susan Wanberg, 77, passed away peacefully on May 3, 2026 with her family by her side. Susan was born on November 3, 1948, in Petersburg, Alaska, to Thomas Wanberg and Genevieve (Murray) Wanberg. She was the middle of three siblings, with an older brother, Daniel "Danny" Wanberg, and a younger sister, Laurie Dunham. Susan spent her childhood in Petersburg and graduated from Petersburg High School. She received a scholarship to attend beauty school in Eugene, Oregon, before moving to Juneau,... Full story
Walk downtown Petersburg during Little Norway Festival and you'll find artwork just about everywhere you look. It's in the galleries and on the walls of pop-up shows. It's on the parade floats. And it's in the storefronts of Petersburg-Wrangell Insurance, IGA, First Bank and Wells Fargo - where the students of Rae C. Stedman Elementary School have their work on display for anyone passing by. "[The festival] is quite a concentrated experience of visual creativity," said Firelight Gallery owner Ma...
This wolf swimming across Duncan Canal was seen last weekend by a passing vessel. The sea wolves of Alexander Archipelago are a distinct, smaller subspecies of gray wolves that have adapted to a coastal, marine-based lifestyle in the Tongass National Forest....
Petersburg juniors and seniors will get a crash course in adult financial life Friday morning when Tongass Federal Credit Union hosts its biennial Get Real Financial Reality Fair at the Parks and Recreation gym. The fair works like a high-stakes simulation game. Each student arrives at a registration table, picks a career and receives a corresponding income, then works their way around a circuit of staffed tables — buying a home, choosing transportation, selecting health insurance, setting up a phone plan and managing daily expenses — all while...
The U.S. Forest Service is bringing its Tongass National Forest Plan revision process to Petersburg this week, with an in-person community workshop scheduled for 5-7 p.m. Thursday, April 23, in the Borough Assembly Chambers. The event is part of a series of workshops running across 19 Southeast Alaska communities through early May — a rare opportunity for the public to provide direct input before the agency completes a draft plan. Revision coordinator Erin Mathews described it as “a bonus” engagement round not typically built into the feder...
Stephanie Pfundt has spent the better part of a decade building a career in classical music far from Petersburg - graduate school in Boston, performing across the East Coast, a produced opera in Massachusetts, a growing network of colleagues at some of the country's top music institutions. And now the award-winning Petersburg-born soprano is bringing a long-dreamed-of project to life and bringing chamber music home to Alaska. "This has been a project I've dreamt of for six years," Pfundt said....
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Begich visited Petersburg last week, holding a community meet and greet and sitting down afterward with the Pilot and the KFSK radio station. Begich, a former state senator from Anchorage, is running for governor on a platform centered on education funding, affordable energy, fiscal accountability, and a governing style he says is defined by dialogue rather than division. The meet and greet drew a roomful of Petersburg residents and discussion touched on...
A federal judge in Alaska has rejected a lawsuit that sought to reinstate a management plan that would allow heavier logging in the world’s largest temperate old-growth rainforest. The result leaves an Obama-era management plan in place, but it could be short-lived: The administration of President Donald Trump is already at work on a new plan that could allow more logging in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. In an order published Friday, Judge Sharon Gleason dismissed the lawsuit filed by Viking Lumber, Alcan Timber and the Alaska Forest Ass... Full story
U.S. Forest Service leadership is in flux as the agency takes sweeping actions in managing the 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest and making regulatory and administrative changes at all levels, Alaska-based officials reported last week. At the beginning of a four-day federal subsistence Regional Advisory Council meeting in Juneau on March 10, Tongass Supervisor Monique Nelson spoke about shifts in the agency since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025. Nelson said staffing on the Tongass is down 30% from this time last year....
I’ve spent years working alongside fishermen in coastal communities throughout the Tongass National Forest — and one thing has never changed: the people who depend on this forest for their livelihoods are the ones who understand it the best. That’s why I’m urging every Petersburg resident to submit comments on the Tongass National Forest Land Management Plan Revision before the deadline Friday night. The Forest Service has opened a 30-day public comment period on its notice of intent to revise the Tongass Land and Resource Management Plan in...
The U.S. Forest Service announced in the Federal Register Wednesday, Feb 18, that it is preparing to update the Tongass National Forest Land and Resource Management Plan to align with executive orders that President Trump issued when he took office last year. Also on Feb. 18, the Forest Service opened a 30-day public comment period on the planned update. The current Tongass plan has been in place since 1979, and the last major revision of the management plan for the 16.7-million acre national forest was in 1997. Amendments to the plan in 2016...
