Sorted by date Results 151 - 175 of 247
Suzanne Wood, co-founder of Mitkof Highway Homeowners Association, on Sept. 1, sent a letter to the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority seeking records for the 11 August 2016 Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority’s Resource Management Committee Meeting and Executive Session and for the 24 August 2016 AMHTA Board of Trustees Special Meeting. The documents, according to the letter, “are necessary for us to ascertain how the Trust could transition from the ongoing and forward-moving AMHTA-US Forest Service administrative land exchange process to s... Full story
tWRANGELL – The City of Wrangell is applying to the United States Forest Service to give a historic boat a new home. The M/V Chugach was one of 11 ranger boats operating in the state during the first half of the 20th century. Built at the Lake Union Dry Dock and Machine Works in Seattle in 1925, the vessel was assigned to Cordova for work in the Tongass and Chugach national forests. It remains the last of its kind in the USFS fleet, continuing service until last year. The boat was restationed in Petersburg in 1953, it served from there more t...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) – A bear that mauled two cruise ship wilderness guides during a hiking excursion in Alaska attacked so quickly that there was little time to defend against the animal, the CEO of the cruise ship company said. The attack occurred after the guides and a group of hikers from the cruise vessel Wilderness Explorer rounded a “semi-blind corner” and found themselves between the bear and her cub, UnCruise Adventures CEO Dan Blanchard told the Juneau Empire in an interview published Tuesday. “I can’t express enough about how rapid...
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – A brown bear mauled two wilderness guides who were leading a hiking excursion in Alaska after the group came between the female animal and her cub in the Tongass National Forest, state troopers said Friday. The guides a man and a woman were rescued by the Coast Guard after being injured Thursday on a trail on Chichagof Island about 30 miles north of Sitka in southeast Alaska. Troopers said the bears left the area after one of the victims used pepper spray. Authorities said they have no plans to hunt down the bear, and t...
WRANGELL – Events for the 7th Annual Bearfest are already underway, with the first two workshops and symposium presented yesterday at the Nolan Center. The annual activity was started in 2010 by Sylvia Ettefagh, an outfitter with Alaska Vistas and commercial fisherman. Drawing a number of notable speakers and participants each year, Bearfest serves to highlight the local bear population, particularly that found at nearby Anan Wildlife Observatory. About 30 miles southeast of Wrangell, the o...
Overwhelming generosity To the Editor: We, as a family, continue to be overwhelmed by the generosity and outpouring of support and love from Petersburg, our family, and our friends. Thank you. It does make a difference. I cannot say that we are doing okay, but we are surviving and slowly, more accepting of our loss. A very bright light in our lives has gone out, but we have many more. Joey and Josh, our families, friends, folks from Electra, Texas, and the amazing community of Petersburg. All of you lighten our lives, and are helping us...
July 1, 1916 – Captain A. W. Thomas, general manager of the Alaska Herring and Sardine Company, at Port Walter, was a business visitor in town. He states that they are confident of having a prosperous season. They have not started the work as yet of putting up the sardine herring, but are canning kippered herring and preserving the fish in other fancy styles. Twenty-three girls and twenty-two men are now employed at the Port Walter plant. They have a large quantity of herring corraled. Captain Thomas visited the Petersburg shrimp plant, and h...
Visitors will soon be able to request the last four daily permits for the Anan Wildlife Observatory this summer. Requests will be made by filling out a form at the front desk of the Wrangell Ranger District office. Individuals listed on the form must be physically present at the time of request, with the exception of family members. Weekly requests will be collected by Mondays at 4:30 p.m. and awarded on Tuesdays by noon. If several requests are for the same day, a lottery for awarding reservation space will be held on Tuesdays at 9 a.m. If...
April 15, 1916 – A new course of procedure in the matter of changing master's papers, which will be of great convenience to Petersburg's boats, is being arranged by the customs officials at Juneau, according to word brought from there by K. L. Steberg this week. The plan as stated by Deputy Collector Garfield is as follows: Owners of boats at Petersburg that wish to change papers without making the trip to a port of entry they will be permitted to have the master's oath taken here before a notary public. The notary is then to mail the papers t...
State Rep. Jonathan Kreiss Tomkins and Alaska Department of Revenue Director Ken Alper gave a state budget crisis presentation for community members two weeks ago. They used colored blocks of wood representing different revenues and expenditures balanced on a large scale to provide a visual representation of the state's budget deficit and the continued gutting of our state's savings should the legislature not create a more sustainable budget for the state. On the revenue side of the scale sat a... Full story
Ned Pence, 78, passed away January 15, 2016 peacefully at home. Ned was born on July 21, 1937. He grew up in Mackay, Idaho, with his parents and four brothers. In 1955 he left Mackay to attend the College of Forestry at the University of Idaho to study Forest Management. He received his B.S. degree in Forest Management in 1959 and married Arleen Westfall, the love of his life in Salmon, Idaho. After graduation he worked at many jobs as a professional forester in Washington, Idaho, Alaska, and... Full story
Permits will soon become available for those wanting an opportunity to visit Anan Wildlife Observatory this summer. Known primarily for its abundance of bears, the observatory was identified as Wrangell’s top attraction by a survey conducted by the city last summer. According to Forest Service records, Anan draws between 2,400 and 2,800 visitors each summer. These travelers contributed around $1.5 million to the local economy in 2014, making up more than a third of all tourism-related spending. Starting Feb. 1 at 8 a.m. the public will be a...
WRANGELL - Members of the community were invited to the Wrangell Ranger District Office on Jan. 13, to meet and greet with some of the minds behind the latest proposals for the future Tongass management plan. The United States Forest Service is amending the current Land and Resource Management Plan for the Tongass National Forest, which is the largest in the country. Covering 16.7 million acres in Southeast Alaska, 3.4 million acres of that has been set aside for resource development. The...
The U.S. Forest Service announced Dave Zimmerman as the new Tongass National Forest Petersburg District Ranger. Zimmerman will arrive from Medford, Ore. where he served as the Timber and Special Forest Products program manager for the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest. "My current national forest is 1.8 million acres spread across five districts, so working on a district of similar size to my former forest will be exciting," Zimmerman said in a press release. "This will necessitate continued...
ANCHORAGE (AP) — A federal agency has concluded that a southeast Alaska wolf affected by logging and hunting does not merit placement on the endangered species list. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday that Alexander Archipelago wolves on Prince of Wales Island and neighboring islands do not warrant additional protections. “Although the Alexander Archipelago wolf faces several stressors throughout its range related to wolf harvest, timber harvest, road development, and climate-related events in Southeast Alaska and coastal Brit...
Laura L. Nelson, 70, went home to heaven on November 17, 2015, in Cape Coral, Fla. after battling pancreatic cancer. She was born on March 14, 1945 in Gore, Ohio to Dolly and Hazel (Breeze) Hartman. She grew up one of five siblings in rural East Clayton, Ohio, graduating from Nelsonville York High School in 1963. Following a cross-country move with her two children, she met and married Lester Nelson of Eugene, Ore. in 1978. Enjoying a career with the U.S. Forest Service that spanned decades,... Full story
Sealaska has shamed themselves To the Editor: Last week in Petersburg, Alaska's newest environmental group 'The Greater Southeast Alaska Conservation Community,' (gsacc.net) gave a slide show on the latest industrial logging now taking place on state land, Sealaska land and other land grant interests. The slideshow consisted of images from 'Google Earth' satellite overviews of Sealaska lands on the Cleveland Peninsula, and also on P.O.W.'s Election Creek and other examples. Needless to say, the push to privatize land from the Tongass National...
In a media release last month, the United States Forest Service Alaska Region announced it is proposing a system-wide cabin rental fee adjustments for the Chugach and Tongass national forests. The two forests are managed by 13 ranger districts, which together maintain 184 cabins year-round for public use. For visitors and residents alike, public cabins become the hub for a variety of recreational trips, from nature walks, family gatherings, hunting and sport fishing to subsistence use. Cabins are most regularly booked during the summer and...
Last month, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) agreed to withdraw their plans to harvest over 28 million board feet from designated sites on Mitkof Island by use of helicopters. The proposed logging sites, located south of Petersburg, were stretched out among just over 4,100 acres. The withdrawal comes after five environmental groups brought a lawsuit against the USFS to block the sale. Greenpeace, Alaska Wildlife Alliance and Greater Southeast Alaska Conservation Community (GSACC) were among the environmentalist groups responsible for the...
Three concerned Petersburg and Kupreanof residents spoke out against a resolution being considered as part of last Thursday’s Borough Assembly agenda. Though three Assembly members—Mayor Mark Jensen, Bob Lynn, Nancy Strand—voted in fav or of the resolution, four votes were needed for it to pass. The resolution would have called for the governor to petition for an appeal of the Ninth Circuit court’s late July ruling which overturned the Tongass National Forest’s exemption to the Roadless Rule. The Wrangell Borough and Ketchikan Gateway B...
An ordinance changing the language and fee structure of cemetery services will go before the Assembly at today’s regular meeting. The changes are both to reflect Borough incorporation and to establish fees to place an urn in one of the 320 burial niches of a new columbarium erected at the cemetery last month. The new proposed fee for urn placement is $175, with an additional $75 charge for placements occurring on weekends or holidays. The proposed fee for burials—opening and closing a grave—would be raised from $650 for an adult and $300 for a...
Sorry, there is no resemblance To the Editor: Can Alaskans trust the government of British Columbia to act honestly, responsibly and openly as B.C. authorizes and proposes to manage a series of mines (up to six of them) in the watersheds of some of the greatest, wildest and most productive watersheds in North America? Is BC “basically the same” as Alaska, as Mines Minister Bennett claims, when it comes to process and regulation of industrial activity? There is no question B.C. has a “mine approval” process, but make no mistake, it is vastly...
The 8th Annual Rainforest Festival kicks off next week and those attending the festival are going to be offered diverse opportunities, including watching an impactful documentary about a basket weaver, a field trip to listen for bats and wine-making with local ingredients followed by wine tasting. Things get started on Labor Day with the 2nd Annual Rainforest Run Half Marathon. Participants will be faced with the task of completing the 13.1 mile long course. Organizers are hoping to increase... Full story
August 14, 1915 – The fast and commodious launch Trigby will leave Petersburg next Monday for Cape Fanshaw, Port Houghton, Pybus Bay, Tyee, Warm Springs Bay, Kuiu Island points, and Kake. Such is the announcement of S.L. Hogue, who this week purchased the Trigby from Conrad Dahl. It is Hogue's intention to make a trial trip to the points above listed, and if it appears that business will justify the enterprise, to make weekly return trips, carrying passengers, mail, and freight, and also to take orders for and deliver merchandise to people a...
