Alaska News

State wildlife officials have closed a subsistence musk ox hunt near Kotzebue because of evidence of wanton waste of the animals. Area biologists say five cow musk oxen from the Cape Thompson herd were killed sometime during January or February of this year.

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According to Jim Dau a biologist with the state office in Kotzebue, wildlife officials were tipped off to the killings when two musk oxen bodies were spotted by census takers last month.

On further investigation, Wildlife Troopers found 5 more cow moose bodies that had apparently been shot, and left unsalvaged.

Dau says the illegal harvests exceeded the harvest quota for the unit. The hunt was scheduled to open July 1. The closure does not affect a similar musk ox hunt on the Seward Peninsula.

State officials are keeping an eye on anticipated flood conditions in the Interior of the state, but in the Matanuska Susitna Borough flooding is already starting. Borough officials say the ground is saturated with rain from last fall’s heavy storms, and that, coupled with the lack of snow this winter is causing conditions that give melting ice runoff nowhere to go.

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A Petersburg fisherman has recovered more than half of the hand-carved cedar paddles that were lost by the One People Canoe Society late last month.

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There are not great numbers of female rappers and Alaska Native female rappers probably number in the single digits. But one such artist is finding great success in the state and around the world as a woman with a passion for raising awareness of the struggles of Native people.

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A firearm found Tuesday  in a Valdez school forced every school in the Valdez City School District on lock down.  The Valdez Police Department is investigating as to how the weapon ended up in the school.

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Students from Gilson Middle School boarded buses after they spent part of their Tuesday afternoon on lockdown.  Around 2 p.m., a loaded handgun was found in the school forcing the Valdez City School District to take immediate action.

“Valdez High School and Herman Hutchins Elementary also initiated lockdown protocol right away. The Valdez Police Department was notified immediately. Students were safe at all times. All students were dismissed by classroom and safely accompanied outside of the building,” Gilson Middle School Principal Rod Morrison said.

Morrison said the students were dismissed at their normal times, but the buses were delayed for about 15 minutes.

Valdez Police Chief Bill Comer said the District followed the right protocol in handling the situation.

“We sent officers to all the schools just to make sure that everything was safe until we could understand what was going on and the nature and the scope of how the firearm got there. We’re working on that, we don’t have any answers right now and we’ll let you know when we can,” Comer said.

Officers spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the night searching for more weapons.  For now, the police aren’t releasing the description of the firearm or where it was found.  So far, there is no indication as to why a weapon was brought to the school.  Comer said despite the incident, no one is at risk.

We’ll likely have an officer around, but the teachers and the school administration is the best read for us on what’s going on, and there’s really been no sign of any kind of aggressive behavior or any kind of threats to the school. So there’s really – outside of just finding this firearm in the school – there’s nothing to indicate that the school would be unsafe,” Comer said.

Students are scheduled to resume classes at normal times.

The salmon fleet is getting ready to go fishing on Thursday morning on the Copper River Delta.

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According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, this year’s harvest projection for Copper River sockeyes is 1.3 million.  Fish and Game Gillnet Area Management Biologist Jeremy Botz says the numbers are about the same as last year

“I think last year was about 1.2 [million], so it’s right in there,” Botz said. “The previous year it was a little lower, but then it came in over forecast.”

Two million sockeyes were tallied from last year’s run.  While sockeyes appear to be strong this year, kings are expected to be low for the second straight year.

Fish and Game is projecting a harvest of 14,000.  The total harvest for 2012 was 12,000, well short of the 20,000 harvest projection.

Last year, low king runs force emergency closures across the state.  Botz says despite the low run, the escapement goal for kings was still achieved.

“We’ve been making that goal for the last few years, but it seems, generally speaking, other King Salmon runs are down around the state and they have been for the last few years and it seems like the Copper River salmon runs have also been quite a bit smaller than they have been historically,” Botz said.

The Copper River commercial salmon season is slated to begin at 7 a.m. Thursday for a 12-hour period.

Photograph of Pavlof steaming, with fresh lava flow on its north flank. Photograph taken by Brandon Wilson, PenAir pilot, at about 7 pm, May 13, 2013. Brandon was at about 10,500 feet, westbound from Sand Point to Cold Bay. Photo by Brandon Wilson.

Scientists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory were able to get clear views of two restless volcanoes today. The images show that both Cleveland Volcano in the Aleutian Islands and Pavlof Volcano on the Alaska Peninsula are oozing lava.

Cleveland started erupting earlier this month, with six separate explosions sending up multiple ash clouds. The volcano has been quiet since early last week, but the new satellite imagery shows a lava flow coming out of the southeastern side of the crater. The flow is about 100 yards wide, and a mile long.

Scientists at the Observatory first detected activity at Mount Pavlof Monday morning, but weren’t able to visually confirm an eruption. Monday night, a passing PenAir pilot took a photo that shows a fresh, quarter-mile-long lava flow on the volcano’s northern flank, and steam emanating from the summit.

While the aviation alert level for both volcanoes remains at orange, neither has interfered with air traffic. Only Pavlof has a real-time monitoring network, while Cleveland is monitored remotely, using infrasound sensors and satellites.

Patient Dawn Dillard talks with palliative Dr. Linda Smith at Providence Hospital in Anchorage. Photo by Annie Feidt, APRN – Anchorage

Doctors deal with death all the time. But they still struggle to tell a patient they’re dying or help them live with a terminal disease. A specialty called Palliative Care is trying to change that. It’s been around since the 1990s. But a lot of people, even in the medical profession, still don’t know it exists.

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Dr. Linda Smith walks into a room at Providence hospital ready with a stethoscope and a huge grin. She teases that Dawn Dillard’s spiky hair recently resembled a faux hawk.

Dillard found out she had uterine cancer a year ago, on her birthday. By the time she got the diagnosis, the cancer had spread to her liver and lymph nodes. Her oncologist gave her a year to live. The 57 year old beat those odds. But now her kidneys are failing. After the laughs are over, Smith sits down on the edge of Dillard’s bed, leans in, and starts talking about a procedure Dillard will have.

Smith is a palliative care doctor, a specialty that is growing rapidly in the U.S. The idea is to help patients cope with a terminal or life altering illness. And unlike hospice care, it is not offered only in the final months of life. Smith works on pain management, coordinating care and even does some counseling. Her goal is to improve her patients’ quality of life. She calls it “whole person care.” Dillard thinks that’s accurate:

“I can’t even say how much she’s helped me. Just little things. You know, showing me things like breathing techniques. Sort of like mediation, just ways to focus on things that are positive and happy rather than focusing on your sickness and how crappy you feel.”

Two years ago, Linda Smith was a very different kind of doctor. She worked in the Emergency Room, where the goal was to quickly stabilize a patient and move on. But two decades into her career, she started to question how she was caring for patients at the very end of their lives. She remembers putting patients on breathing tubes, and hearing family members say things like, ‘I know dad didn’t want this, but we’re just not ready to let him go.’

“I started to have a lot of regret about doing things to people that were painful and uncomfortable and were prolonging their suffering. And if I only had the time to sit down with the family, I probably wouldn’t be doing these things.”

Reporter: And did you know about palliative care?

Smith: “I’m laughing. The answer is no. I didn’t know. And in fact when I started looking into palliative care, I got online… and low and behold I saw that we had a palliative program here at the hospital I was working at.”

In the summer of 2011, Smith enrolled in a one year palliative care fellowship at Providence. It wasn’t easy at first. She wanted to roll up her sleeves and start helping right away. Her mentor, Dr. Steven Rust wanted her to wait. He remembers it this way:

“When she started, she would literally say to me, and she’s the only person that calls me this, she’d say, Boss? Put me in the game. And gently I hope, I just said, ‘let’s wait a little bit longer.’”

Smith had a lot to learn. She was a bad listener. And she was busy. As an ER doctor, sometimes she didn’t even sit down to deliver devastating news:

“I can remember saying to families things like, ‘I’m sorry there’s nothing more I can do.’ And I realize now that sounds like abandonment to many people when you say you can’t do anything more. And the reality is I may not be able to do anything more to the patient that will make them survive, but there’s a lot more that I can do. I always can do more.”

A lot of what Smith does is talk to people. She doesn’t advocate for or against treatment, but she wants patients and their families to understand their decisions. If a doctor puts in a breathing tube, for example, that may extend a patient’s life, but they won’t be able to eat or talk. If they die with a tube in, the family will miss hearing their last words. So now Smith sits down for hard conversations and looks patients and their family members right in the eye. Earlier this year, she was called in to consult with the wife of a patient who was dying:

“When I entered the room, the wife said to me, ‘I know who you are.’ And I said, ‘oh. ok’And she said, ‘I don’t want to talk with you and I don’t want to like you because you’re here to talk about death and dying aren’t you?’”

Smith had a short conversation with the woman, and left her a book on difficult end of life choices. She went back to visit her the next day:

“And she said, ‘you know, I so tried not to like you. And what you had to say. And I really realize that we need to have this discussion now, don’t we?’ And I said, ‘when you’re ready, we’re ready to have that discussion.’ and she said, ‘I’m ready now.’”

Smith was planning to return to the Emergency Room. But interactions like that one persuaded her to stay in palliative care. Now she works more and makes less money. Some days, she wonders if she’s crazy. But then she gets to visit a patient like Dawn Dillard. Back in her hospital room, Dillard asks Smith if she really needs to have yet another procedure.

Smith gives Dillard a hug and plants herself at an empty desk at the nurses’ station outside her room. She calls Dillard’s other doctors and realizes the second procedure isn’t really necessary after all. So instead of staying another night in the hospital, Dillard and her husband are back home by the end of the day.

This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes APRN, NPR and Kaiser Health News.

The U.S. Senate is expected to a pass a sweeping bill authorizing dozens of water projects on Wednesday.

A provision is included that Alaska’s senators say could ease the way to an Arctic port.

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When voters head to the polls next year, they could be faced with questions on oil taxes, the minimum wage, and the use of recreational marijuana. But one thing that won’t be on the ballot is a referendum on a controversial bill concerning cruise ship waste. APRN’s Alexandra Gutierrez explains why.

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Now that it’s summer, cruise ships carrying thousands of passengers loom over Juneau’s waterfront. Just a few months before, the showers, the sinks, and yes, the toilets aboard these massive vessels were a top concern for lawmakers. They passed a bill rolling back parts of a citizen’s initiative governing wastewater standards.

But not everyone was happy with that legislation.

“We were surprised, shocked, disappointed, and we felt betrayed by the whole thing.”

That’s Chip Thoma. He’s the president of Responsible Cruising for Alaska, and he was one of the lead organizers of the cruise ship initiative that passed in 2006.

On top of implementing a head tax, the citizens’ initiative also required cruise ships to meet wastewater standards at the point of discharge. Basically, any water they released had to be fully treated. That portion was struck down by the legislature in February, with the cruise industry arguing that those standards were impossible to meet.

Thoma thinks that change ignored the will of voters. Even so, he doesn’t plan on taking the issue back to the ballot box. He says his group ultimately chose not to go ahead with a referendum repealing the wastewater discharge bill.

“We decided it’d be extremely expensive, extremely hard to gather the signatures in 90 days for our initiative.”

By his estimate, a campaign would have cost his group at least half a million dollars. Thoma says they would have needed to launch a huge voter education effort, especially since there are so many other issues that could also be on the ballot.

“It’s a lot simpler if people know that it’s a ‘giveaway’ of oil and there should be recreational use of marijuana — things like that. Those are clear-cut issues. This one on rolling back the water standards or making them comply with the copper standards, it’s just a little too complex for most people to address.”

Thoma says that his group is now focusing its attention on a lawsuit concerning the enforcement of an emissions control area off Alaska, which would require vessels to use more expensive low-sulfur fuel. The State of Alaska filed the lawsuit against the federal government last year, on the grounds that “there is no environmental justification” for the area and that such policy requires congressional approval.

As far as how the wastewater discharge bill has been implemented, not much has changed so far.

“This season, the cruise ships are operating under exactly the same permit they’ve been operating under since 2010,” says Michelle Bonnet Hale, who directs the water division at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. “So, the only difference this season is that we were able to extend that permit.”

If the wastewater discharge bill hadn’t passed, cruise ships would have needed to renew their permit if they wanted to release waste in Alaska waters. The permit would have essentially been issued under the same legal framework, but there would have been a public comment period, and there’s the possibility that cruise ships would have seen the permit tweaked.

Hale says that the major effects of the legislation will be seen over the next couple of years, as her division considers authorizing “mixing zones,” where waste from cruise ships would be diluted. DEC is currently examining the impact such mixing zones would have on water quality and fish habitat.

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Kali, the orphaned male polar bear cub that has been kept at Anchorage’s Alaska Zoo, spent Tuesday afternoon waiting patiently in his carrier for boarding on a UPS cargo jet bound for the East Coast. Kali is heading to his new permanent home at New York’s Buffalo Zoo.

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A herd of musk oxen was seen on the frozen Kuskokwim River recently. It’s a sign that the population is expanding in the region.

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Two Bering Sea groundfish catcher-processor vessels have been accused of tampering with the scales used to weigh their harvest. As KUCB’s Stephanie Joyce reports, the alleged violations carry hefty penalties for the vessels’ parent company, American Seafoods.

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As federal agencies are beginning to furlough employees because of sequestration, the long-term unemployed in Alaska are about to see a reduction in their unemployment benefits.

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Paul Liedberg, recently retired from the USFWS, finds time for “citizen scientist” work around Dillingham. KDLG photo

Some invasive species of bark beetles, if they make it to Alaska, could pose a serious threat to our trees and forests. In ten years of surveys, none have been detected, but state and federal forestry officials are coming to rely on volunteers to help monitor for them across the state. KDLG’s Dave Bendinger reports on one such volunteer who’s keeping an eye out the beetles around Dillingham.

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The former site of the Redbout Lake Cabin, photographed a day after it was destroyed in a landslide on May 12, 2013. (Kevin Knox photo)

Two people are safe after a massive landslide destroyed the cabin they were camping in Sunday morning (5-13-13) near Sitka.

An air taxi pilot rescued the pair from a debris field estimated to be 20 feet deep. All their belongings were buried in the slide. Their dog remains missing.

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Kevin Knox, 41, and his girlfriend Maggie Gallin, 28, were staying at Redoubt Lake, a popular Forest Service recreation cabin about 15 miles southeast of Sitka.

The cabin is located at the head of the valley, and is surrounded by steep mountain slopes and rocky cliffs that climb 4,000 feet above the surface of the lake.

Knox says the mountainside behind the cabin was showing signs of instability the previous evening.

“There’d been a lot of rock activity from this slide that was off back behind the cabin, all night on Saturday night. I was just kind of watching it. It was just small rocks kind of tumbling off and making a lot of racket.”

The Redoubt Cabin was located at the north end of the lake, about 15 miles southwest of Sitka.

The next morning, Knox and Gallin went out on the lake in the rowboat provided by the Forest Service, to do a little fishing. The mountainside came down as they returned to shore at about 11 AM.

“We had just tied the boat up and Maggie was in the cabin, and it just let loose — a huge piece off of the side of the mountain. I yelled for Maggie to run, to get out of the cabin. We started running down the beach.”

Redoubt Lake is a glacier-carved fjord. It’s just a few feet above sea level. What passes for a beach there is a narrow strip of pebbles. Knox and Gallin did not have much room to make their escape as old growth timber, mud, and rock began to press down the valley.

“We were running along the lakeshore and got thrown into the water, trees kind of toppling on top of us. We both popped up three or four feet from each other. Then we got our wits about us and just tried to hunker down.”

Knox and Gallin were soaked to the skin. The cabin — and all their belongings — were under a debris field Knox thinks is about 20 feet deep. They wrung out clothes and tried to shelter as best they could until their scheduled pick up three hours later.

Kevin Knox and his Border Collie, Luna, at the Redoubt Lake Cabin site before the slide. Luna possibly escaped with Knox and Gallin, but remains missing. (Maggie Gallin photo)

They also spent time calling for Luna, Knox’s ten-year-old Border Collie.

“She was in between Maggie and I as we were running down the beach. I think she thought it was a little bit of a game because I was shouting, Run run!, Go! and she jumped up and nipped at my sleeve. So I know she was right there. I kept laying in bed last night thinking, How did we get through it, and she didn’t.”

The couple flew back to look for Luna on Monday morning, but there was no sign of her. Because of the instability of the slide area, the pilot chose not not to land the float plane. The slide originated 600 feet up the mountainside and is about 200 yards wide. The lake’s inlet stream — Knox says — is beginning to carve a new channel through the debris field.

Knox is grateful to Harris Air, and pilot Mark Hackett in particular, for putting his plane down and looking for them on Sunday in marginal conditions. Knox says he signalled Hackett by waving his bright yellow raincoat.

West Flank of Pavlof Volcano/Credit: AVO – Chris Waythomas

Alaska’s most active volcano appears to be erupting. Mount Pavlof, on the Alaska Peninsula, started rumbling Monday morning, according to Alaska Volcano Observatory scientist-in-charge John Power.

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“This type of pattern — weak seismic activity, along with a great deal of heat at the summit — has characterized past eruptions of Pavlof, and we believe that’s what’s occurring now,” Power says.”

Power says while scientists haven’t been able to get a good look at the volcano, he suspects it’s oozing lava, or perhaps even shooting jets of it into the air in what’s called a stromboli fountain. So far, the Observatory hasn’t detected any ash clouds associated with the eruption, although in the past, Pavlof has produced significant plumes.

“In 2007, during that eruption, there were ash clouds up to 15-18,000 feet, and certainly we’ve had much larger ones out of Pavlof in the past, although this type of activity we’re seeing today is not uncharacteristic of Pavlof — to have lower level, less energetic eruptions of lava as well.”

Unlike Cleveland Volcano, which started erupting last week, Pavlof has a real-time monitoring network, which Power says the Observatory will be keeping a close eye on in the days and weeks to come.

“In the past, eruptions of Pavlof have gone on for four, six, eight weeks, and if this follows the same pattern, it may go on for some time like that, or it could be a very short lived event.”

King Cove and Cold Bay are the nearest communities to the 8,000-ft volcano.

A fatal accident that took the life of a bulldozer driver near Stephan Lake Lodge north of Talkeetna on Friday occurred only hours after a state Department of Natural Resources team had flown over the site on an inspection tour. The work is being done to build an airstrip to support studies on the Susitna Dam project.

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Alaskans who make an annual habit of digging for razor clams on the Kenai Peninsula may have noticed something odd over the last few tears – there just doesn’t seem to be as many clams on the beaches as there used to be. Scientists have also noticed the trend.

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The federal government is predicting a normal wildfire season in Alaska this year, but it could be later than normal.

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The nation as a whole is below normal for fire activity thus far this year. That’s because most early fires rage through the Eastern U.S.

Frequent precipitation here in the East has downgraded the threat.

In parts of Alaska, the late snowfall is having the same effect.

“As we move through May, there’s below normal conditions in Southern Alaska because of the late snowpack,” Jeremy Sullens, an analyst with the government’s National Interagency Fire Center, said.

Sullens says the snow pack will melt away fairly soon, but it could delay the typical start of the fire season.

Last August, a fire south of Fairbanks torched more than 40,000 acres.