KHNS - Haines

A controversial mineral exploration project near Haines has been in limbo since its biggest investor backed out late last year. Now, the company that took full ownership wants to step back, too, further complicating the project’s future.

American Pacific Mining Corp. confirmed last week it plans to distance itself from the zinc, copper, gold, silver and barite exploration site, which has long fueled debate over what a mine would mean for the local environment and economy.

The company first bought the so-called Palmer Project in 2022. But American Pacific CEO Warwick Smith said last week that the company now plans to “transact” on the project, which he indicated could mean selling it to an Alaska-based company.

“We’re in the midst of having those conversations and looking to move that asset to a new home and take equity back from it,” Warwick said during a virtual roundtable posted to the company’s YouTube channel.

The plan comes after Dowa Metals and Mining, a Japanese smelting company, gave up its 70% stake in the project late last year, leaving American Pacific with full ownership.

At the time, American Pacific said the deal came about because the two companies had different objectives for the project. And Smith touted the deal as a “transformative transaction” for the company that provided a “clear path forward” for Palmer.

But now the project stands to change hands again. Warwick said the company has decided to prioritize a different, Montana-based exploration project over Palmer. He emphasized that the latter still has a lot of potential but will require a major investment in the interim.

“It’s going to take money to do that. And it’s Alaska, it’s outside of our wheelhouse, if we’re completely honest,” Warwick said, adding that he thinks there are companies better suited to move the project forward.

For years the project has been a source of controversy. Proponents say the mine would bring much-needed jobs to Haines along with an infusion of investor dollars. Local tribes and conservation groups, meanwhile, have raised concerns because the exploration site sits near the village of Klukwan and a creek in the Chilkat watershed, which supports a run of all five species of Pacific salmon.

Kimberley Strong, who serves as vice president of the Chilkat Indian Village, said the local ecosystem for millennia has served as a “food bowl” for Tlingit communities – and today is a key pillar of the local economy, referring specifically to the fishing and tourism industries.

“This has been a sustainable society for thousands of years,” Strong said. “And there’s no reason to jeopardize that for a short term extraction process.”

During the roundtable discussion, one participant asked if Palmer would ever realistically be developed into a mine amid permitting challenges and local dynamics.

Peter Mercer, the president of Constantine Mining LLC, which operates the project locally, said Palmer could still become a mine. He nodded to other successful mines in Southeast Alaska – such as Greens Creek Mine near Juneau – and said the region boasts a “tremendous amount” of mineral potential.

Also working in the project’s favor, Mercer said, is the executive order President Donald Trump signed in Januaryfocused on “unleashing Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential.”

“Yes, this can be done here,” Mercer said. “You have to incorporate the discussions around salmon, the landscape, the environment and the culture. You have to incorporate all of that into your planning, but that’s what you have to do for all these projects in this day and age.”

It remains unclear what a sale would mean for Constantine. A potential buyer could, for example, acquire both the company and the project – or opt to bring in its own operator.

A Constantine spokesperson said the project is in a “transitional period” and that there will not be a drilling program at the exploration site this summer.

By high tide on Monday, the sky was overcast and spitting rain. Birds circled cacophonously above the Chilkoot River, and sea lions bellowed downstream. Haines resident Sonny Williams was there, too – posted up on the bridge that straddles the river nine miles outside of town.

They were all there for the same reason: hordes of small black fish wriggling through the current below, a telltale sign of spring. Williams pointed as a school made its way upstream. In one swift motion, it spiraled back and merged with another school that was headed back toward the ocean.

“They’re going up and down, up and down,” he said. “Their bodies are acclimating to the freshwater.”

Williams is 73. He has lived in the Chilkat Valley and harvested hooligan here all his life. The fish — also known as eulachon, or saak in Tlingit — return to the area to spawn each spring. For millennia, the Chilkoot and Chilkat Tlingit people have harvested them and extracted their oil, both to trade and to keep.

Some years, the run is thick. Others, it’s lighter or never comes at all, depending on the river. Why exactly that happens remains uncertain, as does a long list of other questions about the fish, which experts say is understudied and little regulated.

That’s why, about two decades ago, Williams started keeping his own records — and advocating for a more robust data collection effort.

“Nobody was recording when they were coming. What days they were coming on the Chilkat side, and coming over here,” he said. “And I was doing that.”

Williams is still taking notes. He said the information is crucial for protecting the fish for future generations.

But now, so are a handful of researchers across the region. In 2010, the Chilkoot Indian Association launched a study to start tracking the run, prompted by tribal members who wanted more concrete data about how the populations were faring from year to year.

“Runs further south were dramatically declining,” said Meredith Pochart, a fisheries biologist for the tribe. “It’s not really a coincidence that also in 2010, the year we started this study, was the same year that the populations in Washington, Oregon and California were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.”

The study first focused on the Chilkoot River. But Pochart said it became clear that to really gauge population trends, the study needed to branch out. So in 2017, the tribe expanded the project to include the Chilkat, Taiya and Katzehin, among other rivers.

So every day at this time of year, Pochart heads to the Chilkoot to take samples. On a windy, cold morning earlier this week, she knelt down to fill some bottles. Later, the samples would be sent to an out-of-state lab to analyze the DNA that hooligan have shed in the water.

That data helps track the size of the run, when it arrives and how long it lasts. But even 20 years in, it’s not a huge sample size – especially when compared to generations of observations by Tlingit people.

“This is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of years of traditional knowledge of monitoring these species,” Pochart said.

But there are still plenty of questions about the fish. Pochart said those include how old they are and if they spawn more than once. Another gray area is why they spawn where they do each year – though she and other local experts say factors including human activity and environmental changes can play a key role. 

“Obviously the fish have an idea of what’s going on, probably way more than we do,” Pochart said. “We don’t know.”

Williams echoed that point, and added to the list of unknowns.

“One of the things they don’t know is where they go, and how come they’re a species of fish that come and spawn and go back out to the sea,” he said. “Herring come and spawn and they go back. But salmon don’t do this. Salmon come to spawn and they die.”

While Pochart finished taking samples, a flock of gulls took off from a nearby bank. Steller sea lions huffed in the distance. It was an impressive show of the hooligan run’s immense ecological value to the area.

“This is like, the buffet is open,” Pochart said. “Eulachon are a forage fish. They’re the basis of a food web. And so it’s what supports all of this other life.”

The sea lions forage on eulachon just before the females give birth. If they can’t find the nutrient-dense fish at this time of year, it can thwart their ability to nurse their young.

Which is why it’s also important to monitor other species’ activity. Stacie Evans is the science director of the Takshanuk Watershed Council, a local nonprofit that partners with the tribe to track the run on the Chilkat River. Every day when she heads out to get water samples, she also does a wildlife survey.

One day last week, the Chilkat appeared calm when Evans arrived to do her survey. But then she set up a high-powered scope and scoured the opposite bank, where she said the water is deeper and draws more hooligan. Evans estimated that more than 50,000 gulls were there to feast before migrating further north.

“They are going bonkers, all over the estuary here,” Evans said.

“It’s just like life coming back to the valley, in such a big way,” she added. “I’ve really never seen anything quite like it anywhere else, and I’ve worked in a lot of cool places.”

Back on the bridge over the Chilkoot, the fish were coming in thick. Williams grabbed his bucket, made his way down to the riverbank and swung his throw net.

It was heavy with fish when he pulled it back out – enough to fill his small, blue cooler in one go. Over the next few days, he said, he would fillet and smoke just the males. He doesn’t like dealing with the females, which ooze eggs during processing.

Then he’ll eat one hooligan a day, or maybe more if the mood strikes, until he runs out – hopefully, around the same time next year.

A federally funded program meant to help Alaskans lower both their energy bills and planet-warming emissions is set to roll-out this summer after months of uncertainty.

Its ultimate aim is to defray the cost of installing electric heat pumps, which can heat and cool homes in place of fossil-fuel based systems – sometimes at a lower cost.

Under the program, lower-income households will get $8,500 to put toward a heat pump. Higher-income households will get either $6,000 or $4,000.

“We do think that for households that have lower income, below 80% area median income, that the incentive should cover the full cost of the installation,” said Cady Lister, a senior energy advisor at Southeast Conference, which is helping manage the grant.

The grant was awarded to Southeast Conference and Alaska Heat Smart, a Juneau-based nonprofit. The two groups say the money could help install more than 6,000 air source heat pumps in households that primarily use fossil fuels or wood for home heating.

Lister said households will be responsible for paying for the installation up front and will be reimbursed afterward. She also emphasized that a newly installed heat pump does not mean households should remove their existing heating systems – especially in Alaska.

“On very, very cold days, it could be that you need to, or want to, turn your Toyo stove or your boiler back on,” she said. “But most if not all of your heating needs could be met with the heat pump.”

Months of uncertainty

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency first awarded the money to the two Alaska nonprofits last year, aiming to help thousands of coastal and Southeast Alaska households install heat pumps. The target area includes dozens of communities across the region, including Haines and Skagway.

But then President Donald Trump took office in January and halted funding for federal contracts, loans and grants. That included a $38.6 million grant for the heat pump program.

“Our funding was frozen twice,” said Lister. She added that the funding has been available again for the last month and a half.

Organizations across the country experienced a similar chain of events after a federal judge blocked the funding freeze and the Trump administration rescinded the original memo that ordered it.

Lister said the freeze resulted in a lot of uncertainty around the program – and a slight delay. But now that the money is available, the group is racing to finalize program requirements and other details.

Within the next month, they plan to release more information about how households can apply and which contractors they can use.

“We’re working hard to catch up now so that we can get this program out on the street,” Lister said.

Just over the Canadian border from Haines and Skagway, Ranj Pillai runs the show. He’s the premier of the Yukon territory’s government – and the territory’s minister of economic development.

So he has strong feelings about President Donald Trump’s trade war, which the White House says is meant to boost U.S. manufacturing and supply chains.

“We’re seeing just this absolute desolation of the U.S. markets because of a decision that really never had to be made,” Pillai said in a recent interview with KHNS. “We think there’s other ways to strengthen both the U.S. and Canadian economy to make sure there’s more jobs in manufacturing back in North America.”

He also has a request for his American neighbors.

“We also want to make sure that the folks in both Haines and Skagway are reaching out to anybody they can to send the message that this is incredibly damaging,” Pillai said.

Residents and leaders in both towns have taken steps to do so, including a rally in Skagway where participants left animated voicemails for lawmakers and a recent “Canadian Neighbors Appreciation Weekend” in Haines.

The last few months have seen a chaotic rollout of Trump’s international trade policy. Earlier this year, for example, Trump announced – and then paused – 25% tariffs on goods imported from Canada, China and Mexico. He later threatened to impose so-called “reciprocal tariffs” on many U.S. trading partners – sending markets into a tailspin – before pausing some of those, too.

But some of the policies have stuck, including 145% import taxes on China and 25% tariffs on U.S. imports of steel, aluminum and cars. Pillai is particularly worried about the latter.

“One major component can have 10 crossings through the border,” he said. “And every time that part crosses the border, in the current context, you’re going to have tariffs put upon it. So it’s going to really increase the cost of both U.S. vehicles and Canadian vehicles.”

Pillai said it’s clear the policies are coming from Washington, D.C., not Alaska, Haines or Skagway. And he said that Alaskans’ support for Canada has been widely appreciated.

That includes testimony against the tariffs from Skagway assembly members at the state legislature. And the Haines assembly gave Mayor Tom Morphet the green light in February to write the mayors of Whitehorse and Haines Junction, voicing the importance of cross-border relationships.

Still, there’s a growing movement in Canada to boycott the U.S. in response to the tariffs – and in response to Trump’s repeated comments about the country becoming the fifty-first state. The Yukon government, for its part, has generally avoided advising Canadians how they should approach visiting or doing business in Alaska.

“We want to make sure that our kids continue to play sports with each other. We want to make sure that these events like the Buckwheat are as successful as they always are,” Pillai said, referring to an international ski race that draws Alaskans and Canadians every year. “But we’re not going to give a direction to an organization.”

At a higher level, Canada has responded by imposing some $155 billion in retaliatory tariffs, Pillai said. Some territories, including the Yukon, have also responded by directly targeting Trump advisor Elon Musk.

That includes eliminating rebates for Yukoners who purchase Teslas, shifting government communications off Musk’s app, X, and considering how to reduce the territory’s reliance on another of his businesses: Starlink.

“There will be some times that the government, in the current situation of dealing with forest fires and floods and being in remote areas, will still use some of the remote units,” Pillai said. “But over time, I think our big push is to have a Canadian solution.”

The backcountry ski and snowboard community has long dubbed Haines “the Dream Stop” for the rugged terrain and pristine conditions it offers athletes.

Less than a year from now, the area will have the chance to live up to that moniker again during the Freeride World Tour, a competition of the world’s top riders.

The event will mark the first time the tour has visited Alaska since 2017. Tour CEO Nicolas Hale-Woods said that’s a major win for the tour and the athletes it draws — many of whom have dreamt about competing in the region their whole lives.

“Alaska, and Haines in particular, is the ultimate free ride destination,” Hale-Woods said in an interview. “And we’re very, very happy to put that stop on the calendar once again.”

The tour announced the Haines stop earlier this week. It will be the fifth in a series of six competitions where skiers and snowboarders fly down ungroomed slopes, chasing a world champion title.

The athletes have to start and end at a certain point on the mountain. But otherwise, they’re free to choose their route. Using binoculars, judges score and rank participants out of 100 points.

“They’re not allowed to ride and ski the mountain before their competition run, which makes it very difficult,” Hale-Woods said. “They have to basically memorize their line and show control, fluidity and jumps.”

After a three-year run in Haines between 2015 and 2017, the event shifted to other locations because it cost too much money to get competitors and support crews to Southeast Alaska — and into the mountains via helicopter, Hale-Woods said.

This year, the event has funding help from outside sponsors, including outdoor goods company Yeti and apparel brand Peak Performance. But the Haines borough also plans to kick in at least $75,000 to make it happen and is looking for ways to potentially contribute another $25,000, said Haines tourism director Rebecca Hylton.

The funding was allocated during last year’s budget cycle and then reapproved this year. Hylton said the money will come from a funding bucket meant for tourism and economic development.

In a funding pitch to the borough, she estimated the event could generate more than $400,000 in local spending, providing a boost to the town’s economy in the off-season, when it needs it most.

All told, Hylton said the competition is expected to bring more than 100 people to town for about a week, depending on the weather.

“They’ll be staying here in town, and a few people up the highway as well,” Hylton said. “And there should be a really positive economic impact to our community, to different sectors of our community.”

Dozens of fire chiefs, city planners, tribal natural resource managers and other officials from across Southeast Alaska were set to gather last month for a second annual landslide conference.

But that didn’t happen.

The event’s organizers cancelled the gathering amid uncertainty over federal agencies’ ability to interact with regional landslide efforts moving forward. Another factor: President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February limiting travel by federal employees.

“Our state partners were pretty insistent that the federal representatives really needed to be there,” said Ron Heintz, a senior researcher with the Sitka Sound Science Center, which helped organize the conference.

“It would be very difficult to make plans and do things in the future without any sort of certainty of what the government landscape was going to look like in the next 12 months or so,” he added.

The two-day conference, which was scheduled to take place in Sitka starting March 11, was meant to pool landslide-related knowledge and strategies for managing the risk. Attendees should have included representatives from federal agencies like the National Weather Service and U.S. Geological Survey.

The gathering was born out of a broader, regionwide effort dubbed the Southeast Alaska Landslide Information and Preparedness Partnership. It’s made up of representatives from Southeast communities all seeking to better understand and prepare for landslide risk, which is increasing with climate change.

The region has seen four fatal landslides over the last decade, including one that killed two people in Haines in 2020.

Lisa Busch, who runs the partnership as a contractor for the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, said in-person gatherings like the conference are crucial.

“This is where the exchange of knowledge happens, so the communities can tell agencies and scientists what they’re concerned about, what they’re anxious about, what their needs are,” Busch said. “And the agencies and the scientists can talk to community members about what they know.”

Heintz echoed that point, noting that communities across the region are wrestling with a slew of similar challenges. Among them: modeling when and where landslides might happen, determining how to respond when they do occur, and making zoning and land-use decisions that could put fewer people at risk.

“These are all really difficult and complex questions, and that’s what we discuss in these, with this group of people that meet,” Heintz said. “And it’s really important that you do that face-to-face.”

Derek Poinsette has participated in the regional partnership as a member of the Haines borough planning commission. He said these types of events ensure landslide-related research and planning efforts aren’t siloed in different communities.

He added that Haines has seen benefits from the effort, including a state-funded landslide risk analysis published earlier this year. The borough had that opportunity due to connections made through the regionwide partnership.

“Not every community has one of those, so we’re kind of special in that regard,” Poinsette said.

Beyond the conference, Busch said federal agencies have played a key role in helping gauge landslide risk in Southeast, including by installing monitoring equipment. That work will likely be affected, she added, if federal employees can’t get back to the region.

“It’s kind of like you’re hooked up to an IV or a blood pressure machine, and a nurse can’t check on you,” Busch said. “What’s the point in gathering the information?”

In the meantime, she said, the risk isn’t going away.

“Landslides don’t care who runs the government,” Busch said. “We’re still going to have to deal with landslides here.”