KHNS - Haines

For years, a national database that tracks and maps landslides has had a major hole: Alaska.

That’s about to change. The state released a database this week that pinpoints where thousands of slides have happened in the past. The aim is to better understand the risk and prepare for the future.

It’s a crucial tool that will help communities, researchers and government agencies “start extrapolating if there are certain slope angles with certain soil types or rock types that are more susceptible than others,” said Jillian Nicolazzo, a geologist with the state’s Landslide Hazards Program.

Staff at the Alaska Department of Natural Resources created the inventory over the last three years by poring over more than 1,000 geologic reports, most of which date back to the 1950’s.

Those reports are from the state agency and the U.S. Geological Survey that were published while mapping parts of Alaska for reasons unrelated to landslides, like building roads or identifying mineral resources.

“If you want to know where to go mine a mineral, for instance, you need to know what the geology is, what kind of rocks might have that particular mineralogy that you’re looking for,” Nicolazzo said.

The reports were largely created using aerial imagery, which means they also capture where landslides have occurred. Nicolazzo helped extract that information from each report, categorize every slide, and compile the data in one spot.

“It’s a good step one, I think, to get it all in one place where it’s easy to find. And then people can start getting creative,” she said.

The new tool makes clear that Alaska is highly susceptible to landslides. It also highlights that certain types of landslides are more common in some areas than in others.

If you zoom in on Southeast Alaska, for instance, hundreds of blue dots appear throughout the region. They signify places where so-called debris flows have taken place. Meanwhile the Brooks Range, further north, is covered largely by pink dots. Those dots mark places where seasonal freeze-thaw cycles have triggered instability.

Something else that jumps out is that major swaths of the state at least appear to have no slides at all, including on the North Slope.

“It’s not that there aren’t any up there. It’s just that they haven’t been mapped yet,” Nicollazo said, noting that the state will ideally fill those gaps as it continues to map new areas.

The new inventory will feed into a national one that the USGS built using information from states. That inventory does currently include some limited information about Alaska.

But the new data will “pretty substantially change the map of Alaska that they have on their nationwide map,” Nicolazzo said.

The State of Alaska has filed criminal charges against Chilkat Valley resident Steve Kroschel two months after state agencies first raided his once-popular wildlife facility, near Haines.

The state Office of Special Prosecutions filed three felony and two misdemeanor charges against Kroschel on Thursday, alleging cruelty to animals. Each of those felony charges could result in up to a $500,000 fine and five years in prison, according to Alaska statute.

An arraignment has been scheduled in Haines for Oct. 8, the state said in a release. Reached by phone on Friday morning, Kroschel was in Central Russia and not yet aware of the charges.

“This is insane, absolutely insane,” he said. “My heart, my spirit, my mind, is all about taking care of life on Earth.”

The charges are the most recent development in a years-long battle between Kroschel and the state over the Kroschel Films Wildlife Center.

For two decades, the facility has offered thousands of visitors close-up views of wild animals. But a series of incidents and inspections over the years raised concern among state officials over animal welfare and human safety.

Those concerns, plus a lapsed federal license, eventually led to the revocation of Kroschel’s state permit. Then, in June, two state agencies executed a search warrant and seized dozens of animals as part of a criminal investigation.

Charging documents indicate the three felony charges are related to “inflicting severe or prolonged physical pain or suffering” on animals including a moose, a porcupine and a brown bear. The two misdemeanors allege Kroschel failed to care for animals including a porcupine and moose.

Kroschel remains adamant that the charges are unfair and inaccurate.

“Every animal that I’ve had that passed away was either examined in a necropsy that I requested, or the state, and it was either old age or something like that,” he said. “It was not because of negligence. But they’re trying to pin that on me as animal cruelty, that’s insane.”

Kroschel has spent much of the last two months in Russia, where he says he’s helping care for some wolf pups and two orphaned grizzly bear cubs.

The Office of Special Prosecutions did not respond to multiple requests for comment but said in a statement that the charges are “only allegations and are not evidence of guilt.”

It’s well documented by now that the marine heatwave that hit the Pacific Ocean in 2014 had devastating effects on Alaska’s marine ecosystem and commercial fisheries.

Now, scientists are uncovering long-term impacts on Alaskan killer whales specifically – a harbinger as marine heat waves become more frequent and severe with climate change.

“We’ve learned that females that were growing during those heat wave years grew to smaller sizes,” said John Durban, a senior scientist with the New England Aquarium in Boston who has been studying killer whales in the Gulf of Alaska for two decades.

“If you’re smaller as a whale, it means you don’t have as much fasting endurance, you can’t store as much blubber,” Durban added. “So if you go through lean times, you’re less likely to bring a successful pregnancy to term.”

Durban has been partnering with the Alaska-based nonprofit North Gulf Oceanic Society to monitor several hundred resident, salmon-eating killer whales in the Gulf of Alaska. He flies drones over the water, which capture images of the whales from more than 100 feet in the air.

Those images allow researchers to measure how individual whales are developing over time.

The North Gulf Oceanic Society has been monitoring killer whales in the Gulf for more than four decades. Durban said that work became particularly important in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, which correlated with an “unprecedented” number of whale deaths among two pods that were exposed to the spill, according to NOAA.

The resident killer whales gradually recovered over the years. Or at least they were recovering, before the 2014 heatwave known by many as “The Blob” hit the area, according to Durban’s research.

“We started seeing that this recovery that had happened over the previous three decades basically getting wiped out in the course of a couple of years,” Durban said.

The technology has delivered some good news. This summer, researchers observed three new calves, plus some slightly older ones that appeared to be healthy and growing as expected.

That could mean the population is on a path to recovery. But it doesn’t mean the Gulf’s resident killer whales are in the clear. The females impacted by the heat wave may be less resilient in the face of future events, such as heat waves or dips in the salmon population.

“We’re cautiously optimistic, but I think it does mean that there’s some vulnerable whales out there,” Durban said.

His latest scientific findings haven’t yet been published. But he said he’s working on several scientific papers that lay out evidence that the so-called blob is still impeding Alaskan killer whales’ growth and reproductive success today, a full decade later.

As he sees it, the findings underscore the importance of studying apex predators. They rely on species down the food chain, which means they can serve as early indicators of trouble in the broader ecosystem.

Durban emphasized that the findings also highlight something else: the threat of climate change.

“These marine heat waves that we’re starting to see in increasing duration and intensity around the world are having really important effects on marine food webs.”

Last year, the Klondike Road Relay got off to a late start when a tour bus crash delayed the race, forcing participants to skip the first few legs. This year, the event celebrated its biggest gathering, despite broken infrastructure and ongoing political tension.

Half party, half grueling mountain run, the 109-mile race stretches from downtown Skagway up the Klondike Highway, all the way to Whitehorse, Yukon. It retraces the steps of the gold miners, except these participants wear wild costumes, flashing safety lights and followed by support vehicles. One of those vehicles this year was an open trailer outfitted with a working hot tub.

Julia Frost from Juneau almost missed this year’s event. It was her first time running the relay. A mechanical issue on the Alaska Marine Highway System made the long journey even more challenging.

“The LeConte broke down so our three cars that we had booked could not come,” Frost said. “So we scrambled yesterday and found one rental car and one Turo for an obscene amount of money. But we were coming, we were doing this.”

So, how much did that broken down ferry cost Frost’s team?

“The Turo was $1,300 and the rental was like $1,200 — a lot,” Frost said. “I mean, we’re sharing it with 10 people, whatever. You know, it’s the whole experience.”

Angene Johnson from Anchorage didn’t so much want the Klondike Road Relay experience as much as her husband didn’t want to run two of the ten legs. The couple flew to Juneau and made it to Skagway before the ferry mishap. But Johnson worried about how they’d get home to their two children if the vessel wasn’t restored.

“We have not had any official communication yet, but we’re trying to start making some backup plans, just in case it’s not functional,” she said. “We have a number of potential worst case scenarios.”

Johnson’s teammate, Aaron Cravez, was less concerned.

“We got plenty of beer, so we’re good,” he said.

For Yukoner Kirsten Madsen, the race was about restoring a relationship.

“I definitely had some qualms,” she said. “As we were driving, I said this is the first time I’ve crossed the border since Trump’s election. And there have been other things that we didn’t do so far this summer because of that. But this race and the kind of friendly feelings we have about Skagway made it an exception for me.”

Madsen was part of team Tiger Fire.

“We’ve got some tiger ears and a bow tie and a tail that’s affixed in a weird, not quite accurate location, but it’ll work,” she said.

Race coordinator Ryan Sikkes says this is the biggest race ever at 2,000 entries sold. One team had to cancel because of the broken ferry.

Cruise ships are subject to federal rules that limit how much they can pollute the water with toxic chemicals that originate from their exhaust. Think: heavy metals and leftover fuel oil.

But federal data shows that a subset of ships violate those standards in Alaska hundreds of times a year. And regulators don’t appear to be doing much about it.

That’s the key takeaway from data released in August by the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, a Juneau based group.

Every year, cruise ships provide annual reports to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that disclose how many times they’ve discharged water that does not meet federal safety standards.

Aaron Brakel, a clean water campaigner at the organization, dug through reports from 46 operators in 2023 and 2024. All told, he found that 17 ships reported more than 700 violation days in Alaska in the two-year time frame.

Those violations came exclusively from vessels that use open-loop scrubber systems. Those systems suck in sea water to “scrub” toxic chemicals, including sulfur, from engine exhaust – and then dump it back in the ocean. That’s different from closed-loop scrubbers, which dispose of the discharge onshore.

“It’s troubling that even with these very weak permit standards, and very weak self-reporting requirements, that the ships with open-loop scrubbers are still reporting hundreds of violations of the limits every year,” Brakel said.

Open loop systems help cruise ships comply with international air pollution requirements that took effect in 2020. They do so by allowing ships to emit less air pollution while still burning cheap, heavy fuel.

That in turn has created a relatively new source of ocean pollution in Alaska that critics say has major implications for marine ecosystems.

“That can have a tremendous number of impacts on organisms in the marine environment,” Brakel said.

One study, published in 2021, found that exposure to gas scrubber discharge led to “severe toxic effects” for a tiny crustacean, known as a Pelagic Copepod, near the bottom of the ocean food web.

Gene McCabe heads the water division at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, which doesn’t regulate this type of discharge. He said federal standards for each pollutant were set using statistical data that suggests discharges that meet those standards shouldn’t harm people or marine life.

“Whenever we go beyond those water quality standards, we’re in a murkier area,” McCabe said. “We’re in a murky area because we can’t really say for certain that it is safe or that there will be damage or that there will be impacts.”

An EPA permit sets limits for pollutants including acidity, concentration of heavy metals and leftover fuel oil. But Brakel says violations of those standards have rarely led to federal enforcement.

“It’s a story of an orphaned permit, where these scrubber discharge requirements have never been enforced,” Brakel said.

In an emailed statement, the EPA declined to comment on enforcement matters. But the agency did note that it has taken enforcement actions against Carnival Corporation, including in 2017. That was after the company installed open-loop scrubbers on its ships starting in 2014.

By 2016, all but one of its Alaska vessels had violated federal acidity standards, according to state documents.

The company eventually paid a $14,500 fine and agreed to work toward addressing the issue, including by closely monitoring scrubber discharge pH and improving its scrubber systems.

But EPA also responded by loosening the existing standard while the company worked to remedy the problem – a policy Brakel said is still in place today.

McCabe, with the state, said he can’t speak to the federal enforcement strategy. But he emphasized that his department is still paying close attention.

“It is probably driving the reason why we are keeping an eye on scrubbers ourselves. Even though it’s not our permit, it’s still our water,” McCabe said. “And we want to at least have data where we can get it.”

Brakel, the conservationist, also took issue with the violation reports themselves. They don’t include when or where the violations took place. As he sees it, that keeps cruise towns from using the information to hold the industry accountable.

“If people can’t tell that this is happening, they have no way to respond to the industry to say,’ “Hey, what are you doing? Hey, these are our waters. Hey, this is our food,'” Brakel said.

The industry group Cruise Lines International Association did not respond to a request for comment.

Skagway is inching toward building a dock that Canadian mining companies could use to once again export ore from the local port.

The municipality of Skagway has been in talks with officials in Yukon, Canada for several years about building a new dock that would allow mining companies to get bulk minerals to market.

But doing so would require a handful of federal permits. Skagway’s borough assembly voted unanimously earlier this month to begin that process, which can take up to two years. During an assembly meeting last week, Yukon Minister of Economic Development Ranj Pillai said kickstarting the permitting process is an important next step.

“If an agreement is reached and approved by Skagway and the Yukon, the project will be able to move quickly to tendering and construction,” Pillai said.

Skagway will need to secure three federal permits for the project: one from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and two others under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.

The permitting process will cost upwards of $120,000 – and the Yukon government has committed to footing the bill. The job will be handled by contractors, including Washington-based KPFF Consulting Engineers.

Pillai emphasized during the meeting that moving forward on permitting does not mean the project itself is a done deal.

“A positive decision on this item will not bind the municipality of Skagway to future decisions on this project but will support our ability to meet potential demand in the near future,” Pillai said.

Demand for the dock would stem from Yukon mining projects set to come online in the coming years. During an interview earlier this week, Skagway Assembly Member Deb Potter nodded to a copper, gold, molybdenum and silver deposit that the Casino Mining Corporation is developing northwest of Whitehorse, Canada.

“It’s going to be a massive operation,” Potter said. “And they want to ship out of Skagway.”

There’s a long history of mining companies shipping ore out of the small, tourism-dependent town. The municipality previously had an ore loader on one of its docks that was most recently used by Minto Metals’ Corp. Minto used the facility up until March of 2023.

But the loader wasn’t in great shape, Potter said, and was removed when Skagway replaced that dock last summer.

Potter said the project could help diversify the local economy and provide a major financial boost, given that mining companies would pay fees to use the dock. That’s different from how it worked before, when the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway held a 55-year lease on the Skagway port.

“The benefit now that that lease has expired is, we’re just looking at bringing in a bunch more money,” Potter said. “That money goes to Skagway now, not to White Pass.”

Negotiations are ongoing between Skagway and Yukon officials on an export cooperation agreement.

Skagway will need to hammer out more details as the project moves forward. That includes making sure that exporting ore via the new dock would not lead to contamination in the area, which was a problem in the past. The assembly has already passed an ordinance that says the ore would need to come through the port in sealed containers, for that purpose.

Correction: This story previously misstated Ranj Pillai’s official title. Pillai was formerly the Yukon premier, but stepped down from that role earlier this year. He is currently the Yukon Minister of Economic Development.