KUAC - Fairbanks

Barrett Flynn and two friends were on an annual Thanksgiving multi day backcountry ski trip in the White Mountains National Recreation Area north of Fairbanks when they saw the bear. Flynn says they were skiing between Crowberry and Lee’s public use cabins when his dog suddenly ran to his side.

“He came and stood right next to me, which is fairly abnormal for him. Usually means there’s an animal,” he said.

Looking through frosty glasses, Flynn says he spotted a furry brown figure he at first assumed was a moose or a large wolf. He says his friends skied up from behind, and together they confirmed the animal was a grizzly bear.

“I see the hump and I was like, for sure, that’s a bear,” Flynn said.

Flynn says the grizzly appeared young and thin, and it moved toward them “curiously.”

“Not running or doing anything,” he said. “But I would say briskly walking towards us.”

Flynn says the three stood together, and the bear came within about a 100-150 feet before it “turned around and scampered away.”

Flynn guesses the whole incident lasted about two minutes. He says the experience has made him think about winter bear protection — the encounter could have gone worse if Flynn had been alone or his dog wasn’t so well behaved.

“If I’m going solo, like on winter trip — absolutely bringing a gun with me,” he said. “If I’m going out with like one other friends, probably a gun. If it’s like three to four, like maybe not.”

Flynn reported the bear sighting to the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the White Mountains Recreation Area. BLM eastern interior assistant field manger Levi Lewellyn says the grizzly encounter is likely an anomaly.

“You have the norm, and then you have an outlier,” he said. “So the bear might have been an outlier, or maybe more bears are awake. We don’t know.”

Lewellyn advises that non-motorized travelers make noise, and he says bear spray is an option for winter protection as long as the canister is kept warm.

“I’d put it inside my coat,” he said. “I would carry something. You know, if you’re not going to carry a bear spray, maybe even a firearm to protect yourself. Just something that you’re proficient with and you’re trained on.”

Although very unusual, there have been some deadly winter bear encounters over the decades, including a starving grizzly that fatally mauled a woman and her baby outside a remote cabin in the Yukon Territory in November 2018.

More than a month after announcing that Kroger and Albertsons grocery stores will merge, the corporations have no explanation for how it will affect Fred Meyer and Safeway customers in Alaska.

The corporations announced the merger agreement Oct. 14, posting online video statements from their CEOs.

“The combination of Kroger and the Albertson companies is a tremendous opportunity to bring together two highly complementary organizations,” said Kroger Chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen, who promised efficiencies and a “world-class shopping experience.”

But Alaskans are worried about jobs and the downsides of such a merger. Kroger runs Alaska’s Fred Meyer stores, and Albertsons runs Carrs Safeway stores.

“And what that means when they say they’re getting more efficient, which is how they sort of sell this, is they mean they’re firing people,” said Graham Downey, a consumer advocate with the Alaska Public Interest Research Group. “It means you had two grocery stores and now you have one. So, you have half as many employees, but all the same customers.”

The two grocers are among Alaska’s largest employers. Currently, Safeway stores are unionized and Fred Meyer stores are not. The United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 1496 has been negotiating with Fred Meyer but has not commented on that or the merger.

Nationally, Kroger is the nation’s second-largest supermarket chain and Albertsons is the fourth-largest grocer.

Vivek Sankaran, the current CEO of Albertsons, said the new company will upgrade stores and expand the brands they sell.

“Together we’ll be able to create a premier omnichannel retailer and provide even more personalized service to customers across the country,” Sankaran said.

If the deal is allowed, Kroger would buy Albertsons for $24.6 billion. The new company would be as big as Walmart and Amazon, with nearly 5,000 stores serving 85 million households across the U.S.

It would also have a huge database of national consumer behavior data, which some analysts are calling the real prize, because it could be used to generate billions in revenue. Just one grocer would run the companies’ many regional chains, such as Harris Teeter, Ralphs, QFC, King Soopers, Vons, Safeway, Jewel Osco, and Acme.

But in Alaska, where the supply chain is vulnerable, consumers care more about food security.

There are some independent grocers in Alaska, niche stores like the Roaming Root in Fairbanks, IGA stores and the member-owned cooperative in Fairbanks. Smaller chains include the Alaska Commercial Company with 33 stores serving rural communities, and the emerging Three Bears chain with 11 stores. There are also national wholesalers like Costco and Walmart, which has 10 stores in Alaska — not all of which sell groceries.

But the 12 large Fred Meyer and 35 Carrs Safeway stores are the major competitors in the Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Kenai-Soldotna and Palmer-Wasilla areas. They serve more Alaskans in those population centers than any other retailers.

In many Alaska towns, like Fairbanks, the Safeway and Fred Meyer stores are across the street from each other. Downey said if the merger goes through, one of those stores would close.

“And then you have market power — the power to set the prices,” Downey said. “You don’t have the competitor across the street making sure you don’t have a crazy price on milk or cucumbers. You can pretty much name your price and people are gonna have to pay it.”

Repeated calls and emails to Kroger and Albertsons corporate offices over the last month were not returned.

The merger will take some time and is planned for early 2024. But first, it has to pass antitrust standards. Attorneys general in Washington state, Illinois, California and the District of Columbia have now filed suits to prevent various aspects of the merger, including the fear of an illegal monopoly that will hurt consumers in the long run.

Two Alaska legislators have written a letter to the Federal Trade Commission explaining Alaska’s unique shipping situation, asking the FTC to investigate the potential for price hikes following the Kroger-Albertsons merger.

Downey said the FTC has begun to examine the deeper ramifications of such mergers.

“The federal regulators are starting to look at market power,” he said. “Prices might be less in the short term, but in the long term what kind of economy are we creating here? Are we creating a diversified economy of lots of local businesses that’s keeping money circulating within our state, or are we making a tiny number of shareholders very rich?”

AKPIRG is asking consumers to sign a letter to Alaska’s congressional delegation urging them to oppose the merger.

On the merger website, the corporations say that until the transaction closes, Kroger and Albertsons will remain separate, independent companies.

A new scientific paper looks at predator reduction efforts in a large area of the Interior and South-Central Alaska and finds they have not increased hunter moose harvest over several decades.

The recently published research looked for longterm correlation between predator control and moose harvest in Game Management Unit 13. One of the study’s authors, retired Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist Sterling Miller, says the study’s finding runs counter to a widely held perspective.

“There’s a lot of support in the legislature, and indeed the Alaska public and particularly the Board of Game, in the concept that killing more predators results in killing more moose,” he said. “And what our paper sets out to do is examine whether or not that’s true or not, and we decide based on our kind of analysis that it isn’t.”

Miller says the study used about 40 years of state harvest data for Unit 13 to analyze the efficacy of using wolf and bear reduction to increase moose hunter success.

“What we can infer from our data is that the historical harvest of predators has not resulted in increased harvest of moose,” he said.

The analysis undermines the premise of bear and wolf reduction programs authorized under the state’s Intensive Management Law by the Board of Game, including in Unit 13. Current state biologist Tom Paragi, who is in the process of evaluating the state’s intensive management programs, says that predator reduction appears to have been successful in Unit 13 over a shorter timeframe.

“The fact is the moose harvest did increase substantially, almost doubling from about 2003 to 2015, coincident with the implementation of wolf control and simultaneously brown bears had been reduced because of liberalized harvest regulations,” he said.

But Miller says the moose harvest fell back again post-2015 despite ongoing predator control. He underscores the value of taking a long-term perspective.

“If you look at short time periods, you may see some things that look like there’s a relationship, but that’s cherry picking the data,” he said.

Miller authored the study with fellow retired Fish and Game biologist David Person and retired University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Terry Bowyer. Their article, titled “Efficacy of Killing Large Carnivores to Enhance Moose Harvests: New Insights from a Long-Term View,” is published in the peer reviewed open access journal Diversity.

The director of the recently-released movie “Till” studied film at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Chinonye Chukwu produced her first feature film in 2012 when she was a student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her professor, Maya Salganek, said she came to UAF after finishing college elsewhere, to pursue writing.

“And (she) had taken some classes and ended up on a film set with me,” Salganek said.

Salganek’s students were making the film “Chronictown” in the winter of 2006.

“It was a tough shoot, and it was being outdoors all the time,” Salganek said. “And then there was sort of the, you know, it’s the boys club a lot of times in film. And I remember very clearly Chinonye and I having a real heart-to-heart at a tough moment, just saying, ‘Don’t let other people define you. Don’t let their version of you stop you from being the filmmaker you wanna be.’ And from there she decided, ‘Yeah, I don’t wanna be a screenwriter, I wanna be a filmmaker.’”

Chukwu went on to graduate school, returning to UAF in 2011 to produce the feature film “AlaskaLand” about the Nigeria to Alaska immigrant experience.

In 2019, she made “Clemency” about a prison warden dealing with executions and won the dramatic grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the first Black woman to take the top prize.

Now Chukwu has directed “Till,” about Mamie Till-Mobley and her efforts to get justice for her 14-year old son, Emmett Till, who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.

Salganek has already seen the movie here in Fairbanks.

“There was one reporter whose review of it I read who said, ‘You need to see it, and you need to bring a teenager,’” Salganek said. “I think that was really insightful. I sat in the theater holding the hand of my own 14-year-old … and knowing how (far) we’ve come as a nation and yet how far we still have to go is very self-evident in the film.”

Speaking in an interview with National Public Radio’s Tonya Mosley this week, Chukwu described how her choices as a director for the film focused on justice, rather than the crime.

“A key was to show him in a humanizing way through Mamie’s emotional point of view, as opposed to the camera taking on a voyeuristic lens and objectifying him,” Chukwu said. “And so that’s why when Mamie’s looking at Emmett’s body in the funeral home, his body is obstructed and we’re just preserving the private, intimate moment that Mami is having in silence with her child. And then when we do start to see parts of his body, it’s seeing Mamie’s loving embrace of him.”

Salganek worked with Goldstream Cinema to hold a question and answer session after the film’s regular 3 p.m. showing on Sunday. She invited guests from the NAACP to talk about the way Emmett Till’s killing and his mother’s quest for justice framed the civil rights movement.

“We’ll be able to watch the film together in solidarity and in community,” she said. “It’s a tear-jerker, so being able to watch it with people is a powerful effect.”

Activists blocked a road leading into the Nenana Totchaket Agricultural Project for two days last week.

Members of Alaska-based Native Movement set up the blockade after work began on a road leading into the agricultural project, located in the Interior just west of Nenana. The activists want state officials to reconsider their plans for both the road and agriculture project.

“The state is proposing to expand a road through Nenana traditional territory, hunting and fishing grounds,” Fairbanks Native-rights advocate Enei Begaye said in a Facebook livestream from the scene on Oct. 31. “And it’s gotten to the point now where construction is about to start, and the tribe is out here blockading the road.”

Begaye is executive director of Native Movement, an Alaska-based nonprofit that promotes social justice and sustainability through Indigenous environmental practices. Members of the organization and their local allies say the state hasn’t fully consulted with local tribal and community members. And they say it’s moving too quickly to develop the 140,000-acre Nenana project.

So they blocked the road leading into the project just as the contractor apparently was about to begin work.

State officials say they’ve been planning to develop the land for about 40 years and have held several public meetings during that time. They say it’s now time to move ahead on the project, which they say will improve Alaska’s food security. The state Department of Natural Resources auctioned the first 2,000 acres of agricultural land this summer, and it’s planning a second sale within the next couple of years.

But local tribal and community members say the state’s approach to developing the agriculture project is a form of industrialized farming that will deplete the land and disrupt its ecology. They say the state should include traditional farming practices and uses for the land that don’t have such a large environmental footprint.

“The tribe asked Native Movement to organize and physically blockade the bridge before any equipment could be moved across to the road,” said Lindsey Maillard, an environmental justice coordinator with Native Movement. She and fellow members of the group and others from the Nenana Native Association and Village Council, participated in the blockade, along with members of the community.

Maillard said they wanted to prevent construction equipment from entering the area. But local residents were allowed to trap, cut firewood and other traditional uses.

“Anyone could go through, but we were just not wanting the equipment to make it to the other side,” she said.

State Transportation Department spokesperson Danielle Tessen said that’s not what the workers were doing.

“Our construction team was not on-site,” she said, “meaning, we weren’t crossing the bridge.”

Tessen said the activity the protesters saw was preparation for beginning work on the project by Brice, the Anchorage-based contractor that was awarded the $5.8 million contract to improve the 12-mile road into the Totchaket. A second phase of the project would extend the road another 19 miles to the Kantishna River

“Crews are mobilizing equipment,” she said, “and we’re working around the construction site at our material sites. Which is what we would do at the start of any construction project.”

Tessen said DOT and contractor representatives decided last week to delay moving ahead on the road project after meeting with local residents and tribal members to talk about their concerns.

“We’ve been taking time to really reflect on that conversation,” she said. “And we will be hosting another listening session that will be open to the public.”

Tessen said the meeting will be held later this month, and DOT’s still working on when and where it’ll happen.

Maillard said Native Movement would welcome more talks, and she assumes local tribal officials would be, too.

Nenana Native Association First Chief Carolyn Ketzler wasn’t available Thursday to comment.

Tessen said officials with other state agencies involved in the project also may be invited. That likely would include the Department of Natural Resources, which is overseeing the agriculture project. DNR officials didn’t respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Alaska Air National Guard crews out of Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson rescued six snowmachiners Monday who were stranded on a glacier in the Eastern Alaska Range near Isabel Pass, just north of Paxson. The Air Guard crew then medevaced one of the snowmachiners to an Anchorage hospital for treatment of injuries.

Alaska State Troopers launched the rescue operation after they got a report at around 7:15 p.m. on Monday that a group of six people on snowmachines were stranded in the mountains east of milepost 200 of the Richardson Highway. That’s about 75 miles south of Delta Junction.

According to a Trooper report, the SOS message from the snowmachiners said they were out of fuel and not dressed for the weather and that one of them was going into hypothermic shock.

Troopers then contacted the Alaska Rescue Coordination Center at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, which dispatched an HC-130 plane and HH-60 helicopter to rescue the group.

“The conditions up in that area were relatively clear, so good for flying. Except there was no natural illumination — there was no moon,” says Alaska Air National Guard spokesperson Alan Brown.

He said when they got to the remote area, the C-130 crew fired an illumination flare so they could get a better look around. He said then they spotted the snowmachiners on the College Glacier, about four miles east of the Richardson Highway.

“They were able to hoist the injured one up immediately,” Brown said, “and then our pararescuemen were able to guide the remaining five snowmachiners to a safer spot on the glacier, where the HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter was able to land and pick them all up.”

The Trooper report says the helicopter brought the five uninjured snowmachiners to the turnout off the Richardson Highway at milepost 197. Brown says the helicopter then took the injured member of the group to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage for treatment.

Troopers were unable to provide the names of the rescued snowmachiners.

Brown said Guard members from the 176th Wing’s 210th, 211th and 212th Rescue Squadrons participated in the rescue.