KUAC - Fairbanks

A Trump administration effort to limit protections for endangered species’ habitats could have outsized consequences in Alaska. That’s according to environmental scientists who warn of “severe” implications for ecosystems that could be targeted for resource extraction, if the proposed change goes through.

On Apr. 17, federal wildlife management agencies proposed redefining “harm” under Section 9 of the Endangered Species Act. The Act says it’s unlawful for anyone to “take” an endangered species, with the word “take” meaning to harass, pursue, wound, kill — or to harm.

For almost half a century, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service have understood “harm” to mean any “significant habitat modification or degradation” that results in death or injury to protected wildlife. The new definition would exclude habitat — “harm” would only apply to actions that directly harm the protected animals.

Splitting protections for species from their habitat

It’s a step in the Trump administration’s broader plan to roll back environmental regulations to remove barriers from energy and resource development — one that many environmental scientists in Alaska say they’re unsettled about.

Falk Huettmann, a University of Alaska Fairbanks wildlife biologist who studies seabirds, said he’s worried about what comes next.

“The implications of this are pretty severe,” he said.

Huettmann added that habitat conservation is imperative to the survival of endangered species across the United States — and, especially, Alaska.

“For instance, the boreal forest is a big, big chunk that we have in Alaska,” he said. “There’s a lot of it left, it’s pretty pristine in some areas. Old growth forest — we have a lot of it. That includes Tongass and others.”

Huettman said his worst fear is that some habitats will be thrown into what he calls “a legal vacuum,” giving developers carte blanche to do whatever they want, short of directly harming an endangered species.

Retired environmental consultant Torre Jorgenson offered another hypothetical outcome.

“If a company only has to worry about taking out a Steller’s eider or a bowhead whale, they can easily avoid harming or killing an animal directly,” he said. “But if they alter or damage the habitats through their development process, they don’t have to be concerned about that under this rule.”

A key source of conservation research could be lost

Jorgenson performed environmental impact surveys in the Arctic for about 40 years, making sure big oil and gas developments up north weren’t interfering with local vegetation, permafrost and bird habitats.

He said that over his long career, not all companies were hostile to that process — some even shared important conservation research they gathered through impact studies.

“Some companies were very proactive on their work,” Jorgenson said. “BP spent tens of millions of dollars on environmental studies gathering information for their environmental assessments. It actually benefited environmental management having all that data, and they produced a lot of data through their studies.”

But if the regulations change, he said that relationship could also dissolve.

Huettmann, the biologist, is awaiting the change with a mix of frustration and apathy. He said the Endangered Species Act, even in its original form, catalogued imperiled species less thoroughly than other lists, like the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. But this move, Huettmann said, could pull out any teeth the act had left.

He added that Alaska will shoot itself in the foot if it spoils its natural beauty, which draws in people from all over the world.

“Alaska owns a very high percentage of protected areas, like national parks,” Huettmann said. “People want to see about the wonders of nature and of the environment — if you get away from that and turn it into a mining state where everything can be done, everything can be drilled, then we lose that market.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service received over 200,000 responses to its call for public comments about the proposed change, which closed on May 19. In an email, a Department of Interior spokesperson pointed to the Federal Register Notice and declined further comment.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Tuesday that it will defund a program that catalogs decades sea ice data in Alaska. Scientists say the program’s termination could create a gap in climate research at a time when polar ice is dwindling to historic lows.

Rick Thoman, a climate specialist at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy in Fairbanks, is among them. On Tuesday, just a couple hours after he got the news about the program cuts, he was taking a tour group past an art installation about sea ice at the International Arctic Research Center.

The installation is in a long hallway at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, covered with vertical stripes in shades of blue and red. Thoman explained that bluer stripes mean the temperature was cooler than the 100-plus year average, while red stripes were warmer than average.

At the end of the hallway, the stripes stop. The years from about 2000 until the present day blend together, forming a solid block of scarlet.

A guest asked Thoman what changed, and his answer was simple: less ice means higher temperatures.

“A lot of what’s driving this is the collapse of sea ice,” he said. “Both decreased extent and the thinning of sea ice — and, of course, increasing greenhouse gasses.

That long-term Arctic temperature data is safe, but the United States’ premier catalog of sea ice data — NOAA’s sea ice index — isn’t. The organization announced earlier this week that it will decommission the program, and the index stopped updating on May 6.

That development came as a shock to climate specialist Rick Thoman, but it comes after many other NOAA cuts this year. According to an internal budget document, the Trump administration is seeking to end nearly all of the agency’s climate research.

The termination of the index is one chapter in a long series of cuts the White House has made — or proposed — in recent months. February saw hundreds of probationary jobs slashed. And April saw a request for sweeping cuts to research funding.

It also follows an Alaska Climate Research Center report that said Arctic sea ice has been at or near record low levels since December, with 58,000 square miles fewer than the previous record low, which was set in 2017.

Scientists and barges left without a map

Hajo Eicken, director of the International Arctic Research Center at UAF, said the loss of the ice index could greatly impact the lives and livelihoods of coastal Alaskans. For example, it could make it harder for people to know the best time to schedule the barges that resupply communities off the road system.

“All of that type of activity relies on the sea ice information that gives you a sense of what’s normal,” Eicken said. “Like, what can we expect for a particular year?”

And Thoman said the scientific community will mourn the loss of the sea ice index, which he uses for his own research all the time. He said he used fresh ice data from the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort seas every day, which allowed him to track how things are changing relative to previous years.

Thoman said other global sea ice monitoring programs, like those in Europe and Japan, could pick up the slack. But the loss of the NOAA-funded sea ice index, which he calls “the gold standard,” will sting.

“When people ask me, ‘What does the sea ice concentration look like in the Bering Sea? What’s the ice extent now compared to last year in the short term?’ The answer is going to be: ‘We don’t know,'” he said.

NOAA officials did not respond to a request for comment by press time Wednesday.

Forced forfeiture of a plane used to transport a six-pack of beer to a dry village does not violate the excessive fines clause in the U.S. Constitution. That’s according to an Alaska Supreme Court opinion published Friday.

Pending further appeals, Friday’s decision means Fairbanks pilot Kenneth Jouppi must give up his Cessna 206 as punishment for ignoring beer loaded onto a flight routed to the dry village of Beaver in 2012.

“Obviously, we’re quite disappointed in the opinion,” Robert John, Jouppi’s attorney, told KUAC Monday.

But he says the case may not be finished yet.

“The odds are good that we’re gonna be seeking review in the United States Supreme Court,” he said. “So we gotta muster our resources and proceed forward.”

Getting a case before the U.S. Supreme Court is far from automatic. The court agrees to hear about 1% of the appeals they receive.

At the state level, though, the case has already been ping-ponging between trial and appellate courts for years.

More than a decade ago, a Fairbanks jury found Jouppi, owner of KenAir, LLC, guilty of a misdemeanor bootlegging charge. Evidence presented at trial showed Jouppi had helped a passenger load cargo that contained about 72 beers — mostly in boxes — onto the plane.

The plane didn’t leave the airport, though, because Alaska State Troopers had been on scene watching the incident with a search warrant prepared.

Court proceedings never determined whether Jouppi was culpable for all the alcohol. But at least one six-pack was in a plastic bag, and the prosecution successfully argued that Jouppi must have been aware of it.

Jouppi was sentenced to three days in jail. He and his company also both had to pay a $1,500 fine and got three years of probation, but district court trial judge Patrick Hammers determined that the state could not take the plane as part of the Fairbanks pilot’s punishment under Alaska law.

The state challenged that conclusion, and the Alaska Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s ruling, sending it back to the trial judge for further consideration.

Then that sequence repeated again – this time on constitutional rather than statutory grounds – as the trial and appellate court again didn’t see eye to eye when it came to the plane’s confiscation.

After the case appeared in the appeals court a second time, the parties petitioned to the state Supreme Court, which was tasked primarily with deciding whether forcing Jouppi to forfeit the $95,000 plane counts as an unconstitutionally excessive fine.

That question requires the judges to consider whether a given fine is “grossly disproportional” to the gravity of an offense.

In Friday’s opinion, the judges invoked alcohol’s connections to crime, health disorders and death.

They wrote, “Within this context, it is clear that the illegal importation of even a six-pack of beer causes grave societal harm. This factor strongly suggests that the forfeiture is not grossly disproportional.”

Friday’s opinion also differs from earlier rulings from the Alaska Court of Appeals in that it says the case does not need to be sent back to the trial court for additional fact-finding.

But John said he thinks the judges miscalculated.

“In my opinion, if this isn’t an excessive fine, I don’t know what is,” he said.

At an evidentiary hearing, Jouppi said he had retired from flying and would likely sell the plane if it were returned to him, court documents say. According to Alaska Department of Commerce filings, KenAir was created in 2008 and dissolved in 2014.

Spokespeople for the Alaska Department of Law did not immediately respond to questions Monday about why they stuck with the litigation for 13 years and what will happen to the plane if it is forfeited.

People living in the northern part of the state will have a chance to watch rockets soar through aurora-lit skies for the next couple of weeks.

Starting on the night of March 24, the research rockets will launch intermittently from the Poker Flat Research Range, about 35 miles from Fairbanks. Scientists will be observing the launches from sites all over the Interior and the Arctic — from Utqiagvik to the north, to Eagle in the east, all the way down to Fairbanks.

It’s all part of a NASA experiment called Auroral Waves Excited by Substorm Onset Magnetic Events, or “AWESOME,” which seeks to observe how auroras affect Earth’s upper atmosphere. Scientists hope the study might also improve space weather forecasts. The idea is to measure the timing and strength of the energy waves thrown around by this spring’s strong aurora.

Don Hampton, a scientist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a partner on the AWESOME project, said the way the aurora interacts with the atmosphere works somewhat like ripples on the surface of a body of water.

“The aurora is sort of a rapid energy input,” he said. “It’s like dropping a big pebble into a lake. And when you do that, the atmosphere actually heats up. You will see what are called atmospheric gravity waves come out from sources like that. So, the idea is to look for that.”

Hampton said spectators are in for a pretty spectacular light show, with the rockets emitting a glowing, multi-colored vapor trail for more than 10 minutes at a time — and that’s not even including the aurora. He said it’s no coincidence that the experiment is taking place right now.

“We’re at what’s called the solar max, so we get a lot of aurora,” Hampton said. “Typically, this time of the year, there’s at least a little bit more of a chance of seeing active aurora. That has to do with sort of the orientation of the Earth’s magnetic field at the time.”

Depending on weather conditions, the rockets will blast off in a window of time from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. The last possible launch will be on the night of April 6.

To get live updates on when the rockets will be visible, you can text PFRRLAUNCHES to the number (866) 485-7641. You can also check the live feed on the Poker Flat Facebook page.

A few dozen University of Alaska Fairbanks students, faculty and their dogs gathered in a frozen parking lot on campus in late February. It might’ve looked like a tailgate party — if not for the signs in their hands.

Many in the crowd, like undergraduate anthropology student Hazel Probst, were there to protest the University of Alaska Board of Regents’ decision last month to scrub all references to DEI from the university’s website and other publications.

“There are so many people out here dancing and just having fun and holding hope,” Probst said. “It’s empowering.”

UAF is in the process of rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs to comply with recent executive orders signed by President Donald Trump. Administrators say that’s to safeguard the flow of federal dollars to UAF research programs. Meanwhile, the federal government has announced investigations into some universities for noncompliance, while others have lost funding altogether.

That’s left some faculty and students waiting for the other shoe to drop.

UAF’s research dreams in the balance

Probst said she understands the university system’s desire to protect its federal funding, but she wishes administrators hadn’t capitulated so quickly.

“We need to continue to uphold the diversity and equity inclusion rules that the University has had for many years,” she said.” I think we need to wait. And once we are punished for continuing to uphold our DEI laws, then we can take action in court.”

But the University of Alaska system isn’t willing to accept that risk. UAF Chancellor Dan White said the university is committed to maintaining an inclusive, non-discriminatory environment. But he affirmed the Board of Regents’ decision.

“The motion came out and said: we support free speech,” said White. “We support these longstanding values of academic freedom, and we’ll continue to do so. But in our institutional websites, let’s take those words: ‘DEI,’ off of our website, and let’s think about, ‘Now, how do we understand belonging for all students?’”

Federal dollars make up more than a quarter of UAF’s total operating revenue. The biggest portion of that pot of money — about 28% — comes from the National Science Foundation,, which is bracing for steep cuts in the Trump administration’s forthcoming budget.

White said that could throw UAF’s goal of becoming a top-tier research institution into jeopardy.

“If the National Science Foundation’s budget were cut, that would have an impact on us,” he said. “But what we can do is focus on things we can control. And what we can control is continuing to recruit students, continuing to seek the funding that’s important for research.”

Faculty divided on how to move forward

Carl Tape is a seismologist at the university’s Geophysical Institute. A lot of his funding comes from federal sources, including NSF and the Department of Defense. None of that funding has been interrupted, and Tape hopes it stays that way. Through it all, he said he’s mostly just trying to keep his head down.

“It’s really upsetting a lot of people,” Tape said. “I can understand that. But it’s like a family. I have students that I’m responsible for, and first and foremost, I have to figure out how to secure funding for them and for myself.”

Tape said equity practices are important, but most of his graduate students are federally funded. And he said any shakeup that could cause the federal government to cut funding would be catastrophic for their future employment and ongoing research.

But to professors in other departments, the federal shift away from DEI policies is the bigger catastrophe. Sarah McConnell, a professor in UAF’s music department, said she expects many of her students will be hurt by the change.

“A lot of what DEI does is it sets up opportunities for students to financially make those opportunities happen,” she said. “These kids who have earned the right to go to various institutions — whether it’s an assistantship or some great scholarship or something else — is going to go away because they’re removing the funding associated with any kind of DEI initiative.”

Several other UAF faculty members, who declined to be identified over concerns about their employment, echoed similar fears for students who have written diversity statements into their applications, or who have project proposals with DEI elements. Some said they worry about job security — especially those whose positions are attached to 1-year federal funding periods.

Many of them say they don’t want to be the proverbial “nail that gets hammered,” but there are internal debates happening over how and to what degree faculty members should comply with executive orders.

Chancellor White said he’s received “handfuls” of letters of concern, and that he’s trying to offer reassurance to UAF’s students and employees.

“We all have to understand that it’s a rapidly changing environment,” White said. “The Board of Regents has a responsibility to help the university move forward.”

If there’s any consensus among faculty, it’s that they’re doing their best to look after their students, who could be most vulnerable to funding cuts.

Interior Alaska’s major tribal consortium will be rejoining the Alaska Federation of Natives, two years after it withdrew.

During their annual four-day meeting in Fairbanks, the full board of directors for the Tanana Chiefs Conference voted Thursday in favor of a resolution to restore membership with AFN.

Tanana Chiefs Conference is a nonprofit tribal organization that aims to advance the health and social service needs of its 42 members, 37 of which are federally-recognized tribes. In April 2023, TCC voted to bow out of AFN, which is the largest statewide Native organization in Alaska.

Denakkanaaga brought forward Thursday’s measure. First Chief of Huslia Jack Wholecheese is on the Denakkanaaga board of directors, and he said unity will be key as looming federal cuts threaten to impact the budgets of tribes and tribal organizations in the region.

“We feel that it is important that we all collaborate and work together with other Native people to have a stronger voice during the critical time we are facing with the federal government and other entities,” Wholecheese said.

The move comes as Congress is considering major reductions in federal spending, including cuts that budget experts say will shrink Medicaid coverage.

On Wednesday, TCC Chief and Chairman Brian Ridley said Medicaid contributes about $68 million in annual revenue that the organization uses to provide health services to its members.

And while he acknowledged that TCC isn’t likely to lose all those funds, Ridley said his organization may have to pull from budget reserves to continue their level of service if Medicaid funding is significantly reduced.

“There’s no way to sugar coat it. Cuts are coming, and so we just have to be as prepared as we can be,” he said.

And it’s that kind of financial uncertainty that’s making a united front more appealing, according to Elder Peter Demoski of Nulato.

“I’m having second thoughts about my opposition to AFN all these years,” he said Thursday. “We are going to be in a financial crisis in the next few years. And I believe we’ll need the support of AFN to help us get through those difficult times.”

The decision to rejoin AFN goes beyond strength in numbers.

The resolution directs TCC staff to renew membership ahead of the annual AFN convention in October, with the goal of advancing tribal sovereignty and protecting subsistence rights.

Those goals touch on one of the reasons Tanana Chiefs Conference broke from AFN two years ago. A TCC statement from 2023 said the statewide organization hadn’t taken adequate action in response to calls to support subsistence salmon populations and traditional ways of life.

“Since then, they’ve made a huge effort to try to push subsistence on social media and other things,” Ridley said Thursday. “I want to give credit where credit is due. They have tried to make a lot of the improvements that we asked for.”