KUAC - Fairbanks

Interior Alaska is losing its last local television newscast, as the corporate owner of NewsCenter Fairbanks downsizes its news operation and lays off employees.

KTVF Channel 11 and KXDF Channel 13, known together as NewsCenter Fairbanks, are collectively owned by Gray TV/Gray Media, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Gray, which also owns Anchorage TV stations KTUU and KAUU under the name Alaska’s News Source, bought the Fairbanks stations in 2017.

In a Nov. 8 conference call with investors, the company announced a plan to cut expenses by consolidating some its stations and reducing staff.

It is unclear if the downsizing at Gray TV means some local jobs will be lost. Reporters for KTVF and KXDF say they have been told not to comment, and to refer any media questions to Kevin Latek, Gray’s chief legal and development officer. Latek did not return calls or emails.

However, NewsCenter Fairbanks anchors let the public know about the change in their goodbyes on Saturday.

“Before we go, I would like to take a moment to thank our loyal and amazing viewers in the community,” said Stephanie Woodard, who has worked as a reporter and anchor on and off since 2010.

“I say goodbye to the evening news desk tonight and thank you to Fairbanks because you truly are the Golden Heart City that I have grown to love,” she added.

Some small segments of Fairbanks news will now be delivered as part of a newscast from Anchorage.

Skyler Lewis included that in his goodbye over the weekend.

“As you may have heard, NewsCenter Fairbanks is joining forces with Alaska’s News Source, our sister station in Anchorage, to bring you news from across Alaska,” Lewis said.

Starting this week, KTVF and KXDF will air news as Alaska’s News Source instead of NewsCenter Fairbanks. It means there will be no more local news or sports anchors, like Alex Bengel or Alex Johnson.

“It has been an absolute honor and a privilege to present your local news every night. Thank you so much for choosing NewsCenter Fairbanks as your source for news,” Bengel said.

“It’s time for me to sign off of Sports for the final time,” Johnson said. “To the friends I’ve made at the games I’ve been at, thank you for the memories made. I always appreciate it. I’ve gotten to cover some amazing events that before I came up here, I’d never even heard of. Whether that be the YQA at 52 Below or the Midnight Sun game. And that’ll do it for the final Middle of the Bench Sports Report tonight. Thank you so much for tuning in, everyone.”

Calls to the general managers of KTVF and KXDF, as well as the Anchorage TV stations, were not returned over the weekend.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command tracked and intercepted two Russian military aircraft Wednesday in international airspace near Alaska.

A NORAD news release said the Russian aircraft remained in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ, and did not enter American or Canadian sovereign airspace. The zone begin where U.S. sovereign airspace ends.

International aircraft may travel through the zones, but must identify themselves.

A NORAD spokesperson said Thursday that the two Russian planes were Tu-142s, which are used for maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare. The spokesperson declined to identify the number and type of U.S. aircraft sent to intercept and escort the Russian planes in the Alaska ADIZ.

Russian aircraft have frequently flown through the zone. They’re usually met by U.S. jet fighters out of Eielson Air Force Base or Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

The NORAD news release says the Russian sorties are not seen as a threat.

Last reported sortie involved Russian, Chinese aircraft

The last time Russian aircraft passed through the zone was in late July. But the two Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers in that formation were accompanied by two Chinese H-6 Xi’an bombers. It was the first time Russian and Chinese aircraft jointly flew through the Alaska zone.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and others said the incident represented an escalation in the years-long game of cat and mouse that’s been playing out in the skies off Alaska’s coasts. In a Facebook post Thursday, Sullivan said the recent intercepts show Alaska “continues to be on the front lines of authoritarian aggression.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin discussed the Russian-Chinese sortie in a briefing on July 25, later in the day the formation was intercepted.

“This is the first time we’ve seen these two countries fly together, like that” in the Arctic, Austin said. He added that the joint flight signals the growing ties between the two nations and their mutual interest in operating in the far north.

According to the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Alaska sortie was the eighth joint bomber flight that China and Russia have conducted since 2019. The previous bomber flights were in the Sea of Japan, East China Sea and Western Pacific.

That includes some flights through the Japanese and South Korean ADIZs.

The Washington, D.C.-based think says a statement by the Russian Ministry of Defense declared the countries were conducting joint strategic air patrols in a “new area of joint operations.”

Alaska librarians are cautiously optimistic that a state agency will restore a big cut in funding for an annual grant that smaller rural libraries depend on. The abrupt reversal of last month’s cutback followed an outcry by librarians and the public.

The director of the state Division of Libraries, Archives and Museums last month told librarians around the state that this year’s Public Library Assistance grants will be $1,829, about 75% smaller than what they’ve been getting for years. That worries the state’s librarians.

“A cut that massive, even though it’s a small grant, does have a pretty big impact on a small library in rural Alaska,” says Theresa Quiner, the director of the Kuskokwim Consortium Library in Bethel. She says smaller libraries depend on the grant to buy books and other materials, and to pay expenses like electricity and heating.

“Yeah, I mean as somebody that runs a library with a really small budget and in rural Alaska, the cut was very alarming,” Quiner said. “And, I can’t even imagine how much of an impact that would have on a really, really small library. Especially libraries that are volunteer-run.”

Soon after the Libraries, Archives and Museums Division announced the cuts on Aug. 16, staff members of smaller libraries scrambled to figure out how they could cut their budgets to absorb that loss of funding. Some faced the possibility of shutting down.

“And so this cut was very unexpected,” she added. “This is a grant that libraries have very reliably anticipated having each year. And so getting the cut midway, part-way through the fiscal year was a shock.”

Quiner says librarians mounted a campaign to get the word out about the cuts. Last week both Division Director Amy Phillips-Chan and Deena Bishop, commissioner of the division’s parent Department of Education and Early Development, sent letters to the librarians and others including leaders of the state House and Senate. In the letters, they said that they would find funding for the full $7,000 grant, and that libraries would get official notice of supplemental grants by Oct. 15.

“We just got that email a couple days ago and so it seems as though the grant funding is being reinstated,” Quiner said. “And I personally am very overjoyed to hear that news.”

Phillips-Chan said in a Monday follow-up email that “A grant payout to a library will be initiated after receiving a signed copy of the grant agreement from the library.”

Quiner, who’s also president-elect of the Alaska Library Association, attributed the state’s turnabout to the outcry raised by the public and her fellow librarians.

“I’m very grateful that so many librarians around the state with so much effort and advocacy for this,” she said Monday. “It just speaks a lot to the power of librarians and their ability to do research and advocate for the work that they do.”

Delta Junction Community Library Director Tiki Levinson says the emails were encouraging. But she’ll maintain a wait-and-see attitude under she gets one of those letters.

“It seems like there’s going to be some movement on this,” she said Monday. “And hopefully this funding will be restored, but it is not a done deal yet.”

If the full grant comes through, Levinson won’t have to make hard decisions on which services to cut back – including children’s programs, like Storytime, that are among the Delta library’s most popular offerings.

U.S. military experts say a formation of four Russian and Chinese bombers that flew through international airspace off Alaska last month signals China’s growing interest in the Arctic and Russia’s intention to support its ally’s operations in the region.

The sortie of two Russian bombers and two Chinese bombers through international airspace off Alaska was unprecedented – a fact that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed in a news briefing he held the day after the incident.

Jet fighters based in Alaska and Canada intercepted the formation on July 24 and accompanied it through the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ. Austin says the combined Russian-Chinese operation signals the growing ties between the two nations and their mutual interest in operating in the Arctic.

“This is a relationship that we have been concerned about,” he said.

Austin said that concern mainly is based on China helping Russia sustain its invasion of Ukraine. But he agreed when a reporter asked whether the two nations were testing the United States and its allies by flying the aircraft jointly through the Alaska ADIZ airspace.

“As to whether or not our adversaries are testing us at this particular time – they’re always testing us,” he said, “and that’s no surprise to any of us.”

‘This is an escalation’

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said the bombers’ flight off Alaska’s coasts reflects increase efforts by China to operate in the Arctic. He said in a news release issued a few hours after the flight was interdicted that “Alaska continues to be on the front lines of the authoritarian aggression by the dictators in Russia and China who are increasingly working together.

“Make no mistake, this is an escalation – the first time that Russia and China have sent a joint bomber task force into the Alaska ADIZ,” Sullivan said in the news release.

A University of Alaska Fairbanks Arctic security expert agrees.

“This signifies a relatively substantial increase in military cooperation between both China and Russia,” said Cameron Carlson, a founder and former director of UAF’s Center for Arctic Security and Resilience. “And that’s significant.

China ‘signaling’ more joint operations

“I think it also serves as a major piece of geopolitical signaling, that they are coming together, that they are going to be conducting more joint military activities,” said Carlson, who’s now the dean of the UAF College of Business and Security Management.

U.S. and Canadian air forces have for years intercepted Russian aircraft flying through the Alaska ADIZ. More recently, U.S. Coast Guard and Navy vessels have tracked Russian and Chinese warships transiting international waters within the 200-mile U.S. exclusive economic zone around Alaska. Carlson expects more combined operations. He said former Northern Command and NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHerck believes last week’s aircraft incursion shows the Chinese now have access to Russian airfields in the Arctic.

“Which gives them now proximity in terms of projecting power to the United States that they never had in the past,” he added.

Carlson said while last month’s incursion was a first, it likely won’t be the last.

A group of Alaskans is circulating petitions this summer to restore state campaign finance limits.

Citizens Against Money in Politics says its ballot initiative will give citizens the same power as large corporations and unions.

Alaska had set up campaign finance limits in the past, but three years ago the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck them down as unconstitutional.

Jus Tavcar, a volunteer coordinator with CAMP, said most Alaskans want some form of limits.

“We’ve capped the contributions twice. And most recently it was in 2006, when we also had a volunteer-driven ballot initiative, which passed overwhelmingly with 73%,” Tavcar said.

Proponents of large contributions say paying for advertising is protected under the First Amendment. But critics claim that candidates who receive the money are beholden to their donors, not the people they represent.

The 9th Circuit’s decision in Thompson v. Hebdon struck down a $500-per-year contribution limit on Alaska legislative races, saying it restricted free speech. The court provided a road map to reconfigure campaign limits so they are adjusted for inflation, but the state Legislature didn’t do that. So, candidates today can now receive unlimited direct donations from anyone, even outside of Alaska. That happened in the 2022 governor’s race, when some wealthy donors gave more than $100,000 apiece to candidates.

“At Citizens Against Money in Politics, we believe that equating money to speech is a dangerous precedent because it leaves everyday citizens who are not wealthy, who are just regular folks, without a fair opportunity to participate in a democratic process,” Tavcar said.

Tavcar said the initiative would limit contributions to $2,000 per election cycle for an individual candidate’s campaign, or $5,000 a year to a political party.

“The initiative updates the prior limits to be in line with inflation, and then the caps will be automatically adjusted every 10 years so they remain constitutional and they will move from per campaign limits instead of per year limit,” he said.

The initiative will not affect contributions by super PACs and independent expenditure groups. Each of those are defined separately under the law and are protected by the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections.

Backers of the Alaska initiative say it will promote better government and accountability to Alaskan voters. They are trying to collect 27,000 signatures across the state.

The three sponsors of the initiative are state Rep. Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage; former Alaska attorney general and Juneau mayor Bruce Botelho; and Fairbanks business owner and Iditarod racer David Monson.

Backers of the Alaska initiative say it will promote better government and accountability to Alaska voters. They are trying to collect 27,000 signatures across the state to get the initiative on the ballot in 2026, at the earliest.

The three sponsors of the initiative are state Rep. Calvin Schrage, I-Anchorage; former Alaska attorney general and Juneau mayor Bruce Botelho; and Fairbanks business owner and Iditarod racer David Monson.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the earliest date the initiative could take effect. It could be on the ballot as early as 2026.

Another mass mass of gnat larvae was reported in Fairbanks this week. University of Alaska Fairbanks entomology professor and Museum of the North curator of insects Derek Sikes says the sighting on Pika Road is the latest report of what he calls snake worm larvae.

“Because it looks a little like a snake when you have all these larvae moving in long column across a road,” he said.

The unusual lines of moving gnat larvae were first reported in Fairbanks in 2007, and Sikes says sporadic sightings have come in over the years since.

“When people see these things going across trails or roads, it’s quite remarkable, and people take pictures and send them in,” he said. “But we don’t get reports every year, so we don’t know how cyclical it is. We don’t know if they’re actually making these columns in the woods where nobody is observing them.”

Sikes says he initially worked with specialists in Germany and Japan to identify the larvae, eventually looking at their DNA.

“Became pretty clear that we were dealing with new species,” he said.

Sikes says the data got back burnered until 2021 when post-doctoral entomology researcher Thalles Pereira of Brazil picked it up.

“He came and finished the project,” Sikes said. “Did all the final analysis and wrapped it up and drafted the paper.”

The paper came out in December 2023.

Sikes says a lot of questions remain about the species they officially named Sciara serpens, including whether it is different from gnat larvae observed in similar formations elsewhere in North America. There’s also the question of why the larvae group in snake-like processions.

Sikes theorizes they climb on top of one another to protect themselves while crossing roads and trails.

“Sliding over their comrades below so you get this kind of conveyor belt thing going across the road where they can make it across with minimal exposure of their moist bodies to the dry conditions,” he said.

He says another possibility is that the formations are a defensive measure.

“Birds that might otherwise prey on individual larvae, will leave them alone because they look like a big animal, like a snake or something,” he said.

Sikes encourages anyone who sees snake worm gnat larva to report them with photos, time, location and other information, using the iNaturalist app.

He says all the Alaska observations have been in the morning when its cooler, but it’s unknown whether the larvae columns are weather-related.