KUAC - Fairbanks

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is asking for the public’s help in reporting sightings of mule deer around the Interior.

The deer isn’t indigenous to Alaska, but Fish and Game experts believe the species has been slowly spreading into the Interior from the Yukon Territory.

The experts are concerned they may be carrying a parasite that could devastate local moose populations.

Fish and Game wants to know about any mule deer sightings around the Interior, because experts are concerned the animals may be carrying the winter moose tick, which if it spreads could decimate the area’s moose population.

“It sucks their blood and causes them to lose hair, because they’re very itchy. But it causes, especially the young animals, a pretty high death rate, especially over winter,” said Dr. Kimberlee Beckmen, the state’s wildlife veterinarian. “We don’t want that to infect our moose population because it would have a negative impact on the numbers of moose that we have.”

Beckmen said Fish and Game is especially interested in one particular mule deer whose carcass was found earlier this month near the Richardson Highway bridge over the Chena Flood Control Project floodplain east of Fairbanks.

The buck was apparently struck by a vehicle, and didn’t show any obvious signs of infection from the ticks.

Beckmen saidthat could be because the animal may have died earlier in the winter, before the disease’s symptoms typically show up. So they need to know when the deer died.

“It would help us decide whether there’s any risk that it could’ve been infected with winter moose tick, or not,” she said.

Fish and Game also wants to hear about any mule deer sightings, to track their movement into Alaska, Beckmen said. Mule deer aren’t indigenous to Alaska, but wildlife experts say the deer have been sighted here in the Interior every now and then since the 1970s.

“In the last 10 or 12 years, there’s been an increase in the number of animals that have been sighted,” she said.

Mule deer are a cousin to the Sitka black-tailed deer, found mainly in the southeast Panhandle, which is the only deer species that’s historically been considered indigenous to Alaska.

The mule deer that’ve been moving into the Interior apparently are coming from the Yukon, Beckmen said, and that’s worrisome.

“Just recently, the government in the Yukon had done a study looking at mule deer that were hunted or hit by vehicles near Whitehorse,” she said. “They found that more than half of them were infected with this moose winter tick.”

The parasites have been devastating moose population in northern-tier states and Canada – killing up to 70 percent of the populations in Maine, New Hampshire and Minnesota.

Beckmen said anyone who spots a mule deer should contact their local Fish and Game office. Phone numbers and online contact addresses are available on the Fish and Game website, adfg.alaska.gov.

Editor’s note: Sightings of mule deer or sick or dead wildlife may be sent by e-mail to: dfg.dwc.vet@alaska.gov or by calling the state Wildlife Health Reporting and Information Line, (907) 328-8354.

Last week, U.S. Sen Dan Sullivan said he’s looking forward to being briefed on the firing of FBI Chief James Comey this week. Sullivan said the assistant attorney general will talk with the entire Senate. Sullivan’s remarks were made at his first town hall meeting in interior in Alaska.

Before Friday’s town hall meeting in North Pole began, organizers urged respectful dialogue rather than a shouting match. And for the most part the audience complied. But many carried green and red placards and flashed them at certain statements Sullivan made.

Alaska’s junior senator opened with some broad remarks about his priorities, the top being the nation’s and state’s economies. He highlighted military spending that will benefit Alaska. He also addressed the firing of FBI Chief James Comey.

“The timing of the president’s firing raises questions that he and his team are going to need to answer,” Sullivan said.

But far and away the dominant subject Friday night was the proposed gutting and replacement of the Affordable Care Act.  Sullivan’s negative opinion on Obamacare drew a sea of red cards and the strongest vocal response by the audience.

“I actually think we’re a state that’s probably been hurt by the Affordable Care Act worse than any other state,” Sullivan said to both applause and boos.

Sullivan defended his statement by pointing to Alaska’s high insurance premiums and the one remaining provider in the state. Audience questions were drawn at random, and small business owner and musician Robin Dale Ford used her time to challenge Sullivan on health care. She said lawmakers seem to be working for insurance companies rather than the average citizen. She said before Obamacare, she couldn’t afford insurance and her situation represented the face of American health care.

“And I feel that I’ve added to my community, to my state,” Ford said. “And I feel that my tax dollars go to pay for you and your family’s great care. Why am I not worthy?”

While Sullivan sidestepped the political clout of big pharmaceuticals and insurance companies, Sullivan said he was no fan of big pharma.

The other topic that stirred the audience was Sullivan’s explanation for supporting Betsy DeVos as secretary of education.

“She has a passion for education …” Sullivan said as the crowd laughed in disagreement.

The senator urged the audience to study DeVos resume.

A major earthquake rocked Southeast Alaska and an area of the Yukon on Monday morning.

The magnitude 6.2 shaker hit at 4:30 a.m. and was centered near the Haines Highway about 55 miles northwest of Skagway, said state seismologist Michael West at the Alaska Earthquake Center in Fairbanks.

“South of Haines Junction on what we believe at this point was the Denali Fault,” he said. “It’s had a vigorous set of aftershocks, several dozen aftershocks as of right now. They’re being felt in Whitehorse. We’re told that the power was out in Whitehorse. We know it was felt strongly in Juneau and throughout Southeast.”

There was a 6.3 aftershock at about 6:18 a.m.

“Reports have been coming in from all over this morning,” West said. “One person indicated in Whitehorse that their Facebook posts were wall-to-wall about the earthquake. We did see a tweet come across from (state Rep.) Scott Kawasaki’s office in Juneau.”

West anticipates damage reports will come in as the initial earthquake was located at a fairly shallow depth and very near the Haines Highway.

Although the epicenter of this morning’s activity is in Canada, it’s important to remember that the Denali Fault spans all the way from mainland Alaska to southeast, West adds.

“Anytime you have an earthquake this size, in magnitude 6 and up, especially if we’ve had a couple of them there’s at least a small chance of related activity on adjoining sections of the fault,” West said. “But we have no reason to suspect that right now.”

A 2002 7.9 magnitude earthquake along the Denali Fault 90 miles south of Fairbanks caused widespread surface disruption, which damaged roads, and caused a section of the Trans Alaska Pipeline to shift.

Summer promises to be a busy construction season for the Interior because of a series of projects at the region’s two Air Force installations. The projects will inject more than $1.5 billion into the area’s economy.

Work is just getting under way on a $22 million building at Eielson Air Force Base that will enable pilots of the new F-35 fighters that are coming here to train in a computer-simulated environment.

“We just broke ground on that. So, that project is ongoing,” said Kevin Blanchard, who directs the F-35 Program Integration Office for Eielson’s 354th Fighter Wing. “We expect it to finish in about October of ’18. We’ll get our first aircraft in April of 2020. But to do that, we’ve got to build a bunch of facilities.”

About $510 million worth of facilities will be built over the next couple of years to accommodate two squadrons of F-35As that’ll be based at Eielson.

Blanchard said Eielson has opened its South Gate to give workers easy access to their construction sites on that end of the base.

“We have a very congested front gate at certain times of the day right now,” Blanchard said. “Our ability to use that South Gate as a contractor/construction gate just during the time period of the F-35 buildup will alleviate a lot of that congestion and traffic.”

A project to improve the South Gate intersection with the Richardson Highway will get under way later this year, state Transportation Department spokeswoman Meadow Bailey said.

“There will be some installation of overhead lighting, some signing, striping,” Bailey said, “Then, constructing a north- and south-bound turn lanes onto Eielson, and then there will be a northbound acceleration lane.”

Blanchard said seven projects are scheduled to get under way on Eielson this year in support of the F-35s, including one for $9.4 million to build six munitions-storage bunkers. And another, estimated to cost between $40 million and $50 million, to construct a maintenance hangar.

“That involves all the people that are coming with the airplanes, that’ll fly ’em, fix ’em, support ’em – that type of thing,” Blanchard said.

About 1,250 people are coming to Eielson to fly, fix and support the F-35s, nearly all of them active-duty personnel.

That number could grow to about 1,370, Blanchard said. He said Lockheed, the aircraft manufacturer, will bring about 60 workers, and subcontractor Pratt and Whitney, which builds the jets’ engines, another half-dozen. And he said most of the newcomers will bring family.

“We’re expecting about 60 percent of those folks to have families,” Blanchard said. “The total number that we’re looking at, as far as coming into the community, would be about 3,500.”

But Jim Dodson, president and CEO of the Fairbanks Economic Development Corporation, said Eielson doesn’t have anywhere near enough on-base housing to accommodate all those newcomers.

“Seventy percent of them are going to have to live off-base,” Dodson said.

The newcomers will need another 800 units of housing, Dodson said. Building them will pump another $80 million to $100 million into the local economy.

Eielson’s projects, he said, combined with construction of a new radar facility at Clear Air Force Station, just south of Nenana, are giving the area’s construction industry a badly needed boost.

“That whole project, including the long-range discrimination radar and the buildup of that base – that’s about a billion dollars’ worth of construction,” Dodson said.

Dodson said the economic boost from both military-related construction and the growing workforce it’ll bring will go a long ways toward alleviating the recession that’s set in statewide since oil prices began to plummet four years ago.

The skies above the Interior and Southcentral Alaska will get a lot busier starting next week, when Northern Edge 2017 gets under way.

It’ll be the biggest military-training exercise to be held this year in Alaska.

The tempo of operations around Eielson Air Force, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and the state’s training ranges, will pick up beginning Monday and last through May 12.

Alaskan Command spokeswoman Capt. Anastasia Schmidt said Northern Edge training exercises will be conducted only on weekdays this year.

“We will not be exercising on the weekend, however,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt said some 6,000 personnel and about 180 aircraft from all the armed services will participate in this year’s exercise, which she said will be a bit smaller in scale than the 2015 iteration.

The point of joint exercises that involve two or more services, like Northern Edge, she said, is to provide training that enables people and equipment to work together.

“When we have these opportunities to do multiple services, we’re able to practice that interoperability,” Schmidt said. “And make sure when we do have to do a real-world operation, we’re able to talk to each other, all of our equipment works well together – simple things like that.”

The airspace over the Gulf of Alaska also will be busier during Northern Edge, as Navy and Marine aircraft conduct training in conjunction with Navy vessels that’ll be operating in the gulf.

“There’s going to be two naval destroyers and one replenishment ship,” Schmidt said.

Personnel and equipment from the Coast Guard and Reserve and National Guard units also will participate.

Northern Edge is one of a series of exercises conducted by the U.S. Pacific Command, a so-called unified combatant command that’s headquartered in Hawaii and operates throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific region.

Schmidt said residents can report excessive aircraft noise by calling the Alaskan Command’s toll-free complaint line, 1-800-JET-NOISE (1-800-538-6673).

Ten Alaskan communities will join hundreds of others worldwide Saturday to show support for science and the role it plays in improving the lives of people.

Two Alaskans who’ll be participating in their communities’ March for Science observances say they’ll also be protesting steep budget cuts proposed for federal agencies and programs and politically-motivated attacks on science and scientists.

Christa Mulder, a professor of ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said she’ll be marching here mainly to express her alarm with a political environment that’s grown increasingly hostile to science.

“We’re marching to celebrate science, but we’re also marching to demonstrate to people that we’re concerned about the threats that face science and scientists,” she said.

Mulder worries that political leaders and others have grown skeptical about science – as shown in resistance to such programs for vaccinating children and, of course, monitoring climate change.

Her concerns are intensified by the near-daily barrage of criticism of science by President Donald Trump and other conservative leaders and their proposals to slash funding and eliminate programs. And their growing tendency to censor and intimidate researchers and suppress their data.

“It’s those kinds of things,” she said. “When you undermine any credibility in what science tells you, you’re really causing, I think, enormous damage to society.”

Bryan Box will be marching for science in Anchorage because the hostile political environment that followed the Nov. 8 election of Trump cost him his job – and a shot at a research position with a federal agency in Alaska.

“Nov. 10,” he said, “my bosses tell me ‘Hey look, because of the election, we’re not going to give you that job. And so we’re also going to have to let you go from the job that you already have, on Jan. 20.’”

Box is an Army veteran who served two tours in Afghanistan and went on to earn an undergraduate degree in biological sciences from the University of Alaska Anchorage.

He asked that the agency that he’d hoped to work for not be mentioned in this report, because he’d still like to work for it. But for now he and his fellow researchers are just trying to cope with such problems as the loss of scientific data that’s been“scrubbed” from federal websites.

“More and more of these researchers were freaking out because huge sections of the (federal) government (online content) were starting to go black, as far as like parts of the EPA website, that sort of thing.”

Box is also discouraged by censorship imposed on federal employees by an administration gag order requiring them to gain high-level clearance for release of many kinds of science-related information to the public.

“Somebody who has absolutely no idea about our field whatsoever is going to be reading our peer-reviewed journal articles for political correctness, or whatever you want to call it.”

Fairbanks’ observance of March for Science will begin at 10 a.m. Saturday at Ryan Middle School, 1450 Cowles St.

The event will begin with a rally at Ryan followed by a march along Airport Way around the Cowles Street intersection.

Box and Mulder both say they’re not particularly politically minded people, and that people of any political affiliation are welcome to participate in the marches – as long as they support science and research free from political influence.

“Science is not by itself political,” Mulder said. “It is not a partisan march. We really don’t care who you voted for. Anybody who’s willing to come out and stand up for science … is very, very welcome.”

Box reiterated that emphasis on inclusion. He’s invited many scientists and science-minded people to show up and share their work.

“If you use peer review, if you use empirical evidence, you use the scientific method to do something, I want you to show up with your data ready to talk to people.”

Online information about the marches is available on Facebook andmarchforscience.com.