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Sponsors of a voter initiative to ban commercial marijuana businesses in the City of Fairbanks submitted more than 500 signatures Friday in an effort to get the measure on the fall 2017 ballot.
Petition sponsor Vivian Stiver, with the group “Drug Free Fairbanks,” said petitioners have gathered well above the 519 required, but the signatures must be of registered voters who live in the city, and are subject to review.
“Say they look at the signatures, there are several that bring us under 519 because theyr’re thrown out for whatever reason,” Stiver said. “We would then be given an additional two weeks to collect the difference.”
Petition sponsors have until September 15 to get the required number of valid signatures, Stiver said. Stiver gathered signatures at several locations this summer including outside the library and at the Tanana Valley State Fair.
“It was interesting,” Stiver said. “A lot of people were just unsure about what all had been legalizded under this law. I think one of the biggest things they’re surprised by are the edibles that can be out there. They are very much likened to national brand foods. Very hard to distinguish for young children … the difference.”
Many people Stiver talked to also did not realize that under the statewide ballot proposition passed in 2014 legalizing recreational and commercial marijuana, local governments have the option of banning retail sale of the drug by ordinance or voter initiative, she said.
Drug Free Fairbanks also has a petition in the works to ban retail sale of marijuana in the North Star Borough, outside of the cities of Fairbanks and North Pole.
The status of a Denali wolf pack is unknown after several members of the group have been killed on state land. (Tim Rains, National Park Service)
Denali National Park’s long studied and once popularly viewed East Fork wolf pack is likely no longer. Several members of the park entrance area wolf group have been killed on state land, and the famed pack’s status is unknown.
Denali’s East Fork wolf pack declined to just one known female and two pups earlier this summer.
The pack’s last other member, a radio-collared male, was spotted dead at a hunting camp on state land off the Stampede Trail in May.
Park Service wildlife biologist Bridget Borg said it’s impossible to know for sure if the mother wolf and her pups survived after her mate’s death, but there’s been no recent sign of the animals and their den appears empty.
”We investigated a den site after,” Borg said. “There was clear evidence it was not being used as evidenced by vegetation that was growing around the entrance to the den site.”
The apparent demise of the East Fork pack comes amidst a broader steep decline of Park-based wolves to about 50 animals. The low point is attributed to more than human harvest outside the park, but it appears to be a significant mortality factor for entrance area wolves. Borg points to the human caused deaths of three of four East Fork Pack radio-collared animals in the last year.
”If we just look at the collared wolf mortalities for this past 75 percent died as a result of snaring or being shot,” Borg said. “So this is really high compared to our previously published rate of less than 20 percent.”
“They’re allowing a handful of people to gun them down or trap them,” said Sean McGuire, who is with the small Fairbanks based advocacy group Alaskans for Wildlife. “We feel it’s a scandal.”
The loss of Denali’s East Fork Pack takes with it valuable opportunity for Park entrance area wolf viewing, as well as a lot of history, he said.
“This wolf pack has been probably the most viewed wolf pack in world history. It’s been studied continuously for 70 years. This was the pack that Adolph Murie originally wrote the classic ‘Wolves of Mt. McKinley.’”
Borg agreed it’s unfortunate to lose track of the long tenured and well followed East Fork group.
“But we should note that the potential loss of this pack doesn’t really mean the loss of the lineage of these wolves,” Borg said. “For example, the Riley Creek pack was actually founded by an East Fork female. In the summer one of her pups has dispersed and apparently found a mate and seems to be seeking out a territory along the park road corridor between Toklat and Wonder Lake.”
State wildlife officials point to robust wolf populations outside Denali.
Alaska Department of Fish and Game Regional Supervisor Darren Brunning said the agency has no confirmation of the May East Fork wolf kill, as its radio collar has not been turned in. Brunning said with no other conclusive information about the pack’s status, there’s no reason for action.
“Hunting and trapping along the Northeast boundary of the National Park and the Stampede trail area is the purview of the Alaska Board of Game,” Brunning said. “The Department of Fish and Game would take no action unless directed by the Board of Game.”
The Game Board agreed earlier this year to shorten the spring wolf hunt along Denali’s northeast edge, and will consider proposals to re-instate a former no wolf kill area there at a spring 2017 meeting. McGuire said he has no faith in the board and wants the governor to step in and close the Stamped area to wolf harvest.
Water diverted from the Tanana River main channel by an ice dam in January blew away vegetation, gouged out the slough and washed away much of the bank at the foot of a ridge where Tom Gorman built his home. (Photo courtesy of Tom Gorman)
An aerial view showing how ice diverted much of the Tanana River into the small slough at the foot of the ridge on which Gorman built his home. (Photo courtesy of Tom Gorman)
Gorman says he knows “the Tanana moves all the time,” which is why he sought advice on where to build his home from longtime area residents familiar with the river. (Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks)
The 8-foot-tall dam that Gorman built earlier this year across the slough was submerged after recent rains raised the Tanana River level. Gorman laid a course of sandbags over the top of the structure to slow the river current and the erosion it causes. “It’s holding,” Gorman says. (Tim Ellis, KUAC – Fairbanks)
Big Delta resident Tom Gorman said a small dam he built earlier this year to protect his home from the meandering Tanana River held steady over the past couple of weeks as the river rose to near-flood level, due to recent rains.
Gorman now hopes the river falls quickly enough to allow him to finish work on the dam before snow flies.
Gorman stands at the edge of a 20-foot-wide slough off the Tanana River that runs along the foot of a ridge on which he built his house about seven years ago and said this isn’t how it looked back then.
“Last year, it was dry!” Gorman said.
A couple dozen trees used to grow in and around the area, Gorman said, which served as a sort of buffer between his big three-story house and the Tanana River some 45 feet away. Until January, that is, when an ice dam on the Tanana diverted a torrent of water into the area that tore out the trees and gouged into the riverbank, threatening to undercut the ridge where his house sits.
“And that just came in and just took ’em out, one at a time – pow! Two hours later, another one – bam!” he said. “It just got behind ’em, the erosion behind ’em, and just ripped ’em up.”
That was near the beginning of an ordeal that lasted for several weeks, as Gorman and a small army of friends, neighbors, contractors and others tried to bust up the pile of thick ice slabs.
They attempted to melt it with a de-icing solution; they tried to bust it up with a 5,000-pound weight dropped from a helicopter; they even detonated explosives to blast it open. Nothing worked.
“No – well, not on 3-, 4-foot (thick) ice,” Gorman said. “That’s what you had over here, all the way across.”
Gorman said state and federal officials for the most part supported his effort to save the house. He didn’t get any help from his homeowner’s insurance company, he said, but he got lots from dozens of volunteers from all around the area.
“The community’s helped me out,” Gorman said, “And they really pulled together.”
Gorman, a retiree from Texas, said the cost of trying to break the ice jam further strained his finances, which he’d already deeply tapped to buy the land and, in 2009, build a house for his family, which includes his wife and elderly mom, disabled son and daughter with kids.
Why did he build his dream house so close to the river? Gorman said he’s been asked many times:
“We were safe,” he said, “we were really safe when we built this house.”
Gorman followed advice on where to build given by his contractor and two neighbors, both of whom have lived along that stretch of the river for more than 40 years. But the ice-jam backup surprised everyone, he said as he shows photos of river water tearing through the slough and frantic efforts to slow its destruction.
“It came around this way, and it starts cutting in here,” he said. “It cut in here and fell down. It cut and just headed right toward the house.”
When the ice jam finally gave way, he and his had crew a chance to bring in equipment to shore up 150 feet of riverbank with big rocks, Gorman said, and to build an 8-foot-tall dam across the slough.
“What this dam did here was to really stop the current,” Gorman said. “Once the current was stopped, then I could get in here and do something.”
When the river rose a couple of weeks ago, he saw that the dam, which is built of interlocking concrete barriers, wasn’t quite high enough. So he laid a course of sandbags on top it to slow the flow to trickle.
“It’s holding,” Gorman said, “but it’s not done. It has to be completed.”
But he can’t bring equipment back in until the river drops and the area dries out.
“The water has got to go down, because what happens is you put the equipment down there and it’s so soft that it’s going to push the dam away,” Gorman said.
Gorman said that may not happen before the first snow flies two or three months from now. He said he’d prefer to do the work before winter sets in, but if he runs out of time, he’ll pay the extra cost of doing the work in the winter to save his home.
Dinosaur bone fragments were discovered this summer in Denali National Park by a team of University of Alaska Fairbanks and National Park Service scientists.
The researchers found the bones on a mountain slope in the Cantwell rock formation, north of the Park Road.
Dinosaur tracks have previously been found in similar rock in the park, and UA Museum of the North earth sciences curator Pat Druckenmiller said the bones are an exciting development.
“Because tracks can give you a certain type of information, but bones can add a lot more to that story,” he said.
The bone fragments were likely from a duck-billed dinosaur, which were common in Alaska more than 70 million years ago, he said, noting that one of the bones provides more specific insight.
”It’s called an ossified tendon and it’s really distinctive for the group so we can probably say with some certainty that we know at least what one kind of animal was making tracks there,” Druckenmiller said.
The discovery may be from a species he and colleagues discovered along the Colville River on North Slope. Druckenmiller, who has done field research around the world, says the bones are less than 2 inches in length, but stand out to team members trained eyes, in the rocky terrain.
“Because they tend to weather a lighter color, a bluish color,” he said. “And it has a very distinctive texture just like modern bone.”
Druckenmiller is optimistic more bones will be discovered in the area of this summer’s find.
“We found these bones actually on our first day out so I think that bodes well for future discoveries.”
The Denali research team will continue to explore the area in future summers, as part of the collaboration which also includes Florida State University professor Greg Erickson.
