Interior

The state of Alaska intends to sue Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to gain title to 10 trail corridors within the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve.

The preserve, managed by the National Park Service, extends west from the Canadian border. It encompasses the Charley River basin and a small portion of the Yukon River.

Attorney General Treg Taylor has issued a notice of intent to sue over 10 ribbons of land that total about 500 linear miles. It’s part of Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s Unlocking Alaska initiative, to assert state land rights.

The claim is based on an 1866 federal law known as RS2477. The law was intended to grant rights of way for roads across unused federal lands. It was repealed in 1976, but there’s an exception for trails that were already established.

Federal regulations allow the Interior secretary to cede RS2477 rights of way, essentially saying the federal government has no property interest in a trail.

The trails the state intends to sue over all go across federal land. Some are near the community of Eagle.

Alaska’s longest and most popular hunting season ended early this year. Only 50 animals were taken because last winter’s heavy snow and ice buildup wiped out nearly a third of the Delta Junction bison herd.

The Delta Junction bison hunt usually extends from October to March, but the state limited this year’s season to just two weeks.

The hunt is by far the most popular for any game species in the state. Hunters submitted more than 44,000 applications last year in hopes of drawing a permit to harvest one of 120 animals the state had planned to make available this year.

“That’s definitely the highest ever,” says Bob Schmidt, the state Department of Fish and Game Delta-area wildlife biologist.

Schmidt says state managers had to rethink their plan for this year’s hunt after finding out that about 180 bison, or nearly a third of the 600-animal herd, died of starvation last winter. That’s three times the number they estimated last spring.

Schmidt says the bison weren’t able to eat because storms dumped an almost impenetrable layer snow and ice atop the grass and sedges that bison feed on.

“Last winter was a winter like we’ve never seen,” he said. “And it was really the rainstorm right after Christmas that was really hard on wildlife across much of Interior Alaska, and particularly bison.”

Schmidt said in an interview Thursday that the magnitude of the die-off became evident last spring.

“They looked really bad well into the summer,” he said. “Even the survivors were really skinny and in poor shape.”

Game managers responded by reducing the number of bison that could be harvested this year from 120 to 50. And they cut the length of the hunt from six months to two weeks. But Schmidt says the hunters reached that quota in half that time during the abbreviated hunt held last month.

“Normally, they’d be hunting all the way ’til March,” he said. “But this time it was, y’know, ‘Get up here, wham, bam, get it done.’ Y’know, no messing around kind of deal.”

Schmidt says he sees signs that the Delta Junction herd is rebounding. And if that proves true, Fish and Game likely will extend the season in the next year or two and increase the harvest quota. He says the objective is to maintain a sustainable herd of about 360 bison — not too large, so as to limit the damage they cause by trampling on area farmer’s fields and raiding their stores of hay and feed.

“We probably don’t want to let it get all the way back to 600,” he said. “There are some agreements we’ve got in place with the ag community to try and stay closer to that 360.”

The Delta Junction bison hunt attracts more applications every year than any other game species. It’s an iconic species prized by hunters, not the least because they provide hundreds of pounds of meat per animal. And because the six-month-long season gives hunters time to return to regroup and return to the area as often as needed in that timeframe to find the ideal specimen.

“This bison hunt is pretty much a once-in-a-lifetime hunt,” he said.

Schmidt says he feels bad for hunters who drew permits and weren’t able to get in on this year’s hunt. He said his personal opinion is that they should consider appealing to the state Board of Game before the April deadline for another opportunity to re-apply for permits for the 2024 hunt, and to ask the board to waive the required waiting period.

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.

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.