Southeast

Haines is Alaska’s oldest borough. A recent survey of residents under 40 years old provides a clearer picture of why.

Haines Borough Mayor Tom Morphet sent out the survey this winter to gauge how young people are faring and what they need to succeed. After reviewing nearly 90 responses, he said they underscore problems that could have major implications for the town’s long-term well-being.

Respondents outlined a long list of factors that make it increasingly difficult for younger people to live in the small Southeast community, ranging from scant housing and child care options to polarized local politics.

“The lack of progress on these issues — daycare, child care, housing — are starting to breed resentment among our younger population,” Morphet said. “I think it’s something the government should be aware of.”

State data indicates that Haines’ population has dropped between 1% and 2% on average each year between 2021 and 2024. At the same time, Haines has the highest median age — 49.8 years old — of any borough in Alaska.

Morphet paid for the survey via the mayor’s discretionary fund. The Chilkoot Indian Association and Haines Chamber of Commerce sponsored the effort. For now, there aren’t plans to use the survey aside from capturing sentiment among younger residents, a demographic Morphet said is “not always present or prominent at our government meetings.”

“What gives some weight to the responses, in my opinion, was that the respondents were in Haines in February,” he added in a June email to members of the Haines Borough Assembly. “These are folks who want a stake in our town.”

Housing and child care shortages send young people Outside

Dacotah Russell is 33 and has two young kids. She said in an interview that Haines’ limited child care options are the number one challenge that her family — and nearly all other young families — contend with.

She said the shortage became even more dire last year, when one of Haines’ few preschool options, a nonprofit, shut down. It’s set to reopen this fall, but the closure underscored the dearth of options, particularly as her toddler approaches preschool age.

“If the preschool wasn’t going to open, I’m not sure what we would do. I probably would have to quit my job,” said Russell, who works as an accountant for the borough. Her husband, Travis Russell, is a local police officer.

She was among those who said the child care shortage — combined with a lack of well-paid, full-time jobs — has left most families no choice but to operate on one income.

“A lot of people are moving out because they can’t afford to live off one income here and still raise children,” she said.

The survey suggests that housing is another top issue for younger residents. By Morphet’s count, nearly half of the respondents mentioned housing and rent.

Joe Aultman-Moore was among them. He came to Haines in 2014 as an outdoor tour guide but settled here full-time in 2017. He’s 35, and he says he and his friends have consistently struggled with housing whether they’ve hoped to rent, build or buy.

“I have been in the situation of being like, days away from basically living, you know, in a tent surrounded by boxes of my stuff because I could not find anything at all,” Aultman-Moore said during an interview this week at the local library, where he works.

The Haines Borough Assembly recently considered addressing the issue by allowing homeowners to build small apartments on their properties that could be used as rentals. The proposal generated pushback from some homeowners concerned about overdevelopment.

The assembly ultimately tabled the proposal, the Chilkat Valley News reported early this month.

Aultman-Moore says that’s just one example of a relatively straightforward policy change that would seriously benefit young folks and the borough writ large.

“We need to have more diverse ages around here in order to really have a healthy workforce and a healthy community,” he said. “And we are moving in the opposite direction right now, and that’s going to hurt us economically and socially.”

Respondent and resident Sarah Elliott spoke to the value of government funding for community services and assets that benefit families — things like the local pool, nonprofits and school. She was born in Haines in the 1980’s, is 40 now, and has two teenage kids.

She said all of the above are crucial for families’ well-being but often get caught up in annual budget talks and political crosshairs.

“I just think that if you want young families to stay in town, then you need to support the things that young families want,” Elliott said.

Morphet, the mayor, said many respondents also raised concerns over a lack of inclusivity, including toward the LGBTQ community, and voiced desire for a more functional local government.

“The drivers of the community, the people that take chances, the people that build the community, are younger, and we need them,” he said. “We absolutely need them, and we can’t afford to be losing good ones.”

A 35-year-old woman has died after the vessel she was on capsized Sunday near Sitka, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard is investigating the accident and has not yet released her name.

At about 5 p.m. Sunday, Air Station Sitka received reports of a capsized skiff and an overturned kayak in the Redoubt Bay area, each with one person on board. A Coast Guard helicopter crew, an emergency response vessel from the Sitka Fire Department, and several nearby boaters responded to the calls that came in over VHF radio.

In an email to KCAW, Coast Guard public affairs officer John Hightower said the man operating the skiff, which was a Boston Whaler, was rescued by a nearby good Samaritan boater — he was taken to emergency responders who were waiting on shore in Sitka.

Hightower said the woman was recovered from the water by another good Samaritan. She was then transferred to the Sitka Fire Department vessel, and the Coast Guard helicopter crew lowered a rescue swimmer onto the boat to help with medical treatment while they headed back to town.

Fire Chief Craig Warren said the crew made it back to Sitka shortly after 6 p.m. Sunday, where an ambulance was waiting to take the unresponsive woman to Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center. Hightower said she was pronounced dead at the hospital. He said the woman’s next of kin have been notified.

It’s been three weeks since the Alaska Department of Fish and Game seized dozens of animals from a popular wildlife attraction outside Haines. But a number were left behind, and now the owner is now calling on the state to return to the property and retrieve them.

Fish and Game reported removing 39 animals from the Kroschel Films Wildlife Center in late June amid ongoing concerns about the facility and the animals it houses. But a recent inventory lists closer to 60 animals, which leaves about 20 unaccounted for.

The discrepancy is the latest dispute in a years-long saga between the agency and the center’s owner, Steve Kroschel, over animal welfare and permitting concerns at the popular tourist destination.

The facility has been closed for nearly a year after losing its required permits. Fish and Game and Alaska Wildlife Troopers raided the center last month after executing a search warrant that indicated Kroschel is under investigation for animal cruelty. Two animals died during the operation.

“We’re working on just going back through and double-checking to determine how many of each species still remain there,” said Ryan Scott, who directs the department’s division of wildlife conservation.

Kroschel, for his part, is calling on the agency to retrieve the rest of the animals as soon as possible.

In a Wednesday email exchange with Fish and Game seen by KHNS, he raised concerns over animals that were left behind – and about others he thinks escaped, including several weasels and an arctic fox.

“What is important is that you and those under your direction finish what you have started,” he wrote. “Animals require care 24 hours a day 7 days a week.”

Reached via text on Thursday evening, Kroschel reiterated that point.

“How the heck do they think I am supposed to maintain freezers, phone, time, care, etc without any revenue for a year now?” he wrote, in a nod to the revocation of his federal permit to operate last summer.

Kroschel is not currently at the facility. He said he is in Russia working on a documentary, but that another staff member is on site and caring for the animals.

The agency says it’s working to resolve the discrepancy and always planned to return for the rest of the animals.

Asked why that hasn’t happened yet, Scott, of the wildlife conservation division, said, “there’s more at play there that I can’t discuss.”

He said he doesn’t have any information about animals escaping, adding that staff were “extremely careful” during the operation to avoid that.

Scott also said that as he sees it, it’s Kroschel’s responsibility to take care of any remaining animals.

“We took over two-thirds of the animals, so that leaves a whole lot of resources for what he has left,” Scott said. “In my opinion, it’s his responsibility to maintain care for them until we can get there to take them.”

The agency said earlier this week that 37 animals have been temporarily placed in three Alaska facilities: The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Portage, the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage and Bird TLC in Anchorage.

The agency added that some of the animals will remain in those facilities permanently. Others could be moved elsewhere, such as educational facilities in Washington, Minnesota, Colorado and Canada.

An Alaska Wildlife Troopers spokesperson said the investigation is ongoing and no charges have been filed.

Petersburg’s police chief and his employer, the Petersburg Borough, have officially resolved a lawsuit over his statements during the COVID-19 pandemic with a $70,000 out-of-court settlement.

That means the remaining claim about Chief James Kerr’s First Amendment rights will not go to trial this summer.

Kerr testified against enforcing a masking mandate during a fall 2021 borough Assembly meeting. He said he was speaking as a private citizen.

This ultimately snowballed into a multi-year legal battle between Kerr and the borough.

In the months following his testimony, Kerr told the borough he had become the subject of retaliatory harassment and intimidation by two Assembly members. The borough hired legal counsel to look into the matter, and the investigation’s findings did not favor Kerr.

After KFSK reported a story in summer 2022 with information about the investigation and a statement from the borough, Kerr’s supervisor, Borough Manager Steve Giesbrecht, asked that Kerr submit any future public statements to him for prior review, noting that community members might conflate Kerr’s personal views with official borough positions due to his occupation.

Kerr maintained that he was speaking only as a community member, not as chief of police, when he testified against the masking mandate. He took issue with the borough’s actions and how the legal situation was explained to the public, and he filed a lawsuit in state court to seek reparations. The defendants — the borough and its manager — moved the case to federal court. By then, it had been nearly two years since Kerr’s initial testimony.

Kerr’s lawsuit claimed that the borough defamed him, portrayed him in a false light, and that the borough’s policy limited his speech and violated his constitutional First Amendment rights. In March, a federal court in Juneau ruled in favor of the borough on most of the claims. For the remaining claim regarding the police chief’s free speech rights, the court granted the borough manager immunity, but ruled the verdict would be better determined by a jury trial in August or for the parties to settle through mediation.

The two sides gave mediation a try in June, and the borough emailed a short press release announcing they’d reached a settlement: The borough’s risk pool insurance will pay Kerr $70,000 as part of the agreement.

According to the release, the parties believe that it’s important for borough officials to work well together and that settling the case is what’s best for the public. It said both sides made compromises, but it didn’t provide any specific detail and no clarification was given by either party when asked. They’ve also agreed not to comment further publicly about the settlement.

The borough’s attorneys did not respond to multiple requests for clarifying information, including questions about the “concessions” made by each party. Kerr’s attorneys also did not provide clarification or answers about any potential changes in policy they were seeking.

The parties reached the settlement agreement on June 11. The case officially closed in court July 2, with all of Kerr’s claims against the defendants formally dismissed.

Decades ago in the Chilkat Valley, heavy rains would spark mudflows that tumbled down the Takshanuk Mountains, over an international highway and into the Native village of Klukwan.

Dan Hotch remembers it well. The slides in the late twentieth century that flooded and damaged buildings would routinely deposit a slurry of rocks and mud under his family’s home.

“Growing up as a kid, we hated August and September weather because we knew the rains were coming, and we knew the water was coming down. And there was no way to really stop it,” said Hotch, who is now an environmental specialist with the Chilkat Indian Village.

Then, about 25 years ago, a community member built a berm high in the foothills to divert the debris down another slide path and away from the village.

For decades, it worked. But now that’s starting to change. As the slide path evolves and sediment builds up, rocks and mud have started surging out of that channel – and heading in a concerning direction.

“That migration has caused it to start to point debris flows more towards the village again,” said Josh Roering, an Oregon-based geologist researching geohazards across Southeast Alaska.

The situation has major implications for the village’s safety – and long-term future.

The tribe wants to build more housing not only for current residents, which the 2020 census put at 87 people, but also to make it possible for tribal members who don’t live in the village to move there.

But that’s complicated by the fact that Klukwan is sandwiched between two geohazards that are intensifying with climate change: to the east, landslides from the Takshanuks, and to the west, erosion and flooding from the Chilkat and Tsirku Rivers.

“With these extreme high temps in the summers, and then the atmospheric rivers in the fall and winters, a lot more flooding is happening here,” said Jess Kayser Forster, who has consulted for the Chilkat Indian Village on environmental issues for more than a decade.

That means the village has two options for development: further north, up the valley, or east, across the highway and into the foothills — which would mean building in areas with intensifying landslide risk.

In response, the tribe has joined a region-wide research project to better understand the threat and develop accordingly.

“It’s kind of hard to expand this way if we wanted to, knowing the fact that (mudflows) could come and take out everything that you’re trying to do,” Hotch said.

Studying the risk 

It’s an issue playing out across the region, state, country and world. Communities are expanding into wilderness at the same time as rising temperatures are fueling less predictable and more severe wildfires, floods and landslides.

That has triggered a global reckoning over how to model extreme weather, protect communities and develop new ones without putting more people in harm’s way. 

“You can see it all over Southeast Alaska, my home included,” Kayser Forster said. “We’re all built in these areas where these hazards are.”

That reality is top of mind in Klukwan. In 2018, the tribal council kicked off a climate resilience planning process. Then, in 2020, an atmospheric river triggered a devastating landslide that killed two community members in Haines.

“We realized that we were underprepared if an event like that were to happen in Klukwan. It highlighted a lot of our needs, and a lot of our risks. But it also highlighted the community’s desire to build those capacities,” said Shawna Hotch, who serves as the tribal liaison for Klukwan’s Tribal Emergency Operations Center.

By 2022, the village had joined a regional research project that aims to help tribal governments to do just that.

The effort is called the Ḵutí Project, which means “weather” in Tlingit. The project, which is run out of the Sitka Sound Science Center using a five-year federal grant, is fueling research in Klukwan, Skagway, Hoonah, Yakutat, Craig and Kasaan.

The main goal is to ensure communities have the data and tools they need to grapple with – and prepare for – weather events that are typically sparked by heavy rains. Roering, the University of Oregon-based researcher, emphasized that the geography, geology and risk are unique in each community. That means on-the-ground research is, too.

Planning for the future in a changing landscape

Klukwan, for its part, sits in the shadow of fractured cliffs further weakened by rain, frost and snow that are crumbling into a catchment below. During heavy rains, water and gravity carry the material downhill.

“When the debris flows get too big to stay in the current channel, they’ll do what’s called an avulsion,” Roering said. “That means they basically jump out of the banks, go over the banks, and follow a new path.”

Particularly interesting is that state geologists have recently discovered permafrosthigh up on those mountains. Roering said it’s too soon to say whether melting permafrost – another climate impact – could be contributing to instability. But research in other parts of the world suggests it’s possible.

Studying and addressing those processes has taken several forms. First, the project is funding the installation of a brand-new weather station, to ensure more accurate local forecasting.

The project has also funded lidar collection and analysis, which provides insight into existing slidepaths and how they’re changing. Finally, it made possible the installation of cameras and sensors high up in the mountains.

On a recent field visit to Klukwan, Roering walked through a dense patch of forest, and pointed them out.

“These are called infrasound sensors,” he said. “They’re recording things that we are not hearing but are happening in the environment.

Think: wind, rain and rockfall. That data, combined with camera footage, provides crucial context about what triggers rockfalls and mudflows, and when those flows are more likely to avulse out of the main channel – and potentially surge toward the village.

For now, Roering said the goal is to develop a baseline of what exactly is happening on the hillside, and why. But even that is complicated.

“This is going to be a long term project,” Roering said. “That channel is going to keep changing, regardless of a berm that gets built next summer, or the summer after.”

Even so, the tribe will ideally be able to use the information for a few purposes. First, planning new berms to divert the slides away from the village, and supporting grant applications to fund the work.

And second is safe community development. Hotch, of the tribe’s environmental staff, said that could encourage tribal members to move home. He himself moved back to Klukwan about a decade ago after spending years in Oregon, first for boarding school and later for work.

“It’s great to be home,” he said. “We need more people back at home.”

Sport fishing for wild king salmon in Southeast Alaska is now more restricted for some people.

Nonresident anglers can no longer fish for king salmon in the region. State managers closed the sector because of harvest projections.

However, harvesting hatchery king salmon is still allowed in certain areas with special fishing regulations near Juneau, Ketchikan, and Petersburg because hatchery fish don’t count toward the amount of wild king salmon anglers can harvest. That includes the Juneau designated saltwater hatchery area, Herring Bay near Ketchikan, the City Creek release site near Petersburg and the Blind Slough-Wrangell Narrows terminal harvest area.

Patrick Fowler is the regional fisheries management coordinator for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He said sport fish anglers have been catching more king salmon than expected so far this season, indicating they’d exceed the allowed harvest limit by about 4,000 fish. So the department took restrictive action.

“We need to keep the sport fishery within its allocation. And following the management plan that the Board [of Fish] gave us, we have to close the nonresident fishery in order to keep the sport fishery within allocation while protecting that resident opportunity,” he said.

The Alaska Board of Fisheries gave the department new directions for managing the king salmon fishery, allowing them to change fishing rules during the season as necessary so anglers only catch the amount of wild fish they’re allowed to take this year. That allocated amount is part of an agreement between the U.S. and Canada, called the Pacific Salmon Treaty, which ensures both countries get some fish.

Alaska residents get priority for sport fishing king salmon. Fowler said it’s still unknown how the resident harvest will add up, and the nonresident sector could reopen later in the season if further projections allow.

“We’re not ruling out that the fishery won’t reopen,” he said. “But we need to watch how the resident harvest materializes.”

In other restrictive action, all anglers —including residents— are prohibited from taking wild king salmon in the zone outside of state waters, called the exclusive economic zone. Fowler said very few anglers harvest king salmon in that area, which begins just over three miles from the outer coast.

“We estimate about 1% of the Chinook (king salmon) harvest happens in the exclusive economic zone,” Fowler said. “The vast majority of, you know, sport fish harvest and effort occurs within state waters.”

According to state law, sport fish violations have a base fine of $100, and there’s an added $150 fine per each fish taken illegally.

According to Alaska Wildlife Troopers, which is the agency that enforces the law, sport fishing charter businesses that retain fish in violation of the law garner heavier fines —including misdemeanor charges— and gear like rods, poles and vessels could be seized.

Any king salmon caught should be released and returned to the water immediately and unharmed, according to Fish and Game.

The regulations went into effect July 7 and will last through the end of September.