Southwest

On April 29, 59-year-old Nicky Myers of Pilot Station fell through the ice on the Yukon River on his snowmachine and died. He was the mayor of Pilot Station, proto-deacon of the Russian Orthodox church, a crew boss for local wildfire firefighters, a member of search-and-rescue, and a family man.

It’s the first river death in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta this year.

Myers set out on the Yukon River from Pilot Station to St. Mary’s by snowmachine on the afternoon of April 26. His son, 30-year-old Nikiefer Myers, had just landed after a vacation. Nikiefer thought a friend was going to pick him up, but instead it was his dad.

“It was a surprise. I was surprised to see him there,” Nikiefer said.

The two headed upriver towards Pilot Station for what is normally about a 40-minute snowmachine ride. His dad told him that the ride downriver had been good. But by evening on the way back, it started to get bumpy.

“There was lots of dark spots, lots of water,” Nikiefer saud.

Then, suddenly, the ice turned needle-y. The snowmachine stopped and started to sink. They jumped off and started to swim.

“I looked back. I saw my dad struggling to swim. He had all his winter gear on. I grabbed him and helped him swim,” Nikiefer said.

Nikiefer was holding onto his dad and trying to find solid ice to hang onto. The first piece broke off, but he finally found a solid patch and pulled his dad onto it. His dad was weak and cold. He wanted his son to stay safe. His dad told him to leave.

“I heard my dad: ‘You gotta go, you gotta go, just go without me,’” Nikiefer said.

His dad was starting to slide back under the ice. Nikiefer pulled him out again.

“His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving. I still stayed there for a little bit with him. And in my head I heard another time, ‘You gotta go, you gotta go, you gotta go without me.’ I really didn’t wanna leave,” Nikiefer said.

But he left to go get help. He made it to shore and shed his wet clothes. He was amazed when his phone still worked. But he had to walk, possibly a couple miles, until he found service.

He called for help and the local search and rescue mobilized. Someone called Nikiefer’s mother, Judy, and told her that her son and husband had fallen through the ice. They asked her to gather warm blankets for the rescue effort.

“So I got everything ready,” Judy said.

She prepared two of everything, but only her son walked through the door.

“And he came in and dropped to the floor crying and said he couldn’t wake up papa,” Judy said.

Myers was dead by the time search and rescue pulled him out of the river. The Alaska State Troopers came the next day to take his body to Anchorage for autopsy. Now his family will wait for his body to return so they can hold a funeral.

In the meantime, they’re spending time with one another, sharing memories.

Myers was born almost 60 years ago in Pilot Station on May 12. He was the third youngest of eight children in a big Russian Orthodox family.

“We had a real good childhood. It was fun. We didn’t have much toys. But we had food, we had shelter, clothes, we had each other. We lived a subsistence lifestyle. We would go out with our parents, or fishing or berry picking, logging,” Wassillie Myers said.

Wassillie was always close with his older brother.

“He was my best friend,” Wassillie said.

Wassilie followed Myers into firefighting. The two traveled all over Alaska and the lower 48 fighting fires together. Nicky was the crew boss, and Wassilie was the squad boss. The two looked and acted so alike that the other firefighters would get them confused.

Alaska Native singer-songwriter Byron Nicholai has a new album out. “Ayagnera” was released on March 25. Two days later, it ranked among the top 10 new albums in the worldwide genre on iTunes.

Back in 2016, Nicholai was dubbed “the Justin Bieber of Alaska” a year after he released his first album, “I am Yup’ik.”

Nicholai has since moved to Anchorage from his home in Toksook Bay, a Bering Sea coastal village on Nelson Island. He works with a producer remotely.

“One of the main reasons I moved from Toksook [Bay] to Anchorage is so I could get faster internet,” he said. “I feel like it would mess with my momentum a little bit, ’cause sometimes I’d be excited to work on a track, but then having internet problems would just kind of wash that away.”

It took Nicholai more than two years to lay down the 13 new tracks for “Ayagnera.” He recorded it entirely in his Anchorage bedroom. The album has garnered international attention from Rolling Stone India’s website, which recently featured the album alongside four others by young global artists.

The songs are almost entirely in Yugtun, the Indigenous language Nicholai grew up speaking. He also uses traditional Yup’ik music for inspiration.

“I’ve always grown up drumming and dancing,” Nicholai said. “And just the song behind the drum, where it’s just that one singular beat, you can transfer that into a whole different song just as long as you keep that rhythm. And having that one single rhythm while we are yuraqing and dancing helps in creating these songs.”

Music is Nicholai’s way of keeping his Alaska Native language alive, and he said it’s also an experiment in modernizing traditional Yup’ik music and dance. He said that much of the album involves a mix of emotions. He sings about his own struggles, the struggles of others, and about his family. The genres he uses to express his feelings in the songs are just as mixed as his emotions.

“Throughout the time that I was making it, I would record a song depending on how I was feeling at that moment,” Nicholai said. “I’ve got a few rap songs in there, I’ve got a couple R&B songs. I’ve got songs in there that sound like pop, and I’ve got a song in there that sounds like electronic dance music.”

Nicholai will perform for fans in Bethel this weekend.

Alaska fishermen could see a record sockeye salmon harvest of 74 million fish this year, most of which will come from Bristol Bay. That’s according to the commercial fishing forecast summary released by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game ahead of the 2022 season.

The department is expecting a return of nearly 75.3 million sockeye to Bristol Bay, of which about 59.5 million would be available for harvest. The predictions have industry insiders wondering if harvesters and processors there will be able to keep up.

The forecast for Cook Inlet, on the other hand, is considered “weak” by the department. The same Fish and Game forecast predicts a total run of 4.97 million sockeye to Upper Cook Inlet, of which about 2.05 million should be available for commercial harvest.

While the numbers are below average, they’re not surprising. Cook Inlet has seen a string of below-average commercial seasons.

Still, Pacific Star Seafoods Plant Manager Nate Berga, of Kenai, said he’s hopeful.

The 2020 season was really bad, as markets were unsettled by the pandemic. Fishermen caught less salmon, and they didn’t earn as much per pound as they did in years prior.

Last year was an improvement, both for catches and price per pound. Berga thinks that’s heartening for fishermen and is expecting a decent turnout in the fishery.

“I think after last season, they’re encouraged,” he said. “There’s a little wind in their sails. So we’re anticipating a fair amount coming up.”

He said regardless of the forecast, what matters are the restrictions Fish and Game puts on fishermen during the season.

Even though the run wasn’t great last year, Berga said Fish and Game gave the drift fleet time to get out on the water and fish.

“Regardless of the run and how healthy it might look, if you’re not in the water fishing you’re not making a living,” Berga said.

A large subset of permit holders won’t be able to fish this year, since the feds closed a swath of Cook Inlet to commercial salmon fishing in 2020. Fishermen from the gear group that represents Cook Inlet gillnetters, the United Cook Inlet Drift Association, argued their case in court Friday in an attempt to get that order stopped before the season starts.

The Fish and Game forecast also predicts a slightly below-average run for the Kenai River — an estimated 2.9 million fish on the Kenai, compared with a 20-year average of 3.7 million.

Fish and Game’s escapement goal for the Kenai River for 2022 is 1.1 to 1.4 million sockeye. Last year, the run was over-escaped as more late-run sockeye passed through the Kenai River sonar than the department had aimed for.

Alaska’s biggest April wildfire in 25 years might be done burning. Damage to the permafrost from the tundra fire is unlikely, but the local ecosystem could still see signs of disruption.

The Kwethluk Fire began burning on April 16 near the communities of Kwethluk, Bethel and Napakiak. The fire was around 650 acres the first day and grew to more than 10,000 acres over the course of 12 days. Now, the Alaska Division of Forestry says the fire has mostly burned out.

That’s according to the Alaska Division of Forestry. Pilot and firefighter Matt Snyder flew over the fire on April 26 and took infrared video showing it had died down considerably.

“The infrared is showing white hot, and that’s showing the solar radiation in the fire, not actual heat,” said Snyder

The video showed that there was no more smoke emitting from the fire. But Alaska Division of Forestry spokesperson Kale Casey said that doesn’t mean they can consider the fire completely extinguished just yet.

“We don’t want to play the game of calling it out. We know that it’s not moving. We know that it has no heat showing. But just like every other wildfire, is there a tiny bit of heat that might linger a few more days? Sure. Absolutely. That’s why we’re going to end up keeping an eye on it in the next couple of days in monitor status,” said Casey.

Climate specialist Rick Thoman said it’s Alaska’s largest April wildfire in 25 years.

Spring tundra fires in general are common. When the winter snow melts and exposes the brown vegetation on the tundra, that vegetation can quickly dry and ignite, sparking fires that can spread far and wide. But a large tundra fire this early is abnormal, according to Thoman. That’s because normally in April there is more snowpack, which prevents fires from starting or spreading.

Tundra and permafrost scientist J.J. Frost watched the Alaska Division of Forestry’s flyover video. Frost said that he has worked in the Y-K Delta over the years. He said that it is possible to see if there’s damage occurring from flyover video’s like Snyder’s, but he didn’t see any. Frost said that tundra fires are sometimes concerning because they can cause damage to the permafrost, but in the early spring they don’t burn deep enough to melt it.

Frost is concerned about something else, though.

“Lichens are not — they’re not tolerant of fire really at all,” said Frost.

He said that lichens take a long time to grow back, which can be a problem for animals who graze on lichen.

“There’s a potential the Mulchatna [Caribou] Herd might utilize that area. And so if those lichens are gone, that is a habitat impact for caribou in particular,” Frost said.

The Mulchatna Caribou Herd is already threatened. Its population size has dropped dramatically since the mid 1990s, hitting a low point of 12,850 animals in 2021. Hunting for the species has been extremely limited since, and closed entirely last year.

Frost said that early season tundra fires do offer some regeneration for non-lichen plants.

“That burn material is releasing nutrients that are going to be available for plants to take up later on in the summer. And potentially, in essence, fertilize them,” Frost said.

Frost said that we could see a lush tundra bloom in the early summer in the area where the fire burned.

The largest April wildfire in Alaska in a quarter century is burning near the community of Kwethluk on dry tundra along the lower Kuskokwim River. The fire still is not threatening the community of Kwethluk or any Native allotments.

The Alaska Division of Forestry’s most recent estimate put the fire’s size at 9,693 acres.

The tundra fire is burning 25 miles southeast of Kwethluk, according to satellite imagery collected by the Alaska Division of Forestry on April 21. It’s spreading away from the community across brown tundra to the southwest.

“I do see it. I see smoke. It’s visible at times,” Kwethluk resident Boris Epchook said.

He said that a northerly and easterly wind has mostly kept that smoke away from the community. He could only smell smoke the first day of the fire, April 16. Otherwise, he said that it has not disturbed the village.

“It hasn’t really affected us,” Epchook said.

Climate specialist Rick Thoman said that the fire is the largest April wildfire in Alaska in 25 years. A variety of conditions have converged, making the area dry and ripe to burn.

Less snow than usual fell in the area this winter. It melted early, exposing the tundra. A steady wind has dried the vegetation, and hardly any precipitation has fallen since early March. Thoman said that with no rain and abundant sunshine, the tundra has remained brown and dry.

“It’s not like dry Aprils are unusual; this is the dry season. But typically you would expect there would still be enough snow around that, even if a fire got going, that it would, within yards, run into snow,” Thoman said.

The forestry division expects the fire to continue burning until it runs out of dry brush and grasses for fuel, or until it rains. A tiny bit of rain is forecast for this weekend, according to wunderground.com. Otherwise, there is no rain on the 10-day forecast.

The fire has been burning for at least seven days, since it was first reported to the division on April 16. At the time, they estimated the fire at 650 acres. It’s grown every day since, now reaching approximately 9,693 acres.

Alaska Division of Forestry spokesperson Kale Casey said that the fire is likely human caused. There has not been any recent lightning, and the area is a travel corridor for ATVs and snowmachines. The decision whether to investigate the cause of the fire will be up to the local land managers. In this case, that’s the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. Casey said that because the fire is burning in a remote area and not threatening people or private property, an investigation is unlikely.

“We’re trying to not just be putting people in harm’s way. Any time you land a resource out in a remote area of Alaska, there’s potential for incidents with aviation having problems, with people themselves having animal encounters. So there’s a big picture here,” Casey said.

The forestry division is not taking any action to suppress the fire at this time. Casey encourages everyone in Alaska to prepare their property for fire season.

Alaska has imported more wood bison from Canada as part of an effort to restore the animal’s population in the state. Some of the young animals will be added to a herd that the state established in Western Alaska in 2015.

The Department of Fish and Game and the Bureau of Land Management worked with Parks Canada to bring forty wood bison to Fairbanks last week.

State wood bison biologist Tom Seaton says the young animals were trucked to Fairbanks from Elk Island National Park in Alberta. He says the park has healthy bison available for Canadian conservation efforts, and this year they had enough to send some to Alaska.

“As far as bison standards go, they’re pretty small, but they’re about the same size as an adult female musk ox,” Seaton said.

Alaska’s new bison are 11 months old and weigh about 400 pounds each. Seaton says Parks Canada charged $16,000 for care and handling of the bison, which are now staying at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Large Animal Research Station.

“We’ve got to go through another 30 days of isolation of them here at LARS and then work toward plans of release,” he said.

Seaton says most of the young wood bison are likely destined to augment a group that was transplanted from Elk Island to the Lower Innoko-Yukon River region 7 years ago. That effort re-established the animals in Alaska, where they disappeared from the wild in the early 20th century.

Seaton says that in late June or early July, the new bison will likely get barged to an area along the Innoko River where the reintroduced herd gathers before the rut.

“It’s most likely that the wild animals will be very curious about these new young ones, and these new young ones are going to want to connect with those adults. We’ll also use some recorded sounds of bison interactions that might help draw in the wild ones,” he said.

Seaton says the young bison will be held in a pen until they connect with the wild herd, which has remained in the area where 130 of the animals were initially transplanted in 2015. They currently number about 105.

Fish and Game Interior and Eastern Arctic regional supervisor says some of the newly imported animals could eventually be used to re-establish more bison herds in Alaska in places “that have yet to be determined.”

Bruning says there’s broad support for wood bison restoration.

“So many members of the public and organizations, and government agencies, Native corporations and tribal entities and communities, all across Alaska and even beyond Alaska — it’s been an effort of great international interest,” he said.

Bruning and Seaton say the public can view the young wood bison at the University of Alaska Fairbanks LARS facility, but they caution people not to disturb the animals because they are still adjusting.