Western

Norton Sound’s commercial crab fishery closed Thursday. In the first season shortened by a new quota, winter fishermen harvested the allowed 41,376 pounds of red king crab in just over a month. Just 22 commercial permit holders sold crab this year. That’s down from last season when 44 crabbers harvested nearly 100,000 pounds, shattering every record in the 35-year history of the fishery.

Jim Menard is the area manager for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He said the Board of Fisheries imposed the new quota to better balance the winter and summer crab catches. The quota shrunk the winter season by several months and cut the harvest by more than half, compared to last year’s record-breaking haul.

Still, Menard said commercial crabbers have had a lucrative winter.

“We peaked at $7.50 per pound. That’s definitely the best we’ve seen, and the fishermen were paid very well,” Menard said.

In addition to the new, reduced quota, Menard said other factors contributed to lower turnout.

“It was a lot of newcomers last year, and they realize it’s not that lucrative unless you have a full commitment to it,” he said. “And the ice conditions weren’t as good as last year, so maybe some shied away for that reason.”

While next year’s winter crab quota won’t be determined until after the summer fishery, Menard said it will probably be about the same. That means shorter seasons and smaller harvests will likely be the new normal for the Norton Sound fishery.

On top of the quota, Menard said the Board of Fisheries is also limiting the number of crab pots fishermen are allowed to use. Starting next winter, crabbers can only fish with 20 pots at a time, instead of dropping any many as they like. Menard said the board is introducing the limit to cut down on lost crab pots and ghost fishing.

The Bering Strait School District has joined a nationwide effort to encourage healthy relationships and end dating violence among Native youth.

The NativeLove Project raises awareness through social media and school programs. Students in White Mountain are producing a video with local interviews to add to the conversation.

More than 40 percent of Native children experience multiple acts of violence by age 18. That’s according to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center in Montana. The organization launched the NativeLove Project to get young, indigenous people talking about healthy relationships.

Kelly Rae Martin is a teacher in White Mountain. She said it’s important her students join the discussion, given Alaska’s high rate of domestic violence.

“It doesn’t get talked about very much,” said Martin. “It doesn’t get shared or discussed, so I think it’s really important people start seeing that it is OK to talk about it. It is OK to address it and try to work through it, so that some healing can happen.”

To promote that healing, her students are producing a video. Anna Prentice is a high school senior, and she interviewed classmates and community members for the project.

“We asked a lot of questions like: What to you is Native love? How do you know that people are showing you love? And then, what do you think an ideal world would be?” said Prentice.

For the young students she interviewed, Prentice said love means helping clean up around the house or taking their siblings out four-wheeling. For elders, she said cooking and sharing food is a favorite way to express their love.

“Everyone thinks it’s happiness, respect for one other, and just family things to do with love,” she said.

Prentice also participated on the other side of the camera. She said she was happy to share her experience with dating violence, even though it was hard.

“For me, the topic is personal,” she said. “I feel like everybody needs to know how we can prevent that from happening, especially with the younger generation. I’ve been through it all, I’ve seen it and to me, it’s very important they know what love is and what isn’t.”

With interviews complete, Prentice and her classmates are now editing footage for the video. They’ll screen the final product soon for the White Mountain community. Other BSSD schools are also joining the NativeLove Project. Students around the district are creating a quilt with artwork centered on healthy relationships.

Cooperation across the Bering Strait was strengthened this week when the United States and Russia signed a joint wildlife agreement.

Officials from the two Arctic nations met in San Diego to discuss polar bear and snow goose monitoring efforts in Alaska and Chukotka.

James Kurth, Deputy Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, signed off on the agreement alongside his Russian counterpart Amirkhan Amirkhanov, deputy head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources.

The two have worked together on wildlife management in the past. A similar joint management effort took place between 2013 and 2015. At this week’s meeting in San Diego, Russian and American officials also discussed results from their joint study on the dynamics of the Bering and Chukotka Seas’ ecosystems.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was unavailable for comment on the agreement.

The US Army Corps of Engineers has completed a week of back-to-back meetings collecting public comment on the Donlin Gold draft environmental impact statement, or EIS, with a visit to Nunapitchuk.

The Army Corps is the lead federal agency on the document and has contracted the international environmental and engineering firm AECOM to create the draft.

About 25 people from Nunapitchuk, Kasigluk, and Atmautluak attended the gathering on Thursday to testify on the proposed open pit gold mine located about 10 miles north of the village of Crooked Creek and the Kuskokwim River.

The comments at the meeting remained consistent with concerns expressed in other villages throughout the Yukon-Kuskokwim region on the project; mainly residents want the economic benefits of jobs without assuming the environmental impacts mining could have on subsistence.

But Bobby Hoffman, a Calista Corporation board member, says subsistence users can’t have one without the other.

“If we don’t have money we can’t get subsistence. Since our subsistence is away from our villages and our towns, we have to go get them. Without gas, without equipment— snow machines, shells, food— we can’t get them,” Hoffman said.

Calista owns the mineral rights to the mine site and plans to increase shareholder dividends with revenue generated from its operations—an estimated $1.5 billion over the life of the project and an additional quarter million dollars in right-of-way lease payments from a proposed pipeline, according to the draft EIS.

Nunapitchuk resident Barbara Evan says she’s torn about the mine.

“I know there (are) a lot of unemployed people all over these small rural communities. It’s a good opportunity for them, but then there’s that side where the elders are concerned about our subsistence,” Evan said.

Her son is one of those unemployed people. He’s 21 years old and living at home. She says he dropped out of high school, and she’s encouraging him to get his GED so he can work.

Evan says even though she’s concerned about environmental hazards if the mine offered her son a job, she’d encourage him to take it. And if the mine were operating, she says maybe he wouldn’t be in his situation, because more employment opportunities would motivate young people to finish school.

But Morris Alexie, a subsistence hunter from Nunapitchuk disagrees.

“It’s been 20 years since these guys showed up,” Alexie said. “I haven’t seen any improvements in our graduation rates.”

According to the draft EIS, in 1995 Placer Dome US began exploring the mine site, setting up camps and support facilities like an airstrip and roads to advance their assessments.

In 2007 Barrick Gold North America and NOVAGOLD Resources Alaska, Inc. formed Donlin Creek LLC in a 50/50 partnership. They changed the company’s name to Donlin Gold LLC in 2011.

Since then Donlin has committed to a Calista shareholder hiring preference, and the draft EIS estimates the mine would employ 1,600 to 1,900 YK residents during construction and 500 to 600 residents during operations.

Alexie says those numbers don’t substantially benefit the region.

“They say jobs. But there (are) 13,000 shareholders right now, and if we add the descendants, it’ll be 40,000 shareholders,” he said. “It outweighs the shareholders for the number of jobs available.”

Alexie says the possibilities for environmental impacts override the possibilities for employment. Jobs, he says, would benefit a few while subsistence consequences would affect everyone.

No matter what happens, Henry Tikiun Sr., an elder from Atmautluak, wants the region to hold the mine’s estimated 27-year lifespan in perspective.

“Subsistence outweighs jobs. You can have a job for so long. The gold mine can be open for so long and then close. Subsistence,” Tikiun said, “will last forever.”

The Army Corps will return to the YK region the final week of March to collect public comment on the draft EIS in Chuathbaluk, Holy Cross, and Lower Kalskag.

Lillian Michael provided Yup’ik translation for this story.

Rural Alaskans can pay three to five times more for electricity than those in urban areas. That’s why the state launched the Power Cost Equalization Endowment Fund in 2000. It’s paid roughly $40 million annually to subsidize rural energy bills.

But some are questioning if the fund, now worth $900 million, should be committed to benefit only about one in nine Alaskans.

Senate Finance Committee Co-Chairwoman Anna MacKinnon, an Eagle River Republican, said the state government could consider tapping the fund.

“You’ll see Power Cost Equalization come before us. There’s a billion dollars in that fund,” she said. “That billion dollars has been benefiting a selected group of Alaskans with Power Cost Equalization. But is that the highest and best use of those dollars now?”

MacKinnon is a sponsor of Senate Bill 196, which would rebudget fund earnings for other purposes. In years where fund earnings are greater than what’s needed for the Power Cost Equalization program, 60 percent of the excess earnings would go to the state government, 30 percent would go to renewable energy projects, and 10 percent would build up the endowment.

The fund lost money this year, so no excess money is available. It’s not clear whether MacKinnon and other lawmakers are looking beyond Senate Bill 196, to use the fund itself to help close the state’s budget shortfall.

Bethel Democratic Sen. Lyman Hoffman – another sponsor of the bill – sees Senate Bill 196 as a way to protect the fund’s principal while helping the state.

“So what we’re trying to do with this bill is to assure that during those high years, the fund only pay for its intended purpose – and if there are excess earnings, that those earnings be sent back to two different programs,” Hoffman said.

Rep. Bob Herron, another Bethel Democrat, said power cost equalization is fair to rural residents. He notes the endowment was started after the government paid for dams that provide power to cities.

Gov. Bill Walker wants to make sure that if changes are made to the fund, they’re considered along with his plan to close the budget shortfall. He wants to ensure everyone in the state shares the burden.

Walker expressed concern that the combined impact of Power Cost Equalization changes with Permanent Fund dividend changes would put too much of the burden on rural Alaskans.

“That’s why we have focused on a sustainable plan that is a broad-based plan, so that we take into consideration rural Alaska’s situation, which is unique versus urban Alaska,” Walker said. “We’ve tried to take all of that into consideration. That’s why one piece at a time doesn’t really work.”

The Senate Finance Committee heard testimony supporting Senate Bill 196 on Wednesday, but didn’t vote on the bill.

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Dallas Seavey and his dog team came running down front to claim victory in this year’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and he sat a new race record.

The younger Seavey finished less than an hour ahead of his father.

Although his team was small at only six dogs, Dallas Seavey was able to shave time from the previous race record – one he set back in 2014.

“I was kind of surprised to see how fast the time was, but I had it in the back of my mind that this just might be a record breaker and if any dog deserves it it’s this team right here,” he said.

This is Seavey’s fourth win in five years.

“You know, that’s the funny thing is everybody has been asking ‘are you gonna go for five? Are you gonna go for six?’” Seavey said. “And I was like, ‘I just won my first Iditarod.’ Then after the second one, I said that’s a long ways off. Coming in tonight, I was thinking it might be time to start thinking about number five now.”

After an awards ceremony that included a $75,000 check and a new pickup truck, Seavey left the finish line for a few minutes – long enough to grab a cup of coffee, before his father and two-time champion Mitch Seavey drove his dog team under the burled arch that marks the finish line of the 1000 mile race.

Dallas: “I had fun out there.”

Mitch: “You did?”

Dallas: “Well, racing with you.”

Mitch: “Yeah, it was fun being together at places.”

The elder Seavey didn’t talk nearly as much about his own race as he did about his son’s.

“Dallas is a believer,” he said. “If it’s out there to be achieved, he thinks it’s already his and usually he turns out to be right.”

Mitch Seavey drove a team of young, inexperienced dogs. He struggled to find leaders throughout his race, but at the finish line his wife Janine reminded him of his accomplishment.

Mitch: “I’d like to have won – should’ve, could’ve. If, if, if; if, ifs and buts. But, leaders …”

Janine: “But look what you did without the leaders. It’s just incredible.”

Mitch: “I just did what Conway says. If you don’t have leaders, just don’t put any up there.”

Conway is another of Mitch Seavey’s sons.

Between the two of them, Mitch and Dallas Seavey have 20 top-10 finishes.

Now, they also now have a handful of new dogs to add to their mix of trail-hardened, experienced sled dogs that are likely to prove dominant in the mushing scene for many years to come.