Western

The Aniak Traditional Council unanimously voted to rescind its support for the proposed Donlin Gold mine over concerns about increased barge traffic on the Kuskokwim River. The tribe’s withdrawal removes a longtime pillar of support for the project. The mine’s landowners say they see the repeal as an opportunity to better understand and address community concerns.

The council’s repeal vote on Aug. 30 revokes its 2016 resolution to support the mine. But council Chief Wayne Morgan said that the body had unofficially supported the project for over a decade before that, since 1995. It wanted the potential jobs and economic benefits that the mine could bring. Now, Morgan says, that desire is overridden by concerns over the mine’s barge traffic.

“I really believe our river, Kuskokwim River, it’s a scenic river. It’s a wild river. And with the increased traffic on the river, I’d call it industrializing the river, it’s going to take away the wild and scenic part of that,” Morgan said.

Aniak is the largest community in the middle Kuskokwim. The town of about 500 people sits about 70 miles downstream from the proposed mine. To operate, Donlin would need a steady stream of materials, equipment, supplies, and diesel fuel.

From early June to early October, when the river is ice-free, much of those resources would arrive by barge, traveling 190 miles of river. Donlin plans to send one to two barges per day along the Kuskokwim River between Bethel and the mine, increasing summer barge trips by almost 200%. The traffic would last the length of the mine’s lifespan, projected at about 30 years, but it could run longer if more gold is found and as mining technology advances.

For Morgan, age 57, that’s longer than he expects to be alive.

“That’s too much to give and sacrifice on our end,” Morgan said.

Morgan predicts that the barge traffic will disrupt subsistence activities, jeopardizing people’s abilities to feed their families. For example, it’s currently moose hunting season, and Morgan said that the barge traffic could spook off moose before hunters can see them. Fishing is also a concern. The river narrows upstream, and to catch salmon, most people use gillnets stretched across the water.

“We’d have to wait until a barge passes and then try and fish. It’s going to put a burden on fishermen trying to get their subsistence foods in a limited amount of time,” Morgan said.

Also, he said, the wake caused by barges makes the river more difficult and more dangerous to navigate in small skiffs. Another concern for Morgan is any contamination the barges could cause if an accident, like a fuel spill, occurs. If the mine begins operations, he expects the barges to become many people’s main experience of it.

“Some people will never get to see the mine, but they’ll see it every day for 30 plus years on the river with the barges,” Morgan said.

The mine would be built on Native corporation land. The Kuskokwim Corporation owns the surface rights. Aniak is one of 10 middle and upper Kuskokwim River village corporations that compose The Kuskokwim Corporation and the first to take this type of action. The Kuskokwim Corporation President and CEO Andrea Gusty is an Aniak tribal member and said that she welcomes her tribal council’s concerns.

“It’s concerns that make the project better. It’s being skeptical, and diving into the details, and doing due diligence, and doing research,” Gusty said. “I mean, there’s a reason that development like this takes years and years and decades and decades.”

Calista Corporation is the other land owner. It owns the sub-surface rights. Vice President of Corporate Affairs Thom Leonard also framed Aniak’s concerns as a positive.

“If everyone was in support of the project, then I would be more worried, because then we wouldn’t be getting the feedback we need to make improvements and support our people,” he said.

Donlin External Affairs Manager Kristina Woolston pointed out how Donlin has adapted to address concerns about barge traffic in the past.

When an Aniak resident shared concerns over the traffic impacting smelt, Donlin began researching the fish and its habitat. When residents shared concerns over the number of daily barges transporting diesel fuel, Donlin proposed a plan to reduce the number by constructing an over 300-mile natural gas pipeline from Cook Inlet to the mine. Also, Donlin formed a Subsistence Community Advisory Committee and is accepting applications for the group.

Woolston sees Aniak’s repeal as another way the mining project can adapt while continuing to move forward.

“We appreciate the feedback, and we feel this is an ongoing opportunity to continue our robust discussion with the community of Aniak and its leaders, and throughout the region,” she said.

Though the Aniak Traditional Council rescinded its support for the Donlin Gold mine, it did not vote to oppose it. Fourteen tribes in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta have issued resolutions of opposition, along with tribal organizations that include the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation, the Association of Village Council Presidents, and the National Congress of American Indians.

Mother Kuskokwim Tribal Coalition is a new organization that formed this summer to advance tribal opposition to Donlin. When Director Sophie Swope heard that the project landowners were characterizing Aniak’s repeal as an opportunity to address concerns, she pushed back on that framing.

“Them talking about how it’s going to bring more robust and clear conversations, I don’t believe that is what it will bring. I just think it makes it more clear that they do not have the social license,” Swope said.

Morgan said that he could not predict if the Aniak Traditional Council would again support the mining project if it reduced its projected barge traffic.

Fall moose hunts are beginning across Alaska. In western parts of the state, biologists hope that hunting pressure will help protect the health of booming populations. They also want to know why there are so many moose in the first place.

It may have a lot to do with shrubs — particularly scrubby willows shooting up at the edges of open tundra. Moose feast on their leaves during the spring and summer. These short woody plants are spreading west, aided by climate change, and moose populations are expanding along with them. Researchers say it highlights the way that ecological changes cascade. Meanwhile, it’s prompting changes in hunting management, as people in rural areas depend increasingly on moose for subsistence.

The shrub spread appears to be caused by warming temperatures and the loss of snowpack in the Subarctic. Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said that spring in southwest Alaska has changed substantially, with snow melting earlier as temperatures rise. In the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, for example, the average springtime temperature has increased by more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit between 1972 and 2021. “That’s of course critically important for vegetation, because the earlier you can start to grow, the more you’re going to grow, in a Subarctic environment,” said Thoman.

Shrub expansion across the tundra, sometimes called “shrubification,” is visible from space: In satellite images, areas dominated by shrubs are greener than open tundra during the summer. Researchers track shrubification by comparing the greenness of images across the years. Shrubs have been proliferating in the rapidly warming global Arctic since at least the 1980s, and recent research shows that they are expanding in tundra below the Arctic Circle as well.

For moose in western Alaska, it’s been a boon. Their populations have swelled to record numbers in parts of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and in the nearby Togiak National Wildlife Refuge. “From the early ’90s to now, we’ve seen at least a 400-fold increase in the moose population (in the refuge), which has tremendous effect on the environment,” said Sebastian Zavoico, a master’s student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A rise in moose predators, including bears, could be among the possible consequences. There might also be physiological changes to the shrubs moose eat. Willows can produce chemicals that make them less nutritious for moose as a defense.

Zavoico is studying changing moose demographics in the refuge. He’s found that when summer vegetation does well, so do moose: They give birth to more twins, and more calves survive. Satellite data shows that the refuge has grown significantly greener in the last two decades. That confirms what people who live in the refuge have told Zavoico: “Shrubs, which are the main moose food, have just exploded.”

But Zavoico is careful not to equate correlation with causation. For years, hunting and habitat management have aimed to boost moose populations in the refuge. Still, he said, the fact that moose are expanding in other western areas of the state suggests that climate change is also propelling the population boom. “It’s important to understand why (moose have) been expanding in the past so that we can better manage for the future,” Zavoico said.

The moose boom has huge implications for communities in the region that rely on the animals for subsistence. One moose can supply more than 500 pounds of meat, which is usually divvied up between several freezers as hunters share the bounty with family, friends and elders. It’s vital both culturally and economically, because it can help offset the high cost of groceries in rural areas. And moose hunting is increasingly important as numbers of caribou, another important subsistence animal, have declined steeply in this area in recent years.

The Mulchatna caribou herd in southwest Alaska is a traditional food source for villages from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta to Bristol Bay. For several years, however, the herd’s numbers have fallen below half the minimum population objective of 30,000 individuals.The Togiak National Wildlife Refuge and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game canceled last year’s fall caribou hunt. There won’t be one this year, either.

Biologists suspect that the decline is caused by a combination of factors, including disease, overhunting and increased predation by wolves and bears, according to public radio station KYUK.

Whatever the cause of the caribou decline, more people are relying on moose to stock their freezers. “In procuring lots of meat efficiently, moose are kind of your best bang for the buck, but also because the caribou population does not have any harvest available at this time, there’s a lot more people putting a lot more importance on the fall (moose) hunt,” said John Landsiedel, an Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist for the west side of Bristol Bay.

This fall and winter, bag limits for local hunters are more liberal than usual in parts of Bristol Bay and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta: These hunts will allow people to harvest two moose each, and some of the harvested animals can be “antlerless,” or female. This could help moose as well as people: Managers don’t want the moose populations to outstrip the capacity of their winter food sources. “Antlerless harvest only occurs where … you’re trying to bring that population back down to a level that biologists have determined is more sustainable on the landscape,” said Landsiedel.

Last winter in the lower Yukon, the Federal Subsistence Board increased the limit for local hunters to three moose each at the request of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta Subsistence Regional Advisory Council, which was concerned about a potential moose population crash. The council also said that low salmon runs in the region and the decline of the Mulchatna caribou herd underscore the urgency of the local moose hunt.

However, moose population trends are not uniform across Alaska’s southwest. Just east of the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, moose numbers are dropping, mostly because bears are preying on calves. In that area, Choggiung Limited, an Alaska Native Corporation, has restricted hunting on land it owns near Dillingham, Alaska, to improve subsistence opportunities for its shareholders. For the second year in a row, it is reserving hunting big game animals — including moose — on portions of its property for its shareholders, with exceptions for other Alaska Native people, family members and proxy hunters.

“The bigger game is their primary meat for winter, so we’re trying to give the shareholders of our organization a little bit better opportunity to find big game,” said Mark Bielefeld, Choggiung Limited’s land manager. “We are stewards of this land. … It’s our future generations’, and we’re trying to uphold it for the future.”

More shrubs means way more moose in western Alaska was originally published Aug. 29, 2022 at High Country News.

Both the fall chum salmon and the coho salmon runs on the Yukon River remain too low to open subsistence harvest. Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists do not expect either to reach their goals for fish reaching their spawning grounds.

An estimated three quarters of the fall chum salmon run is past the lower river. As of Aug. 21, the state-run sonar at Pilot Station counted 194,000 fall chum. That’s compared to a historical medium of 486,000 fall chum by that date.

The fall chum that have returned are slightly older than the historical average and with slightly fewer females than the historical average. The fish are also smaller, measuring 26 millimeters less than their historical average length.

The Yukon River coho salmon run is also far below its average run size but coming in higher numbers than last year’s record low. The Pilot Station sonar has counted 43,000 coho, compared to a historical average of 73,000 by this time.

Like the fall chum, the coho are also returning smaller. The coho are averaging 31 millimeters less than their historical average length. The sampled coho length averaged 544 millimeters, compared to a historical average of 575 millimeters.

At Russian Mission, state biologists have attached radio tags to over 118 coho as of Aug. 19. ADF&G asks anyone catching a coho carrying a tag to call the department at 907-459-7274.

Fishing for fall chum and coho salmon remains closed on the Yukon River. Selective gear types remain allowed, and fall chum must be returned to the water alive. Four-inch mesh gillnets are also allowed.

Yukon River state fishery manager Christy Gleason says mesh size restrictions are unlikely to lift until early October.

Correction: This story originally said that both fall chum and coho caught in selective gear must be returned to the water alive. That is incorrect. Coho can be retained along with non-salmon. Only fall chum must be returned to the water alive. Also this story originally said that four-inch mesh set nets are allowed on the Yukon River. That has been corrected to say that four-inch mesh gillnets are allowed.

In June, the largest tundra fire the region has ever seen ripped through the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Life is now going back to normal for residents who live near the site of the fire, but people should expect more frequent tundra fires in coming years as the climate continues to change.

Elder Sophie Beans stands in her wooden house near the banks of the Andreafsky River. It’s lush and green outside, but just a few miles away the earth is scorched.

“See right here is our camp, and it burned,” Beans said, gesturing to the wall and a vintage photo of her cabin, nestled into a spruce grove about five miles upriver from her main home.

Those spruce trees burned down and the surrounding tundra is black after a massive fire ripped through about two months ago. At 166,587 acres, the East Fork Fire was the largest tundra fire the region has ever seen.

Climate scientist Rick Thoman said that fires like this one were once rare. Now, he said, they are likely to become far more common as the earth continues to warm.

“The idea that there’s going to be more fire on the tundra, I think, is a done deal. After decades of warmer springs and summers there’s just more to burn,” he said. “There’s going to be more land burned. That’s a sure thing.”

Thoman said that this summer has seen the most acreage burned in the Y-K Delta region. And most of the region’s wildfires have occurred in the past seven years.

The cause of most of the fires has been lightning. And lightning has become much more common in the Y-K Delta over recent years. Thoman said that’s because more heat emanating from a warmer Bering Sea causes more moisture, which in turn causes more frequent thunderstorms. When the lightning from those storms strikes the tundra, which is now usually drier from less snowmelt and more heat, fire can spread fast and far.

Elders along the Yukon River also report thicker and denser vegetation over recent years, which can serve as fuel for fires. Like the spruce trees that surrounded Beans’ cabin.

Beans said that the fire destroyed her favorite blackberry patch nearby.

The other leftover signs of the fire in St. Mary’s are the torn up tundra trenches encircling the city, scorched earth and leftover fire retardant.

Besides that, life has largely gone back to normal in St. Mary’s. The vulnerable residents who evacuated to Bethel or Anchorage have all returned and the nearly 200 firefighters have long gone home.

Each week during the summer, subsistence users and managers up and down the Yukon meet on a teleconference to share fish news and reports. On last week’s call, Anvik First Chief Robert Walker said that people are hanging on by a thread.

“These people are running out of food, basically,” Walker said.

That’s because there’s not much food swimming up the river. As the summer salmon runs finish up, counts are once again at record lows. Chinook runs had been dwindling for years, but last year the region suffered an unexpected chum salmon crash, too. Now, no one has been able to subsistence fish for either species in two years.

When the chum ran abundantly, they provided subsistence users with a buffer zone against the low chinook counts. With that buffer gone, salmon conservation scientist Peter Westley said that the record low chinook run has become glaringly obvious.

“There are no chinook in the Yukon. They’re at 40,000. Remember how last year was like this terrible year, there was 150,000. This year, there’s 40,000. That’s my point. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but there are no chinook,” Westley said.

He said that last year, he was optimistic chinook could bounce back. This year, he’s not so sure.

“I thought all these things, like, if we did X, Y, and Z, they’ll come back. I think I might be wrong. It’s a collapse. I mean, it’s heartbreaking,” said Westley.

The Yukon River is not the only river system with low chinook runs. Other parts of the state are suffering low runs, too. The state says that Bristol Bay is likely having some of its lowest chinook runs yet, and the Kenai River is also set to miss its escapement goal. Most scientists point to something in the ocean causing the low chinook runs.

Subsistence users on the Yukon River say they’re going broke trying to replace the salmon.

“We’re spending more money on food than we ever did before because we don’t have that bump of salmon to ease the price,” said Anvik’s First Chief Robert Walker.

Walker said that they’re having to rely on government subsidies.

“We don’t want more food stamps, we just want our way of life, good lord,” Walker said.

Walker said that people are not the only species being impacted by the low runs.

“Since there’s no fish coming up the Anvik River, we had grizzly bears coming through our dump. This is really early. It doesn’t usually happen until October,” Walker said.

Normally this time of year, bears would be filling their bellies with river fish, and people would be preparing for the fall chum run. But that won’t be an option this year either.

“We’re looking at a critically low fall chum run again this year,” said Christie Gleason, the fall manager from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, who said she expects subsistence fishing for fall chum will remain closed on the whole Yukon for the second season in a row.

Gleason said that fall chum have begun to enter the river, and they expect to start seeing coho salmon in a few weeks. Last year was the worst year on record for coho salmon on the Yukon too, so this year the department has implemented a new project to try to understand that crash. They’ll begin radio tagging coho salmon in August to track their movements up the river.

In a bit of good news, Basil Larson from Russian Mission reported that the pink salmon run is strong this year.

“The humpies are running pretty thick. I get probably 50 of them in no time,” Larson said.

Plus, he said, there’s an odor that makes him think the chum may, at least, be reproducing well.

“The mud is pretty stink, which kind of indicates that there’s some local spawners in the creeks,” Larson said.

A group of young wood bison are being transported to the Lower Innoko River region in Western Alaska. It’s the latest step in a decades-long effort by state and federal agencies and Alaska Native groups to re-establish the animals in Alaska. 

The 28 yearling wood bison are part of a group form Alberta’s Elk Island National Park that were trucked to Fairbanks in April. Alaska Department of Fish and Game wood bison biologist Tom Seaton says the animals spent the last three months at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Large Animal Research Station.

“When we first got them, they were just kind of bony calves that had just been weaned, and we wanted to get their body condition up. So we got them on some really good hay from Delta Junction and supplementing them with alfalfa pellets to try to improve their protein so they can gain some muscle mass,” he said. “This summer was a great growing summer, and you can really see it in the bison. Some gained as much as 200 pounds since April, and it’s pretty amazing.”

The even mix of female and male wood bison are destined to join a herd seeded by animals transplanted from Canada to the Innoko River region in Western Alaska in 2015. Seaton says the young bison were separated into four groups of seven in preparation for this week’s trip.

“They’ve had some time to develop their social relationships in those groups of 7, which is important because you don’t want certain individuals in a container working out their dominance hierarchy when they’re being transported,” Seaton said.

The bison are traveling in four customized steel shipping containers, which longtime project partner Carlile Transportation trucked from Fairbanks to Nenana Wednesday.

Carlile Transportation senior account executive Eleanor Harrington says the company provides the service for a nominal fee because it supports the wood bison project.

“This is just one of the coolest projects,” she said. “My background is in animals, so I’m personally very invested in this.”

From Nenana, it’s a three-to-four-day barge voyage along the Tanana, Yukon and Innoko Rivers to a pre-staged release site on the Innoko. Seaton says 2 biologists are accompanying the wood bison on the river trip, during which overheating is the biggest concern.

“They take shifts and monitor them 24 hours a day, and there’s air conditioning units on there, and temperature and humidity sensors,” he said.

Seaton says the journey is stressful for the wood bison, which will be released into a large, fenced area to adjust to their new environment. He says the enclosure was constructed by Holy Cross and Shageluk residents at a site along the Innoko River in an area where the existing herd of around 130 animals gathers for the rut this time of year.

“We need to connect them with the wild bison so they can join that social group and learn about where to eat and where to go, and what to do and all that from the wild bison,” he said. “So if we can get the bison settled, and then the wild bison show up, then we’ll turn them out.”

Seaton emphasizes that bison are very good at finding other bison.

“Young bison want to be with adult cows and adult cows want to keep young bison with them, and so even for young bison that they don’t know, there’s an attraction there, a magnetism there that will work in our favor,” he said.

Seaton says a grant from the Bureau of Land Management is covering the $300,000 cost of this latest phase of the reintroduction project.

He says another 11 bison from the same group of yearlings brought from Canada in April are remaining behind in Fairbanks because they are still a little too small to be released into the wild. He says that group will likely join the others along the Innoko River next summer.