Tourism

The U.S. Forest Service says it has a plan in place to staff the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center this tourism season. That comes almost two months after dozens of staff were fired amid federal downsizing. 

In a press release Thursday, the Forest Service shared their staffing plan for the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area. Five staff will be ready to greet the first cruise visitors of 2025 on Monday and the area will continue opening intermittently throughout the month.

By May 4, the visitor center will be open and staffed from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and Sundays.

Since February, the Trump administration has cut thousands of federal jobs across the nation, including all but one staff member at the visitor center in Juneau. In a typical summer, there are about a dozen on site. 

Some of the fired staff have been rehired. But there is a chance they may lose their jobs again or accept a deferred leave offer as the federal government continues its quest to downsize.

U.S. Forest Service spokesperson Paul Robbins said the visitor center will be staffed most days cruise ships come to Juneau, with the exception of April 26. 

The release says the Forest Service presence at the glacier will be made up of staff from the Forest Service’s offices in Juneau, and those staff will be supported by employees with partner organizations like the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and Discovery Southeast, who already have a presence at the glacier. 

In addition to Forest Service employees, the tribe’s cultural ambassador program will have eight staff at the glacier Monday through Friday. 

Between these three organizations, the release says staff will be able to manage crowds, provide for visitor safety, maintain trails and facilities and manage bear encounters. 

The Juneau Assembly is considering a proposal to set aside $200,000 to help those partner organizations hire more staff for the visitor Center. 

While the visitor center will only be open on certain days, the recreation area will be open as usual, from 6 a.m. to midnight each day. The portable bathrooms outside the visitor center will be open at all times, and the bathrooms by the visitor center parking lot will be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day.

Less than a year after Juneau voters shot down a ballot initiative to ban large cruise ships on Saturdays, advocates are trying again to put hard limits on tourism’s growth. 

On Monday, local advocates went to City Hall to file a petition that would impose a five-ship daily limit, cap the annual number of passengers at 1.5 million a year and impose a daily limit of 16,000 people on most days and 12,000 on Saturdays. The petition also seeks to shorten the season to only last between May and September. 

Karla Hart filed the failed initiative last year and the new one this week. She’s an outspoken advocate against the growth of tourism. She called the new petition a compromise. 

“I really want to win this year,” she said. “What prompted me to file this year was the complete lack of any indication that the borough Assembly has any plans or any intention of doing anything that relieves the impacts on the community as a whole.”

The City and Borough of Juneau has already signed agreements with cruise lines that put in place a five-ship limit, and limit the number of daily passengers that come to town beginning in 2026.

The difference is that those agreements are non-binding and voluntary. But if the initiative is passed by voters, those limits would become law. Hart says she wants the initiative to hold the city and cruise lines accountable. 

“Negotiations mean nothing. My intent with this initiative is to simply say, ‘you the industry agreed on these limits, and so let’s put them in law so that they stick,’” she said. 

Residents in nearby Sitka have also tried multiple times to limit cruise tourism. They’ll vote on the latest attempt in a special election in May. 

Juneau had between 1.6 and 1.7 million cruise passengers visit during the past two summer seasons. The 2025 season – which begins next week – is expected to yield a similar number.

Hart filed the petition the same day the Juneau Assembly voted to approve a tidelands lease for a fifth cruise ship dock in downtown Juneau.

The petition still needs to be reviewed by the city’s law department and the city clerk. If approved, the group then has 30 days to collect just over 2,700 signatures to land a spot on the local election ballot this October. 

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the current year. 

The Juneau Assembly voted Monday night to approve a tidelands lease for a fifth cruise ship dock in downtown Juneau. It paves the way for the construction to move forward after a years-long process. 

“With or without this dock, we will still have five ships in town,” said Deputy Mayor Greg Smith, who voted in favor of the lease. “This is not the question on, ‘what is the future of tourism?’ That is still undecided and unknown. This is ‘should we allow a fifth dock and the benefits that it brings?’ And in my opinion, it is worth supporting.”

The company behind the project is Huna Totem Corp., an Alaskan Native village corporation that owns Icy Strait Point cruise port in Hoonah. Norwegian Cruise Lines, which originally bought the property for $20 million, gave it to Huna Totem in 2022. 

The dock will be constructed in Gastineau Channel, accompanied by a waterfront development called Áak’w Landing. The development — which was approved by the Juneau planning commission in 2023 — will include underground parking, retail space and a culture and science center located along Egan Drive next to Juneau’s U.S. Coast Guard station. 

The tidelands lease is set to last for 35 years. The Assembly’s vote Monday night came after multiple rounds of public testimony both in favor and against the development. 

Huna Totem and supporters of the new dock say it would help disperse tourism downtown and ease vehicle congestion. Kerry Crocker, who leads the local International Longshore and Warehouse Union, called the dock “a big win for Juneau.”

“I spend about 2,000 hours a summer downtown. I’m the dock foreman for all four docks, and we service all the ships that are over 1,000 feet,” he testified. “I can assure you that the downtown congestion will definitely be dissipated with the new dock.”

However, critics of the project, like Joan Wilkerson, said she worries about the dock’s proximity to where she lives and the health impacts the ships could have on air quality. She asked the Assembly to postpone the vote. 

“Adding yet another ship pumping more poison into the air right under our windows is not welcome,” she said. 

Part of the agreement with the city involves the guarantee that no more than one ship will dock there in a 24 hour period. The city has previously signed agreements with cruise lines that puts in place a five ship limit in Juneau, and limit the number of daily passengers that come in Juneau beginning in 2026. 

In the conditional use permit for the dock approved by the planning commission, Huna Totem is required to provide electrified shore power within two years after a power line to connect it is built within 25 feet of its property line. Once the shore power is available, all large ships using the dock must use shore power instead of ship power, which uses fossil fuels.

The Assembly added a few conditions that Huna Totem must agree to before members voted to approve the lease. One is that the corporation must provide the city with written assurance from the U.S. Coast Guard that the dock will not obstruct the Coast Guard icebreaker expected to be homeported in Juneau.

Other conditions include only allowing ships with 4,500 passengers or fewer, and agreeing that the development will not obstruct the downtown seawalk, barring special events.  

Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs, who was the only member to vote against the lease, said she doesn’t think it’s in the best interest of the residents who will feel the impacts the most. 

“I asked myself, ‘is this the right thing? Is there a rush? Have we truly done the planning to make this decision?’ And I do not think we have,” she said. 

Russell Dick, the president and CEO of Huna Totem, was not immediately available for comment on the project’s approval or to share more information about the development’s next steps.  

At Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center earlier this week, cultural ambassadors were learning how to best represent Lingít stewardship and connection to the glacier to the roughly one million tourists slated to visit this summer. 

Saaní Liana Wallace set off down the walkway toward Steep Creek. For this training, her supervisor sent her and her fellow ambassadors out to study the plants along nearby trails and take photos of the ones they don’t know. 

“Join the crowd,” she said. “We’re talking about plants, so Lee [Miller], who’s been here a while, is going to show me a plant that he wants us to work on.” 

While U.S. Forest Service staffing at Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center remains uncertain, there will be eight people working at the glacier in a different role – as cultural ambassadors. They’re employed by the local tribe and they teach visitors about Lingít history, culture, and its connections to the land.  

The Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska program started last year, as part of a co-stewardship agreement the tribe formed with the Forest Service. 

It will allow people like Shaaḵ’indax̱ Jonah Johnson to teach visitors about things like Devil’s Club – or as it’s called in Lingít, s’axt. He likes it because there’s more to it than meets the eye.

“It looks like it’s just a harmful plant, but it’s really our medicine plant,” Johnson said.

In February, a wave of federal firings left one remaining Forest Service staff member at the visitor center. In a typical summer, there are about a dozen on site. 

Some of the fired staff have been rehired, but there are rumors they may lose their jobs again, or accept a deferred leave offer. Forest Service officials say they aren’t able to share any plans for staffing for the summer.

But while that’s up in the air, the cultural ambassadors are moving forward with their plan to staff Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area.

Góos’k’ Ralph Wolfe directs Indigenous stewardship programs for the tribe.

“We’re still out there, we’re still going to be there,” he said. “And we’re just trying to figure out where we can help the Forest Service kind of fill in.”

He said he’s been thinking of how the ambassadors may be stepping in to do work the Forest Service rangers would be doing – like managing visitor safety. 

But he said the program’s mission is still focused on highlighting Indigenous stewardship. 

“We’re trying to be flexible while also making sure our mission is to make sure that the culture is passed on,” Wolfe said. 

Cultural Ambassador Lee Miller is returning for his second season. He said he thinks all of the staff at the glacier will be spread thin this year. 

“But it’s exciting,” he said. “I mean, every day is different, every person is different.”

Miller said he loves representing the Áak’w Ḵwaan, and bringing the joy of the natural world to visitors. 

“You can pass it on to them. You’re, you know, you’re coming in and you say, ‘Okay, I just saw a porcupine out on the meadow there,’ or an eagle or a heron, and, you know, just point it out to them, and they’ll ask you questions,” he said.

Miller’s family has been here for thousands of years, but he’ll be greeting people who are seeing the glacier for the first time. 

“Just interacting with them and watching them,” he said. “You know it just — that made the whole season.”

And the 2025 season begins April 14, when the first cruise ship arrives in Juneau.

The Juneau Assembly is set to take a critical vote Monday night that will determine if the construction of a fifth cruise ship dock downtown will move forward.

The development proposal is from Huna Totem Corporation, an Alaska Native village corporation that has been trying to build a dock and waterfront development downtown for years. 

The Assembly will vote on whether to lease city-owned tidelands, the submerged land in the Gastineau Channel, for the project. Without a tidelands lease, the dock can’t move forward. 

Huna Totem has proposed building the dock along Egan Drive near Juneau’s U.S. Coast Guard station and across the street from KTOO. It would be paired with a waterfront development called Áak’w Landing, which would include things like underground parking, retail space and a culture and science center. 

Huna Totem says the new dock will help disperse visitors and reduce downtown congestion. Critics of the project don’t buy that, and say they’re concerned about the growth of tourism in town and the potential environmental impacts of the dock. 

Both Huna Totem and the city have held public meetings for residents to learn about the project in recent months. It has also gone through years of city meetings and procedural steps to get to this point. 

The meeting on Monday starts at 7 p.m. at City Hall. Residents can testify on the topic in person or online before the Assembly takes the vote. 

With Juneau’s cruise ship season less than two weeks away, Juneau officials are proposing to set aside city money to hire staff for one of the city’s main tourist attractions: the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center.

The jobs were formerly filled by federal workers, and city leaders say the proposal would act as a safety net in the face of further uncertainty at the federal level.

Juneau’s Visitor Industry Director Alix Pierce asked the Assembly Finance Committee to set aside $200,000. The money could be used to fund positions at the visitor center from State Commercial Passenger Fees collected from cruise ship visitors if more federal employees are laid off. She’s hoping it won’t come to that, though. 

“This appropriation would be money to the manager’s office to use at the discretion of the City Manager, if there’s another issue affecting staffing, to try to create some level of continuity out there, given all the uncertainties,” Pierce said. 

In February, a wave of federal firings left one remaining staff member at the visitor center. In a typical summer, there are about a dozen on site at any given time to serve the one million visitors who come each year. 

Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reinstated employees who were terminated because an independent federal board ruled that the firings were unlawful. It issued a 45-day stay on the positions, but thereʼs still uncertainty about what happens next. U.S. Forest Service officials say they can’t provide a staffing schedule or plan for the visitor center at this time. 

Pierce says about half of the visitor center staff took their jobs back. Others had already found jobs elsewhere. But even for those currently back at the glacier, the job is unstable. And, sheʼs heard from Forest Service staff that more cuts may be coming from the White House in the future.

“There is still some uncertainty,” she said. “There are discussions of another reduction in force. We don’t know what that looks like. We don’t know how it would impact operations here in Juneau.”

The city manager could use the money to pay other organizations that operate at the glacier to quickly hire some of the terminated staff. 

One of those is Discovery Southeast, a nature and science education nonprofit that already has a presence at the glacier.

Shawn Eisele is the director. He said the city funding is a good stop-gap, but he’s upset they have to step in at all. The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center was self-sustaining as it was before the Trump administration cut staff.

“It worked really well. It ‘s good paying jobs in our community. It worked great. It doesn’t make sense that it’s been kind of artificially collapsed right now,” he said. “Like, we’re not looking for a good solution. We’re just looking for the least pain in the short term to hopefully bridge a better solution in the long term.”

But Eisele said the organization is prepared to be a part of that bridge.

“If there’s an opportunity for us to step in in the short term and keep things going, we’re prepared to do this,” he said. 

The proposal will be introduced at Monday’s assembly meeting, and voted on at the next.