Environment

A gravel road runs along the edge of HAARP’s array – that matrix of giant radio antennas on the tundra that’s been blamed for everything from the 2010 Haiti earthquake to chronic fatigue syndrome. On June 14, Fairbanksan Carl Triplehorn stood by that road crafting a hat out of tinfoil. Then Jessica Matthews, HAARP’s director, handed him a big picture frame to pose with.

It’s fair to say that HAARP’s staff is in on the joke.

“Some of the best calls I get are from people that tell me, ‘I have a wedding that’s coming up. Can you guys help us out with the weather?’ Matthews said.

Scientists at the Gakona-based High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program — known everywhere as just HAARP — open their doors once a summer to show the public what they’re up to.

It wasn’t the facility’s first open house, but it was the first since the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Geophysical Institute took complete possession of HAARP from the military this year — a process that started a decade ago.

The military built HAARP in the 90s to conduct atmospheric defense research. These days, scientists mostly use it to look into things like space weather, and how gravity acts on the ionosphere, the highest layer of Earth’s atmosphere.

Matthews said security around there used to be much tighter, which probably fed the intrigue.

“Back in the Air Force days, when you came up to that gate, you saw that scary, big red warning sign: ‘No Trespassing,'” she said.

HAARP’s shadowy reputation has been hard to shake

Speculation about what happens there runs pretty wild. Some believe the facility is trying to do everything from reversing Earth’s magnetic poles to trapping people’s souls.

And sometimes those ideas are endorsed by public figures. Like last year, when prominent far-right activist Laura Loomer accused HAARP of creating a blizzard to blow then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s chances in the Iowa caucuses.

Matthews said the open houses pull the curtain back on what they’re really doing.

“Events like this give them an opportunity to actually ask some of those hard questions of the researchers and get an answer,” she said.

The people who work at HAARP are more than happy to talk about their research and day-to-day grind — when the mics are off. Most are wearing buttons that say, “No photos, please.” All of that is to safeguard against harassment and credible threats — which they do get from time to time.

“I take very seriously my obligation to protect our staff to the best of the ability that we can in every discussion that we have, in every meeting that we have,” Matthews said.

Taking off the tinfoil — and teaching the public about space physics

The idea behind the event isn’t just about clearing up dangerous misunderstandings. The scientists want to share what they’ve been learning about the upper atmosphere by beaming massive amounts of radio waves at it.

UAF physicist Craig Heinselman said the facility is like the “world’s best screwdriver” to poke at nearest space.

“Being able to steer the beam in various directions in very short time frames, transmitting at different frequencies,” he said. “The radio waves that are transmitted can also be polarized — kind of like polarized filters on your glasses — and they have different effects.”

He and his colleagues are looking into things that have practical applications, too. They’re studying how space weather interacts with the ionized layer of the atmosphere, which can sometimes disrupt GPS signals.

“We’re working on the basic research to get to there, but eventually we hope to get there and have better space weather prediction,” he said.

For Triplehorn — the guy with the tinfoil hat — that educational aspect was the biggest draw. And that’s true for most of the hundred or so guests, like UAF chemistry student Aggy Boldt.

“I think I’m just trying to explore my options, like what kind of career I could go into with chemistry,” she said. “I think it’s just cool to see what everyone else is doing and learn more about it.”

After a day packed with science talks, drone demonstrations, and walking tours that wound through the facility’s cavernous engine room and up to the array, Matthews, the director, said it was another successful outreach event.

“I’m thrilled that we had young kids that were asking for balloons and asking if they could steal two or three cookies for their siblings,” she said. “This is what I want to see.”

She says that she hopes each open house event makes the facility a little less frightening to the public.

“It’s just Alaskans that are helping to do some really cool science,” she said.

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A mandate to sell millions of acres of public land was struck from the Republican budget reconciliation bill that’s moving through the U.S. Senate this week. That’s after the Senate parliamentarian ruled on Monday that the public land sales didn’t clearly affect the budget. But some parcels of land might make it back into the bill. 

Two days before the parliamentarian’s ruling, dozens of people gathered on a remote beach on Prince of Wales Island, taking a picture with a large wooden board painted with three red words: NOT FOR SALE. Then they sent the photo to lawmakers.

“When we were holding that sign, I think we all felt upset,” Elsa Sebastian said. “This was happening for reasons that we didn’t understand.”

Sebastian lives in a small community near Port Protection. It’s a remote area surrounded by the flora and fauna of the Tongass National Forest — and she said that’s why people live here.

“It’s our way of life,” she said. “It’s being able to continue to hunt and fish and play and explore and, like, find ourselves in these places.”

Sebastian said the lack of public engagement from lawmakers felt like a betrayal of trust, and privatizing parts of the Tongass would significantly affect rural communities like hers.

“We need ultimate transparency when it comes to decisions around our public lands,” she said. “And that’s not what we got this time around.”

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah,  added the proposal to the mega bill that would have required the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to sell off roughly two to three million acres of land across 11 western states. 

National parks, monuments and other protected lands were excluded, but roughly 82 million acres in Alaska could have been eligible for those sales, including sections of the Tongass and Chugach National Forests and parts of the Interior. 

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska,  told the Anchorage Daily News last week that public land sales would help Alaska develop affordable housing. But much of the identified public lands are not suited for housing development. 

The Senate parliamentarian decided that the mandate breaks a rule ensuring that reconciliation bills like this one focus on fiscal issues rather than unrelated policy changes and ordered the section’s removal.

Lee is reportedly revising the public land sale proposal to try to include BLM lands within five miles of town borders. According to The Hill, that would include a sale of somewhere between 600,000 and 1.2 million acres of BLM land nationwide. The new proposal is expected to exclude National forest lands, so the Tongass and Chugach National Forests might not be affected.

Joe Plesha, Murkowski’s communications director, said the language is currently evolving, but it’s now about selling public lands purely for housing and local needs associated with housing. He said there might also be provisions for a review process. 

“Eligible BLM lands could be made available to build housing for communities after a significant process that involves nominations, consultation, review and first right of refusal for local governments,” Plesha said in a statement to KTOO. 

The Forest Service and BLM declined to comment on pending legislation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which manages the Forest Service, did not respond. 

Kate Glover is a Juneau-based attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law firm. She said the Forest Service and BLM already have the authority to sell or exchange land under current laws.

“But in those cases, the agencies have to take a look at the public interest and decide whether it makes sense to sell the land or not,” Glover said.

She said what’s different about a mandate is that it would require sales whether or not they are in the public interest.

Also, Glover said that selling steep and rugged public lands won’t solve Alaska’s affordable housing problem because many of those areas are not connected to existing infrastructure. 

“It’s more likely that that’s going to allow for building new mansions and second homes for people from out of state,” she said. 

The Wilderness Society published a map showing swaths of land that could qualify for sales under the original bill, fueling public outcry on social media. Josh Hicks is the organization’s director of conservation campaigns in Denver, Colorado. He said the controversial idea to sell off public lands is widely unpopular. 

“We’re seeing people from across the political spectrum in opposition to this proposal,” Hicks said. “A lot of folks in the sporting community who go and hunt and fish in our public lands absolutely are rising up.”

Some Republican representatives from Colorado, Idaho and Montana spoke out against the sell-off. Alaska Congressman Nick Begich III, who voted for the bill when it passed through the House, did not respond to a request for comment. Sen. Dan Sullivan, who has indicated support for public land sales in Alaska, also did not respond. 

Amendments to the bill have not yet been made public, and it’s unclear whether revised public land sales will be approved by the parliamentarian. Senate Republicans are aiming to vote on the bill by July 4. 

A Haines nonprofit has been working for years to build a large facility capable of churning out compost for farmers and gardeners. The facility itself is complete. But the plan has stalled for months amid a heated debate over a neighboring driveway that’s owned by the borough – and part of the local cemetery.

The non-profit, known as the Takshanuk Watershed Council, wants to use the driveway to access its new composting facility. Opponents say that’s inappropriate.

“We have stated over and over that the Cemetery does not have any land to give away,” Roc and Diann Ahrens, who have served as volunteer caretakers of the cemetery property for more than three decades, wrote in a public comment letter.

The issue came to a head late last week when the Haines planning commission considered the watershed council’s easement request. The conservation organization wants to use about .09 acres of cemetery land to transport material and turn around heavy equipment. The group would also build a bear-proof fence.

The bulk of the cemetery property, known as the Jones Point Cemetery, is across the street. And the request notes that the driveway site has been used as a driveway by neighboring landowners in the past. More recently it was strewn with abandoned boats, cars and tires.

“What we’re asking for here tonight is permission to build about 150 feet of fence to enclose about 40 feet of existing driveway,” Derek Poinsette, the watershed council’s executive director, said during the meeting.

Without the easement, he said, the organization might need to scale back its composting plans. Building a new driveway is possible, he added, but wouldn’t be easy.

“To just expand that into new terrain, with new fill and cutting trees down and all that, is expensive,” Poinsette said in an interview. “We don’t have that money, and I don’t know that we’ll be able to get money to do something like that.”

The application cleared the planning commission after hours of public comment dominated by opponents who were adamant that the watershed council should not be allowed to use cemetery land.

“I’m not opposed to composting at all. I’m opposed to you taking part of the Jones Point property. That’s inappropriate, you have another place you can put your access,” said Haines resident Randa Szymanski.

Critics also said the watershed council should have designed the facility to fit on its own property. Others thought the facility would just be bad for the cemetery — that it would generate noise and traffic and could attract bears.

During a phone interview, Ahrens said his main concern is that, due to Haines’ aging population, the cemetery should keep control over all of its land.

“The aged population that still lives here, [that’s] the reason that we’re starting to be concerned about running out of space,” he said.

He added that they’ve proposed building a columbarium on the driveway site, though in a June 11 memo, Haines interim Borough Manager Alekka Fullerton noted that the cost of a columbarium is not currently in the budget.

The watershed council, for its part, has pushed back against the suggestion that they should have built the facility elsewhere – and that they can just build a new driveway.

The organization owns about 50 acres in the area. Much of that is used for public trails and conservation work. The compost facility itself borders a wetland and a creek on two sides, which would complicate building a new access point.

Building the facility cost around $250,000 in grant funding. In an email, Poinsette said creating a new access point could cost that much or more.

During the meeting, Poinsette said the group explored buying or leasing the land in 2022. It was later determined that wasn’t possible due to the nature of the federal deed associated with the property, which says the land should not be sold or used for other purposes.

The borough later recommended pursuing a temporary easement. In 2024, an official with the Bureau of Land Management said in an email to the borough that the agency would not take issue with an easement allowing the use of the area as a driveway.

Poinsette said not having access to the driveway could lead to worse impacts for the cemetery.

“We might end up having to park equipment out on Takshanuk’s stretch of the road there, which is across from the cemetery,” he said. “That could be a greater impact, I would think, on the cemetery than if we were allowed to get off the road and back behind the screen of trees.”

Five planning commissioners voted in favor of the motion, with only Jerry Lapp voting against. Poinsette is a commissioner but did not vote due to his role with the watershed council. The full assembly is set to consider whether to approve or reject the request on July 8.

When Billy Owens saw the fire getting close to his property near Bear Creek last Friday, he and his wife put their seven kids in a car. By the time they finished packing, the flames were on their land.

“We just had to make quick decisions,” he said. “Decide the most important stuff, like the cook stove and the things we need to survive.”

He also needed to get 24 birds – ducks and chickens – to safety. Owens put them in cages and strapped them to a four-wheeler. He said it was the only hope for a future for their farm.

“I just stacked the ducks and the chickens on there and apologized for the wind, and we went,” he said. “And they didn’t like it, but we all made it.”

After a week that saw wildfires break out across much of Alaska, the Bear Creek Fire is the state’s highest firefighting priority. It started during the lightning storm on June 19, burning over 26,000 acres on both sides of the Parks Highway which connects Fairbanks to Anchorage.

Laura Knowles evacuated with her family, too. She said they lost their log cabin at Bear Creek in a fire eight years ago. Since then, she’s lived in a bus with four of her younger children.

This weekend, the wildfire destroyed that. Knowles said she was devastated.

“Ever since I was a little kid, I dreamed (of) living in Alaska off grid. This was my off-grid home,” she said in a message. “I am trying to process this all and helping my children process it too.”

Denali Borough Mayor Chris Noel says officials are still assessing the damage, but he knows for certain that people have lost their primary residences. The borough’s preliminary estimate showed that 17 structures have been damaged by the Bear Creek Fire, at least six of them residential. At least 100 Healy residents were asked to evacuate.

“We feel for them,” Noel said. “We know this is a challenging and stressful situation, and we’re doing the best we can to put out timely public information.”

The area has been getting rain after what Noel called extreme fire behavior over the weekend. He says it will take a lot of precipitation to soak the dry duff layers that are fueling the fire, but the moisture is helping firefighters protect structures and slow the fire down.

Overall, around 300 fires were burning across Alaska as of Wednesday, though fire activity has slowed down beginning with Tuesday’s cooler weather. Fire managers were focused on several fires near Fairbanks, as well as fires along the Denali Highway, near Tok and east of Delta Junction.

The forecast showed warmer weather and potential for thunderstorms returning in the next few days.

Meanwhile, the Owens family is living on a neighbor’s land. The night they evacuated, the family camped at a gravel pit across the Nenana River, thinking they would be safe there. But they woke to see that the fire had jumped the highway and was approaching the river, so they had to evacuate again.

“The sky looked like the world was ending,” he said.

Owens says that back on their land, the fire had destroyed the RV they had been living in, along with gear and tools worth thousands of dollars. They also lost family photos and keepsakes they can’t replace.

But Owens says he’s thankful for the community that stepped up to offer his family clothes and supplies. He was also happy that the frame of the cabin he was building survived.

“The only thing I lost was the home I was staying in, but I still have the tools to rebuild,” he said.

The Denali Borough and fire managers will hold a community meeting on Thursday at 6 p.m. at the Tri Valley School to share updates and connect with people whose property was damaged or lost.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced plans to rescind the Roadless Rule yesterday, aligning with President Donald Trump’s executive order earlier this year to end a ban on constructing roads in undeveloped areas of the Tongass National Forest in order to stimulate more logging in the region.

The Roadless Rule has flip-flopped multiple times since it was established to protect undeveloped lands in 2001. It was rolled back during Trump’s first term before being reinstated by former President Joe Biden. 

Mike Jones is the Tribal President for the Organized Village of Kasaan on Prince of Wales Island, an area of the Tongass that has been logged heavily. 

“It’s the largest temperate rainforest in the world … it’s the northern lung of the planet,” Jones said of the Tongass.

He said new roads and additional logging would degrade the landscape and harm salmon streams that people rely on. 

Rolling back the Roadless Rule in Alaska hasn’t been popular in the past. When the U.S. Forest Service considered exempting the state from the federal Roadless Rule back in 2019, more than 144,000 people submitted public comments and most were opposed to opening up the Tongass to new roads. 

U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan both welcomed the rollback. 

“Repeal will not lead to environmental harm, but it will help open needed opportunities for renewable energy, forestry, mining, tourism, and more in areas that are almost completely under federal control,” Murkowski said in a statement today.

Kate Glover is an attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental law firm that has challenged past rescissions of the Roadless Rule on behalf of tribes, conservation nonprofits and tourism and fishing groups. 

“It’s disappointing to see the administration doing something that’s so clearly contrary to what the public is asking for and is contrary to the public interest,” Glover said. 

More than 9.2 million acres of the Tongass are inventoried as roadless areas under the rule. Nearly 330,000 acres of the 16.7 million-acre forest are considered suitable for logging, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s latest 2016 management plan. That plan is currently going through a revision. 

The USDA did not respond to a request for comment. Viking Lumber and Alcan Timber, the largest logging companies operating in the Tongass, also did not respond.

Wildfire activity exploded across Interior Alaska late last week amid widespread red flag warnings and the state’s first-ever heat advisory.

Dozens of lightning- and human-caused fires have started, intermittently closing major highways and leading to the evacuations of hundreds of people around Fairbanks, Healy and Tok. Some homes and other structures have burned, but it is not clear yet how many.

A spokesperson for the federal Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service said in an email that experienced wildfire managers have told her that this year “feels different.”

“What stands out is the number of fires immediately threatening communities – and the number of evacuations happening simultaneously – which they say is unprecedented,” Beth Ipsen said.

Cooler, wetter weather is in the forecast, but a spokesperson for the Alaska Forestry Division cautioned that Alaskans should not expect that to slow down the fires very much.

“The rains that are in the forecast now for us, with this cool weather, is pleasant,” Sam Harrel said. “But it’s not going to be enough rain to end the current wildland fire situation. It may slow it down a little bit — it may give firefighters more of an opportunity to actively engage with a fire.”

Bear Creek Fire

The Bear Creek Fire, near Healy, is burning on both sides of the Parks Highway, which is the main artery connecting Fairbanks to Anchorage. Ipsen said the fire is the state’s top priority.

Harrel said that fire, which was discovered on June 19, was caused by lightning and fueled by wind.

“It grew rapidly towards the north along the Parks Highway,” he said. “There’s a lot of thick black spruce stands in that area, and that area has had challenging wildland fires for the past several years.”

Denali Mayor Chris Noel said borough officials do not have a comprehensive count yet, but they know that some homes have burned. Noel did not have a count of how many people have been evacuated.

Heather McGrorty said she lives five miles north of the Bear Creek Fire. She and her husband knew they had to act when they saw the fire had crested the ridge at June Creek.

“We had to start getting everything ready,” she said. “We have three big, large pools that we had to fill up, put sprinklers out and start moving stuff around the yard to be able to keep it safe.”

McGrorty said she has asthma and on Saturday she evacuated with her two daughters, 8 and 12, to stay with family in Healy. She said her husband stayed to clear their 40-acre property and cut trees.

“He is protecting our home,” she said. “We don’t really live anywhere else. We’re there all year round. Whether we have 10 feet of snow or the fire, we try not to leave.”

Harrel said the fire had jumped the Parks Highway and is burning on either side of the road. He said that, as smoke and fire conditions allow, pilot cars are leading groups of motorists through the fire area between mile markers 259-278. But he encouraged people traveling between Anchorage and Fairbanks to take the long way around.

“We’ve told a lot of people how to get to Fairbanks by taking the Glenn Highway over to Glenallen and then going north up to Delta and coming around,” he said. “It’s a beautiful scenic drive. It’s a little longer, but it’s not impacted by the fires like the Parks Highway has been.”

Evacuations near Fairbanks

About 200 households in the Fairbanks area have been evacuated from neighborhoods north and west of town. Residents of several other neighborhoods on the fringes of the city are under less severe notices to prepare to evacuate from smaller fires, like the Nenana Ridge Complex.

Fairbanks Borough Mayor Grier Hopkins said no structures have burned in the borough so far, but there were some close calls over the weekend in the vicinity of the Himalaya Road Fire, just northeast of town.

“There were six homes that were protected by firefighters — burned right up to the edge of the home and the property,” he said. But even though the firefighters couldn’t see maybe 20, 30 feet, they were still able to protect those homes.”

Sharon Baker said she was at her log cabin at the lower end of Haystack Mountain, less than a mile from the Elliott Highway, when the Himalaya Road Fire broke out. She said she was working outside and saw tall, billowing clouds of smoke rising above her cabin. Later, Baker got a “Go Now” evacuation alert.

“I already had clothes, tax and other important documents as well as a bag of toiletries by my front door. I grabbed them and other items and left,” she said. “I was prepared.”

Baker evacuated with her neighbor to nearby Hilltop Gas Station, which has a large parking lot.

“We remained there, while I was in touch with other neighbors who I knew were packing to leave but declined help. Quite a few of us from Haystack Mountain arrived shortly after receiving the alert.”

Baker said she was able to return to her home the next morning. But she was deeply touched by the many people who offered rooms in their homes and help with evacuating people, equipment and animals.

“This is a community that takes care of each other,” she said.

Now over 3,000 acres, the Himalaya Road Fire is the state’s second highest firefighting priority, behind the Bear Creek Fire. A federal firefighting crew is traveling up to Alaska from the Lower 48 to help contain it.

The borough’s animal shelter is currently open to taking in evacuees’ pets. The borough is also offering hotel vouchers through the Red Cross for people who have had to flee the fire. Hopkins said that if the number of evacuees continues to climb, the borough will consider setting up a shelter.

Seven Mile Lookout Fire

Further south, residents of the Tok neighborhoods near Butch Kuth Avenue, Osprey, Moose Nugget, and Goshawk Road were asked to evacuate this morning due to the uncontained Seven Mile Lookout Fire southwest of town. A community wildfire meeting will be held today at 6:00 PM at the Tok Dog Mushers Association

More crews expected from the Lower 48

The fires grew rapidly during a spell of hot weather that led the National Weather Service to issue Alaska’s first-ever heat advisory. But the area was already primed for intense wildfires.

“Even though we had a cool May and start of June, we weren’t getting much rain, so the forest was drying out,” said Rick Thoman, a climate specialist with the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. “The duff — that organic material that’s right on the ground — that accumulates year after year because we have very slow decomposition rates. Which means there’s lots of fuel available.”

Thoman said the dry fuel, hot weather and abundant lightning all contributed to the fires.

“Thunderstorms were able to form each afternoon, and because it was a slow changing pattern, we got day-after-day of lots of thunderstorms,” he said. “Most areas that were getting lightning were getting little or no rain.”

Thoman pointed out that fires like this are nothing new in Alaska, but intense wildfire behavior should be expected more and more frequently as the climate changes.

“Wildfire is a natural part of the northern boreal ecosystem, but we’ve seen much more fire in recent years — especially the frequency of those big seasons and these explosive periods within the fire season,” he said.

Harrel, of the Alaska Division of Forestry, said more firefighters are on their way from the Lower 48 to help the Alaska crews already fighting the fires.

“We have a jet load coming to Fairbanks with four hot shot crews on it, and those crews will be assigned to fires that are highest in priority based on defense of life and defense of property.” he said.

He said more crews would be flying in on Wednesday, but they hadn’t firmed up the staffing for flight planned for Friday yet.

“We are also in competition with the lower 48 for resources, and as their fire season starts to grow and escalate, it becomes challenging,” he said.

The Anchorage Fire Department is also sending up seven volunteer firefighters to help suppress the Bear Creek Fire near Healy.

Meanwhile, Harrel said road highway closures are in flux, so travelers should check conditions by calling 511 before heading out.

“Don’t drive into dense smoke,” he said. “You have no idea what’s in there.”

Alaska Public Media’s Chris Klint contributed reporting.