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- [00:00]
Casey Grove
Support for Alaska Public Media On Demand comes from Siri, an Alaska Native corporation.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
With operations and investments spanning five continents, 45 states, and two US territories.
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Avery Elfelt
We realized, you know, there wasn't something similar going on here in our own backyard in the YK Delta.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
There's a new effort to collect traditional foods for storm displaced families living in Bethel. From Alaska Public Media, this is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Friday, December 5th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, why one of the largest gathering spots for eagles in Alaska has some uncertain numbers behind its data.
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Avery Elfelt
We can say that there has been a decline. I mean, it's pretty obvious.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly.
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When ex typhoon Ha long forced residents out of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta in October, efforts to get subsistence and traditional foods for people who had been displaced began immediately. It's been several weeks, and those requests and donations for people in Anchorage have continued, guided by the understanding that the taste of home could comfort people living through the disaster. Therese Vicente is the policy and programs director for the Kuskokwim River Intertribal Fish Commission.
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Avery Elfelt
But we realized, you know, there wasn't something similar going on here in our own backyard in the YK Delta for families who have evacuated to Bethel, but also families in other villages that were really impacted by the storm.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Vicente says she learned that the Red Cross had donated chest freezers to some of the impacted villages and wanted to find out how the commission could help fill them. It turned out other regional organizations were thinking about the same thing. Through this weekend and next week, a food drive in collaboration between local organizations is accepting subsistence donations dropped off in person or shipped to Bethel. The commission will then distribute them to families who have registered. Through the fish Commission's website. Organizers are asking for anything harvested in 2025, including whitefish, seal, seal oil, walrus, moose, ducks, salmon, and blackberries. They want foods that are individually packaged and not freezer burned. Robin Masterman is one of the drive's organizers.
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Avery Elfelt
We understand, like, how difficult and how physically and financially intensive it can be to be able to harvest these kinds of food.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
All of that work was lost when the typhoon remnants swept through and families lost freezers full of subsistence foods.
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Avery Elfelt
We really want to stress, like, how, how much we appreciate any kind of food donation, no matter how big or how small it is.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Vicente says sharing harvested foods is part of the social fabric of the region. She says many people who live in the YK Delta have already been sharing their food stores with people who need help.
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Avery Elfelt
So this effort is really to just support and enhance what's already happening organically because it's part of the way of life out here in the YK Delta.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Contact information and a full list of requested donation items can be found on the Fish Commission's website at cuscosalmon.org.
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The Chilkat Valley is home to one of the world's largest gatherings of bald eagles, and this year the highest number of raptors were recorded in more than two decades. That marks a departure from longer term trends, which have suggested that the local eagle congregation may be decreasing. But as Avery Elfelt reports for the Alaska Desk, there's still uncertainty around what exactly is happening in the valley and why.
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Avery Elfelt
On a mild gray day in early November, Stacey Evans is posted up on the banks of the Chilkat river between Haines and the native village of Kluquan. She's scouring the valley with a high powered scope and counting bald eagles. 97, 84, 98, 84, 99, 300. Evans is the science director at the Toxinook Watershed Council, a local conservation nonprofit. Throughout the fall, she drives up the highway, counting eagles as she goes. That day she counted more than 900, and by the end of the month, this year's peak count had surpassed 1,400 birds. That's the highest count that I've ever counted and it's the highest count that's been documented since the year 2000. The road counts are part of an annual survey that provides insight into the area that every fall draws thousands of bald eagles, plus photographers, birders and other tourists. The effort is limited in scope, but these days it's the only information out there, and it generates data that can be compared over time.
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At each stop along Evans Survey Drive, eagles are perched in the cotton woods and scattered across the river flats. She explains why they're here in the first place. So a lot of the water that's coming from the Surcoo into the Chilkat is subsurface, so it's not exposed to air temperature, which means in the wintertime it is relatively warm. And so it keeps the Chilkat river from freezing. That facilitates a uniquely late chum salmon run. That's a major boon for the raptors heading into winter. Steve Lewis is a raptor biologist with the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service. He says the federal agency used to fly over over the preserve to count eagles, which is perhaps the best way to track the congregation. But that hasn't happened for at least 20 years, and he says it's probably not in the cards anytime soon, you.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Know, I would love to do that, but I just don't. I don't have funds to do it.
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Avery Elfelt
Other organizations, meanwhile, have helped carry out the road surveys since the 80s. It's not a perfect system, and there are a smattering of years with no data. The survey is also limited by the reality that there's no way to see the entire valley from the road. Still, Lewis says the resulting information provides a helpful snapshot.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
If there's lots of eagles in the valley, you're probably gonna have a higher count. If there's not as many, you'll probably have a lower count.
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Avery Elfelt
The high count in November likely correlates with a strong chum run, but it defies longer term trends, which suggests that the Hanes congregation may be smaller today than it was in the past. Here's Evans again. So we can say that there has been a decline. I mean, it's pretty obvious.
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From when the survey started in 1988. Some locals say they've seen that decline with their own eyes. Craig Loomis has lived in haines since the 1960s. He recalls driving up the highway and seeing far more eagles than he does today.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
I mean, there were eagles all over the place.
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Tim Ellis
I mean, they were just.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
And that didn't count the ones that are, you know, away from the river.
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Tim Ellis
That we could or from the highway that we couldn't see. These are just the ones that we could see.
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Avery Elfelt
You know, a few factors could be impacting the counts or the eagles themselves. An obvious one is the chum run in 2020, for example. The run was incredibly weak and so was the eagle count. Weather is the other factor. Warmer falls can result in more open water, both locally and regionally, Lewis says. That allows the eagles to feed in different areas of the valley that are further from the road, making them harder to spot. That could happen more frequently with climate change. In southeast Alaska. Temperatures between September and January have risen by more than 4 degr on average since 1988, according to federal data. Despite all of that, Evans emphasizes that bald eagle populations are really doing quite well. So even if the Haines congregation is shifting in some way over time, that doesn't mean the raptors are in danger. It could just mean they're elsewhere. This is not a population survey at all. There's no indication that eagle populations are diminishing. Lewis echoed that point. Ultimately, he says he's really not sure what's happening with the local congregation. Answering that question for certain would take more time, data and money. Reporting in Haines, I'm Avery Elphelt.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, we follow one reporter's journey to find the perfect Christmas tree.
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Alyona Nydin
Oh, this one is probably white spruce, right?
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Tim Ellis
Yeah. Looks a little bit greener than the other one.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
That's ahead. Stay with us. State and federal law enforcement officers on Wednesday captured a North Pole man wanted for the fatal shooting of a teenager near Fairbanks in October. KUAC's Tim Ellis reports.
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Tim Ellis
State Department of Public safety spokesperson Austin McDaniel said Thursday that Alaska State Troopers and U.S. marshals located 18 year old Darius Morgan after receiving a tip that he was at a residence on the south side of Fairbanks.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
They were able to quickly respond to that tip, which led to Darius Morgan's arrest.
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Tim Ellis
Morgan is being held at Fairbanks Correctional center on charges of first and second degree murder and weapons misconduct. His bail is set at a million dollars. McDaniel said two others were also apprehended Wednesday for hiding Morgan at their house.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
After troopers and the U.S. marshals located him at that residence. Two other people that were aiding in his ability to hide from us were arrested there as well for hindering prosecution.
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Tim Ellis
A DPS dispatch issued Thursday identified Those two as 19 year old Maya Cochran and 21 year old Matthew Winter. Both are Fairbanks residents. Investigators have been looking for Morgan ever since a 15 year old was fatally shot at an October 25 house party off Farmer's Loop Road. A witness told troopers that they saw Morgan at the party with a handgun. That would be a felony, according to a charging document, because it would have violated the conditions of Morgan's probation after he was convicted last year of robbery. McDaniel said the effort to find Morgan involved several law enforcement officers from different agencies.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
The U.S. marshals that were assisting us, as well as troopers from the Mat Su area, worked together to run down several leads and tips of where Darius was, which ultimately led to his arrest at the residence off of Lathrop.
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Tim Ellis
He also thanked members of the public who provided tips and information about Morgan's whereabouts. And he encouraged them to help with other cases under investigation, including a homicide and shots fired at two Ore hauling trucks on the Richardson and Steese highways last month. For KOAC news, I'm Tim Ellis.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
State investigators have concluded that an elderly Valdez woman, missing since early last month, died in a Nov. 12 fire in Glenallen. The Valdez Police Department issued a missing persons alert for 86 year old Mary Jo Evans on November 11th. That came after her family members told officers they had not seen her since the week before. Then on November 12, the Caribou Hotel in Glen Allen burned to the ground. Alaska state troopers got a tip last week about a badly burned car matching the description of Evans vehicle in the hotel parking lot. Troopers later confirmed the car was Evans. On Friday, investigators with the state Department of Public Safety and the state fire marshal's office began searching for human remains in the burned out hotel. Troopers said in a dispatch Monday that due to the duration and intensity of the fire, the investigators were not able to locate any human remains. But the dispatch said investigators believe Evans died in the fire because there's no evidence that she ever left the hotel. A trooper spokesperson said there were no other victims because Evans was the only hotel guest who was unaccounted for after the fire. Troopers said investigators believe the fire was accidental.
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Legendary Alaska adventurer Dick Griffith passed away Tuesday. In his 98 years, Griffith trekked across more than 10,000 miles of wilderness in Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, Mexico and Asia. He often traveled alone, on foot, by boat or both, pioneering the use of an inflatable boat small enough to carry on one's back called a pack raft. Roman Dial, a legend of packrafting and Alaska wilderness adventure in his own right, calls Griffith the grandfather of modern Alaska adventure. I met Dick when I was in my 20s and he was in his 50s, and I wanted to be just like him. He kind of looked like Clint Eastwood in tennis shoes and a backpack. But by the time I was in my 50s and he was in his 80s, I realized that there's no way I was going to be like him. He was truly one of a kind and he had a huge impact on my life and the path that I took. Kayleen Johnson Sullivan was a friend of Griffith's and wrote his biography called Canyons in Ice, the Wilderness Travels of Dick Griffith. Johnson Sullivan joins us now. Hi there.
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Kayleen Johnson Sullivan
Hello.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
So where did Dick Griffith grow up? How did his upbringing contribute to his adventurous nature? And how did he end up in Alaska?
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Kayleen Johnson Sullivan
Well, he grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. It was a hardscrabble life and they were quite poor. It was during the Depression. He was born in 1927 and he, from a very young age was hunting for meat for the family because all the farm food went to town for cash. And so it was a hard life and he was eager to be away from it. And he decided one day that he was going to build a boat based on a article that he read in Life magazine. And he built that boat and headed down to the canyons in southwestern America and launched his boat. And his dad was a rancher, couldn't figure out why? He wouldn't ride a horse rather than take a boat. But he was kind of done with.
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Avery Elfelt
Horses for a while.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Enough with horses.
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Kayleen Johnson Sullivan
Yep. Yeah. And he was in the canyons when he met his wife to be Isabel, and they fell in love and got married and did some adventuring of their own. They went down the Barranca del Cobre in Mexico. And so after they were married, they came to Alaska in 1954.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
And did he come up to Alaska for work, is that why?
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Kayleen Johnson Sullivan
Mm. He started with the Alaska. Well, with the railroad up here. He decided then to go back to school and become an engineer. And after that, he worked for the FAA as an engineer for the rest of his career.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
I feel like other folks that I've read about that were, you know, you could characterize as an adventurer. They're, like, stubborn, like serious people sometimes. Was he like that?
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Kayleen Johnson Sullivan
Oh, I think that he was determined to do what he had set out to do. And he didn't always succeed, but he always went back to make it happen. But he also had a great sense of humor, and he loved giving people a hard time, and you knew that if he was giving you a hard time, then he liked you. So he always had a jokester, too. He always had a very wry wit, had a lot of funny things to say.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Yeah, you mentioned he had a great sense of humor. And Roman Dial, who we heard from off the top there, has this great story about one of the Alaska mountain wilderness classics where Dick showed up with what we call a pack graph now and basically leapfrogged over these guys and said something like, old age and treachery will win every time.
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Kayleen Johnson Sullivan
Right, right, right. Exactly.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Great quote. But I wanted to ask you, why does Roman call Dick the grandfather of modern Alaska adventure?
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Kayleen Johnson Sullivan
Well, Dick did things that no one had done before. Even the folks out in the villages would be amazed as he pulled into a tiny village pulling a sled all by himself. He was one of the first people that did these solo trips, long trips, and he did most of them in the latter part of his life. He retired at 62 and set off to just go across the. The northern tier of Alaska and on into the Arctic of Canada, all the way across the continent, basically. And no one had ever done that. And he did that in segments. He also traversed the Brooks Range, and almost everything he did, he did solo because mostly people couldn't keep up with him.
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So he learned along the way, but he enjoyed his own company. And he went out there and just made. Made a plan to do it. And he did it.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
What legacy do you think Dick Griffith leaves us?
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Kayleen Johnson Sullivan
I think Dick has left a legacy of amazing adventure, but also courage and integrity and humor and that he met life's challenges just head on. And he lived life completely and fully all of his life. And I think, boy, we could all stand to do such a thing, you know, to be fully present and alive right up, right up until the end.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
That was Kayleen Johnson Sullivan, who wrote Canyons and the Wilderness Travels of Dick Griffith. Griffith passed away Tuesday at the age of 98.
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A pilot project that set up designated bike lanes on two streets in downtown Fairbanks drew hundreds of responses to a summer long survey. Fairbanks Area Surface Transportation Planning, or Fast Planning, administered the survey and processed the results. And on Wednesday, staff with Fast Planning presented some of the findings to the agency's technical committee. The survey collected an abundance of feedback on an idea that's been years in the making. As KUAC's Patrick Gilchrist reports, local officials must now decide whether to keep plans for a bike network moving forward or to hit the brakes.
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Casey Grove
On an August afternoon, David Button was pedaling down Barnett street in downtown Fairbanks. That's one of the two roads included in the pilot project. Where are you headed right now?
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Tim Ellis
I'm going to Keybank, then over to Costco.
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Casey Grove
He was following the green and yellow street paint that marked the lane specifically for bike traffic, and Button said he bikes every day, always trying to use the safest route and and that he liked having the space on the road labeled for cyclists.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
You know, you just don't want to be in the line of traffic and.
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Tim Ellis
This gets you out of the way. Safety, a lot of safety.
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Casey Grove
Not everyone felt the same way about the temporary lanes, which crews installed in May and removed this year before the snow fell. Hundreds more people provided their thoughts through a survey Fast Planning administered over the summer, and transportation planner Olivia Lunsford presented a snapshot of the results at a technical committee meeting on Wednesday. She says the surveys created plenty of data to sift through and that some patterns emerged.
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Avery Elfelt
You can definitely see that the people who don't bike for recreation or transportation do make up the bulk of the negative responses. Experiences, et cetera.
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Casey Grove
Collectively, the responses suggest public opinion didn't clearly tip one way or the other on the project. For instance, in one section of the survey, roughly 90 people answered that the pilot project made them feel confused or angry, while a little more than 100 people said it made them feel happy or excited. Then there were the few dozen people who answered other and left a comment.
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Avery Elfelt
And we got comments like Whose cockamamie idea was this?
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Casey Grove
The answer to that question is no single person. The project dates back to 2019, when the city of Fairbanks nominated a seasonal bicycle network on city maintained streets as a project proposed for funding from Fast Planning. The city later scaled back the request to be for the one year test, and in 2023, a fast planning advisory committee proposed nine roads for the initial pilot phase. That scope got narrowed further, and the Fairbanks City Council ultimately passed a resolution authorizing two roads downtown, Barnett street and 10th Avenue, for the pilot. In total, the temporary bike lanes on the two roads cost just under $900,000, according to Fast Planning documents. The bulk of that funding came from a federal program aimed at boosting transportation alternatives like bike and pedestrian facilities. The city also paid a roughly $65,000 match. The end of the pilot this year means the city would have to renominate the bike network project to move it forward, according to Fast Planning Executive Director Jackson Fox. He said by email Thursday that any additional phases, whether they're temporary or permanent, would also require approval from Fast Planning's policy board and another resolution of support from the City Council In Fairbanks, I'm.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Patrick Gilchrist Looking for the perfect Christmas tree? A state forester helped Alaska desk reporter Alyona Nydin harvest hers in the Matanuska Valley this week and shared how you can, too.
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Alyona Nydin
Last year, I had a fiasco. My friends and I drove out and cut down a Christmas tree. It looked perfect and I was excited to decorate it in our living room. But the tree lost nearly all of its needles by Christmas Day. The thin tree trunk with sad, sagging branches stood completely naked, a thick layer of green needles pulled on the floor around it. I show Steven Nicholl a photo.
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Tim Ellis
Oh, oh yeah, that happens.
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Alyona Nydin
Nikhil is a forester with the Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection. This year, I asked for his help. Nikhil and I are at the Moose Range near Palmer. It's one of several established places to find a Christmas tree on state land in south central Alaska. Other spots are on the Kenai Peninsula. You just need to consult the maps on the Division of Forestry website. You can also cut a tree anywhere on unrestricted state land, and there are options at the Jim Creek Recreation Area as well as Chugach National Forest. Nicol says the legal window for cutting is from Thanksgiving through Christmas Day.
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Tim Ellis
General rules are one tree per household less than 15ft tall. We want folks who cut the tree all the way down to the ground and then just clean up after yourself.
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Alyona Nydin
There are a ton of Christmas Tree candidates here, mainly white and black spruce.
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Equipped with a handsaw, a shovel, and some ropes to carry out the tree, we trudge through melty snow and fallen branches.
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Tim Ellis
Sometimes you'll find little tracks where people have already walked off in the woods. Like, hey, maybe there's another spot over there. Maybe there's another tree.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Let's go check it out.
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Alyona Nydin
Picking the right Christmas tree is all about foliage. Nikhil says to look for healthy green needles to make sure the tree will last.
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Tim Ellis
And envision the space that you're trying to fill with a tree. And pick the tree to find that.
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Alyona Nydin
If it's a centerpiece of the room. He says to look for full, even foliage, typical for trees without close neighbors. If you want a tree against the wall, maybe pick one that has fewer branches. On one side, we see one charming spruce tree, but it is a little too short. Another one looks tall and full, and we decide it might be a great candidate.
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Tim Ellis
You ready to cut it?
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Avery Elfelt
Let's do it.
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Casey Grove
All right.
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Alyona Nydin
Then. Nicol notices an issue. Yellow speckles on the needles that might indicate that the tree is not healthy.
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Tim Ellis
I might want to point you towards something that's got a little bit more green on it, just so you don't have, you know, lose a bunch of needles.
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Alyona Nydin
So we keep walking until we see the one. Oh, this one is probably white spruce, right?
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Tim Ellis
Yeah. Looks a little bit greener than the other one.
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Alyona Nydin
Yeah, I like this one.
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Tim Ellis
All right.
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Alyona Nydin
I get on my knees and crawl to get closer to the trunk.
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Tim Ellis
Just like that.
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Alyona Nydin
It's easy to cut with a sharp handsaw. Just make sure you cut on the side opposite of where you want the tree to fall. Okay, it's about to fall.
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Tim Ellis
There you go.
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Alyona Nydin
My Christmas tree.
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Kayleen Johnson Sullivan
Yes.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
Oh, it's a nice one.
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Alyona Nydin
I think I picked well. The needles will stay on. We take a short walk back. Nicol says to be careful when you put the tree in or on your car. The branches might be brittle, especially when it's cold outside. Then when you bring the tree home, Nicol says to leave it in a semi warm space that will allow the tree branches to relax before you bring it inside. For now, mine is in the garage warming up. I'll bring it into my living room soon to decorate it and enjoy its lush green branches. I hope it will last at least through Christmas. Christmas time is here.
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In Anchorage. I am Alena Neiden.
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Narrator/Host (Casey Grove)
For more rules and best practices, check out the Division of Forestry and Fire Protection website.
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And that's all for this edition of Alaska News Nightly. If you missed any of tonight's stories. We're online@alaskapublic.org and wherever you get your podcasts. We had reports tonight from Samantha Watson in Bethel, Avery Elfelt in Haynes, Tim Ellis in Delta Junction, Patrick Gilchrist in Fairbanks, and Ilona Knighton in Anchorage. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us@newslaskapublic.org Our audio engineer is Crystal Hyde. Madeline Rose is our producer. And I'm Casey Grove. Have a great weekend.
- [25:57]
This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.