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- [00:00]
Casey Grove
Support for Alaska Public Media on Demand.
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Narrator/Reporter
Comes from Siri, an Alaska Native corporation with operations and investments spanning five continents, 45 states and two US territories. I'm going to make sure Alaska does not get a federal judge who sides with the far left radical enviros on every case. Senator Dan Sullivan's criticism of a federal judge shines a spotlight on the judicial selection process from Alaska Public Media. This is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Thursday, March 27th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, the CDC cancels funds meant to help defend Alaska against future pandemics.
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Casey Grove
It's hard to know for sure, but it feels like decades of lessons learned are going backwards if we lose this.
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Narrator/Reporter
Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News nightly. U.S. district Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled this week that the Biden administration was wrong to cancel oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. As it happens, she did exactly what US Senator Dan Sullivan says she never does by deciding against environmental groups. Sullivan's recent criticism of the judge caused a stir in the legal community. Alaska Public Media's Liz Ruskin reports Sullivan.
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Casey Grove
Veered into criticizing the judge when he spoke to reporters at the state Capitol on March 20.
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Narrator/Reporter
I don't want to get specific, but we have a couple district judges that rule with the far left radical environmental groups every single time. And that judge, in my view, has done more damage to our state than almost anyone imaginable.
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Casey Grove
Sullivan let it stand when a reporter observed that it was obvious who he was talking about because Sharon Gleason is Alaska' active US Court judge. He went on to assail her impartiality again. A moment later, he said the main thing he's looking for in the next judge would be someone unlike her.
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Narrator/Reporter
And my red line is we're not going to have another judge like the one that we were talking about. I'm not going to. I'm going to make sure Alaska does not get a federal judge who sides with the far left radical enviros on.
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Casey Grove
Every case that is factually incorrect. Attorneys like Jeff Feldman who've appeared before Judge Gleason says Sullivan is wrong about her. She does not always rule in favor of environmental groups. I can say that both by looking at her history as well as her personal experience because she has ruled against me in environmental cases or against my clients, to cite a few examples. In 2021, Gleason ruled against environmental groups trying to block oil leasing in the Arctic wildlife refuge. In 2023, Gleason dismissed lawsuits aimed at stopping Willow ConocoPhillips Oil and Gas project in the National Petroleum Reserve. And then on March 25, she issued her decision favoring a leaseholder in the Arctic refuge. Feldman, now a law professor at the University of Washington, did some research and says 81% of Gleason's decisions are upheld on appeal, a slightly higher rate than other federal judges who have serv Alaska. Feldman says he considers Sullivan a friend but says it's inappropriate for him to, as he put it, throw rocks at a judge. When a leader makes that kind of allegation, that suggests that a judge's rulings are both wrong and politically motivated. That undermines faith and confidence in the judiciary. Federal judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. By tradition, the senators from the state with the judicial vacancy play a big role. They usually select a candidate and send the name to the White House. For several decades, Alaska's US Senators have made their selection with the help of the Alaska Bar Association. The bar association collects names of applicants and then polls its members about them. Senator Lisa Murkowski likes the process Sullivan doesn't.
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Narrator/Reporter
One bar poll is not reflective of what's out there, in my view, and I feel very strongly about that.
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Casey Grove
Case in point, Sullivan says, is Joshua Kindred's selection. Kindred was the who resigned last July amid findings of improper conduct. Sullivan praised Kindred at his Senate confirmation hearing but speaks of him with disgust now and is quick to point out that he wanted someone else. Sullivan says the Kindred fiasco shows the need for more pre nomination screening. So Sullivan is using a method he devised. He's appointed a committee of Alaskans to collect and review applications Sullivan has been keeping under wraps, including who the potential nominees are. Sullivan says the confidentiality attracts more applicants. Retired state Judge Elaine Andrews says the bar poll works well if senators choose from the top end of the list. Kindred finished near the bottom. Andrews says she wonders about applicants who will only step up for Sullivan's secret process. If they're afraid of a terrible bar poll because they're either inexperienced, intellectually unqualified, or an ideologue that they know people do not believe will be fair, well, then we've got a problem. Andrews says nominees should represent the best and the brightest, and that attorneys know the work habits and professionalism of their colleagues. The goal should be to find a person who is willing to work, who's capable of understanding the complex matters that comes before the federal court, and who has the courage to apply the law to the facts and decide the case, sullivan says. He's working with Murkowski to find nominees they both like. Reporting from Anchorage, I'm Liz Ruskin.
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Narrator/Reporter
In a sudden move, the Centers for Disease Control and prevention, or the CDC, is pulling up to $43 million in federal grants that support public health programs Alaska the COVID era grants were meant to reduce health disparities in the state, especially for rural Alaskans. They were also helping the state prepare for the next pandemic or public health emergency. Alaska Public Media's Rachel Cassandra has more.
- [06:43]
Casey Grove
The federal government notified Alaska's Division of Public Health Tuesday that the state won't receive millions of dollars in public health grants it was expecting over the next two years. The state Department of Health didn't agree to an interview for this story, but spokesperson Alex Huseman said by email that the department is assessing the potential impacts and next steps. The funds were meant to address the continued impact of COVID 19 on the economy, public health, state and local governments, individuals and businesses. Dr. Ann Zink led the state's response to the COVID 19 pandemic as chief medical officer. She says the money was also meant to reduce the impact of future disease outbreaks and pandemics. I worry that without letting them finish, we will be set back tremendously again. It's hard to know for sure, but it feels like decades of lessons learned are going backwards if we lose this, zink says stopping the funding partway through projects is a waste of money and effort. The money that was already spent may not be realized in its benefit to Alaskans because we may not be able to finish the project or we started something and can't get it done. One of the state's projects that is losing funding is an electronic records sharing system, which is partially finished. That's according to a source working at the Division of Public Health. The source doesn't want to be identified because they're not authorized to speak to media. Zink says the system would allow for data sharing between public health and the broader healthcare system to help them communicate and work better together. The division source says this Covid ERA funding was also focused on reducing health disparities across the state, especially in rural Alaska. They say such major cuts will have a devastating ripple effect throughout all Alaska public health programs, and they say almost 10% of the Division 50 people are fully funded by the cut grants and some are likely to lose their jobs. The state did not give an estimate of the total amount of funding lost, but the source provided documents showing the grants amounted to $25 million in funds already allocated by Congress, an additional $18 million cut has already been awarded to state organizations and contractors, they say, and the future of those funds is uncertain and complicated. Legally, a majority of the funding, the source says, has gone toward expanding rural health access. But the Anchorage Health Department has also received a big chunk of funding to reduce disparities within urban areas. A spokesperson for the Anchorage Health Department says they don't currently have enough information to say how the city may be impacted by this decision. Zink says the grants were aimed at the biggest public health concerns in Alaska. These dollars were very tailored to what Alaskans need and want, and these were not federal dollars telling us how to practice or what to do. Alaska got the opportunity to decide if we were going to apply for them or not, and apply for them in ways that met the department's goal of the health well being and self sufficiency of Alaskans. And to have those dollars cut, which are Alaskan taxpayer dollars, is going to hurt Alaskans, and that is hard for me to watch. It's unclear whether the state will be able to pay the contracts that have already been promised to organizations and communities across the state. In Anchorage, I'm Rachel Cassandra.
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Narrator/Reporter
Still to come on ALASKA News nightly, Southeast Alaska artists share their work in a traveling exhibit.
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Casey Grove
The idea of portable Southeast in terms of the theme is that it is an art exhibit that celebrates life on the coast.
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Narrator/Reporter
That's ahead. Stay with us. The ongoing spruce beetle outbreak in Alaska has now affected more than 2 million acres statewide. But last year, the new forest damage attributed to the beetles hit its lowest point since the outbreak began nearly a decade ago. That's according to a March update from a joint state and federal effort to track the outbreak. Jason Moan is a forest health program manager with the Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection. He says using aerial surveys and other monitoring techniques, the agencies spotted about 35,000 acres of spruce beetle activity in 2024.
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Casey Grove
That simply refers to places where beetles were active in attacking trees when we flew the survey or when we were there on the ground looking at the trees.
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Narrator/Reporter
The outbreak peaked in 2018 when monitors saw almost 600,000 acres of spruce beetle activity in one year. It's been on a zigzagging decline since then, so reaching a low point this year does not necessarily mean next year will have even less activity. But Moen says the dip is still a good sign.
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Casey Grove
It is certainly a promising development and you know, as we have seen it declining while there is those fluctuations, we.
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Narrator/Reporter
Are still generally headed in the right direction. Spruce beetles are small and reddish brown in color. They live and feed underneath the bark of trees, and they can target all types of spruce. In Alaska, previous outbreaks have also killed millions of acres of trees. The current iteration gained footing in south central Alaska in 2016, but over the last couple years, spruce beetle activity in that region has tapered off. It's now clustering mainly on the outbreak's northeastern frontier. Mohn says that's largely due to the three things that dictate where the beetles can a lack of predators, the availability of host trees, and warm enough temperatures to survive overwintering. Faded yellow needles and dust at the base of a tree are among the first signs of a spruce beetle infestation, and Mone says spring is a good time to start checking in on tree health. Southeast Alaska's Chilkat Valley is inching toward the area's first major timber harvest since the 1990s, but that plan just hit a snag. The timber company under contract for the sale recently applied for a permit to store harvested logs in Haines Lu Tec Inlet. As Avery Elfelt reports for the Alaska Desk, the state is halting the application amid public concern.
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Casey Grove
Four years ago, an Oregon based timber company won a contract to harvest some 23 million board feet of spruce and hemlock outside Haynes. But the company's plan to get that timber out of Alaska and into buyers hands is sparking pushback. That's because the company's local operator is seeking permits to build a log transfer facility and storage site in Haynes Lutek Inlet, a popular spot for commercial and subsistence fishing. Late Wednesday afternoon, the state Department of Natural Resources made an about face and temporarily closed the public comment period on the permit application, which was originally set to end March 28th.
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Narrator/Reporter
Just from the public commentary we were.
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Casey Grove
Getting and stuff like that, we feel like it'd be necessary to do this. Tony Keith is a natural resource manager with the department. He adds that the agency will be requiring the company to provide the public with more information, including a dive survey of the ocean floor.
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Narrator/Reporter
And then once you're finishing up the dock, the log transfer facility, or if you're trying to bring it back under.
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Casey Grove
Review or anything, you're able to do.
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Narrator/Reporter
Another dive survey and go down there.
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Casey Grove
And just check bark accumulation and stuff like that. The timber sale, known as Baby Brown, has a long and winding history. The state first awarded the sale to a contractor in 2016, but later canceled it after conservation groups appealed the land use plan. The sale was later awarded to Oregon based NWFP Inc. The company has been developing a plan for the sale since then. State Forester Greg Palmieri says it could present a major economic opportunity for the area, which used to be home to a booming timber industry but hasn't seen a similarly sized sale since the 1970s.
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Narrator/Reporter
If there's no industry working in the.
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Casey Grove
Area, there's no potential for growth.
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Narrator/Reporter
So this sale was designed to encourage.
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Casey Grove
The development of the industry. Conceptually, does it crack that egg?
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Narrator/Reporter
We'll have to see. It has the potential to do that.
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Casey Grove
The permit application proposes a log transfer facility and storage area on a 12 acre site about four miles out of town off Lutak Road near the Alaska Marine Line's dock. The facility would include a slide to transfer logs into the water. Log bundles would then be placed into floating rafts and towed to a storage site close to shore. Later, they would be loaded onto a ship. Palmieri, the state forester, estimates the storage site would be less than one third of a mile long and says the facility is a conservative option that aims to limit potential impacts. Still, locals are worried about the facility affecting the inlet and access to it. Eric Lemke is a commercial fisherman in Haines. My main concern is during the sockeye run, you know, we a lot of times there'll be as many as 20 boats up there trying to fish. And I think if there was a lot of logs and a big ship, it would pretty much make it impossible to do that. Paulie Johansen, who is listed as the permit applicant, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Earlier this month, a separate lumber company confirmed it is largely shutting down a site near Kodiak. The company attributed the move to China's pause on imports of US Logs in response to ongoing trade disputes. Palmieri says he's received no indication that the trade war has impacted the sale. The permit application, for its part, says logging could begin as soon as this spring and run through 2028. The state agency did not say when the dive survey will take place or what the permitting delay will mean for logging operations in Haines. I'm Avery Elphelt.
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Narrator/Reporter
A new charter school run by the Kainaitse Indian Tribe will officially open its doors in Kenai later this year. That's after the state Board of Education gave the tribe's application a unanimous final stamp of approval earlier this month. When it opens, the tribe's Thuthlin Charter School will become the Kenai Peninsula borough School District's 43rd school. The tribe expects to enroll up to 65 students in kindergarten through third grade. The school will be hosted at the tribe's Katana Tana del Dulde campus in Kenai. Our vision is to be a beacon for educational excellence and cultural pride for the kenai Peninsula. Kyle McFaul is the Kainaitse Indian Tribe's education director. He was tasked with fielding questions from state school board members about the tribe's school proposal at the board's March meetings. We envision a school where the richness of Denina cultural heritage is interwoven to every aspect of learning, fostering a deep sense of belonging, pride and self confidence, McFaul says. The school will incorporate existing tribal programs, including the Dena' Ina Language Institute and the Yaghanin Language and Cultural Program. The tribe also has plans for a science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics academy, and the school will have a Native Youth Olympics coach to lead physical education, Tribal Council Chair Bernadine Acheson told the board the school's been a long time coming.
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Casey Grove
The tribal school has been a long standing goal for the Kaintse Indian tribe for over 30 years and continues to.
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Narrator/Reporter
Be one of our top priorities identified by tribal members. Kenai Peninsula School Board members approved the tribe school application in November. State School Board Chair James Fields was the only board member to comment on the application.
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Casey Grove
It sounds you got a good broad base of educational experience in that district, which helps, so you kind of know the ins and outs and you can.
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Narrator/Reporter
Kind of do that with the Denina.
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Casey Grove
Group and the Kanatzi Tribe. So thank you for all your work on this and wish you guys luck.
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Narrator/Reporter
At the same meeting, the board also unanimously approved a renewal application for the K8 Aurora Borealis charter School in Kenai. Anchorage School district officials say data from the first semester with new school start times is inconclusive. In the fall, the district rolled out new start times for elementary, middle and high schoolers that shifted elementary classes an hour earlier, while middle and high school students now start later. The change is part of a slew of measures meant to increase the graduation rate to 90% by 2028. The data show overall attendance numbers increased incrementally during the first semester and a slight decrease in failing grades for middle and high school students. Significantly more elementary students were late for the start of school, but officials warned against drawing broad conclusions from the narrow data set. Board President Andy Holloman says the attendance increases are too small to prove whether the start times have the desired effect.
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Casey Grove
I mean, I think you have to at least get outside the margin of error on a few things to be able to feel confident that we're either doing the right thing or the wrong thing, and I just didn't see that in any of the stats.
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Narrator/Reporter
Board members said they intend to keep reviewing the data over time to get a better idea of what impact the start times are having on student attendance and performance. The Great Backyard Bird Count is a day in mid February when birders around the world venture out into their neighborhoods to count and record every bird they can spot. KUCB's Sophia Stuart Rossi joined Unalaskans as they tallied their feathered friends.
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Casey Grove
It's a cold and windy winter day on a Maktac island. Megan Dean is leading a group of local birders outside along Alulik Harbor. She's with the Museum of the Aleutians. I know between the wind and the sun, my eyes are like watering. Dean is using binoculars looking out across the water. Soon she spots a group of black and white ducks. The birds are bopping up and down on the waves, and they aren't that easy to identify because there are a lot of different black and white ducks in the Aleutian region. So knowing the fine details to separate them all becomes crucial. Dean has ID books and brochures to help participants in the group decipher what species the birds are. I'm kind of more of like a pelican and flamingo girl. Like I want an odd shaped, very large duck or bird that identify. Yeah. The group ranges from toddlers to seniors. This one day global bird count event helps scientists track bird populations just before their spring migration begins. It's a program by Cornell Lab, Audubon Society and Bird studies Canada. Today, the unalaska birders count 16 bird species, including four common ravens, which is exciting to see as their population has drastically decreased in the last couple of years for unknown reasons. But Dean was on the hunt for another bird. Today. She's looking for a canvas back duck, a species of fellow birder found earlier that day. So it's like another Oreo duck, but it's a little more white than the Scots and it's got a brown head and it's got a different color beak and kind of a different shape beak. It's more of like a Roman, a Roman nose. Once the birds are counted, Dean records the sightings in the Ebird app, so birders and scientists around the world can see what birds are hanging out in Unalaska on February 15th. For some places in the world, it's competitive. Columbia, we learned, is currently in the count of counting the most birds. Oh, interesting. The results of Unalaska's great backyard bird count can be found@birdcount.org in Unalaska. I'm Sophia Stewart Rossi Portable Southeast is.
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Narrator/Reporter
A traveling art exhibit featuring southeast Alaska artists. Their art reflects coastal living and will visit six different communities this year from Southeast to the Gulf of Alaska. It kicked off in Wrangell this month and will soon head north. KSTK's Colette Czarnicki visited the Nolan center to see what kind of art will be hopping around in Alaska's coastal communities.
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Casey Grove
Portable Southeast is in its second year as a collaboration between the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council and community centers throughout the region. There are 29 art pieces by 23 artists this year, a mix of paintings, watercolors, photography and textile art. One of the artists include Grace Wolf of Petersburg, who is a painter and jewelry maker. Others come from Juneau, Gustavus Ketchikan, Tenakee Springs, Haines and Thorne Bay. Jeannie Arnold is the director of Ringel's Nolan center, which is in its first year hosting the exhibit. She says the exhibit connects our communities together through art, since it's made by artists who live in southeast Alaska. As we were unpacking this guy, this is tight. The Coffee Crab by Robert Bo Anderson. It's acrylic on plywood and it's this bright colored Dungeness crab who's sipping a cup of coffee. The colors are brilliant. He really does a great job at the texture, arnold says. She also wants to highlight a raven tail weaving of a set of headphones and a woven iPad by Juno based Alaska Native artist Lily Hope. She's taught internationally and is both a raven's tale and chilkat weaver. It's titled Pandemic Babysitter attached to a little device here, which is something that I think a lot of us parents, if we went through the pandemic, will definitely attest to. This little piece came in handy. So just kind of a kind of a funny little piece, but also it's beautiful and just kind of a representation of the times I think that we lived through. Some of the art is for sale with prices ranging from $25 to $3,000. Rachelle Bonnet is the gallery manager at the Juno Arts and Humanities Council and the project manager for the traveling exhibits. So the idea of Portable Southeast in terms of a theme is that it. It is an art exhibit that celebrates life on the coast, she says. They launched the exhibit in 2022. This year it will visit six communities which are Wrangell, Sitka, Skagway, Juneau, Kodiak and Haines. Our hope is to expand this exhibit out beyond southeast Alaska and try to make it more open to any artist that's living in a coastal community, in any community that's living in a coastal community. So that's kind of the path that we're headed down. Bennett says that the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council invites people from different Southeast Alaska communities to curate future exhibits. She says this year they had artists from Craig, Juneau and Cordova, who helped select the artwork in Wrangel. I'm Colette Czarnicki.
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Narrator/Reporter
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 Liz Ruskin and Rachel Cassandra in Anchorage, Patrick Gilchrist in Fairbanks, Avery Elfelt in Hanes, Ashlyn o' Hara in Kenai, Sophia Stuart Rossi in Unalaska and Colette Czarnicki in Wrangell. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us@newslaskapublic.org Our audio engineer is Chris Hyde, Tim Rockies, our producer and I'm Casey Grove. Good night. This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.