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Support for Alaska Public Media On Demand comes from Siri, an Alaska Native corporation with operations and investments spanning five continents, 45 states and two U.S. territories.
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We're gonna get to work and get these heroes the land allotments that they deserved.
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Congress votes to extend the deadline for Alaska Native veterans to apply for land allotments from Alaska Public Media. This is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Wednesday, December 17th. Good evening. I'm Wesley Early. Also tonight, what was once Alaska's largest caribou herd has hit its lowest numbers in decades.
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Based on the last count, 2023, we've lost 20% of the population.
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Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly. The window for Alaska Native veterans to apply for their native allotments will stay open for another five years. Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan's bill, which extended the filing deadline, passed the Senate yesterday by unanimous consent.
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Wasn't easy, but we got this done at the buzzer. It's going to be signed into law. It's going to go over to the White House, the president's going to sign this, and we're going to get to work. We're going to get to work and get these heroes the land allotments that they deserved.
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The deadline was set to expire in less than two weeks. The bill now gives Alaska Native veterans until 2030 to claim 160 acres of federal land made available to them under a law Congress passed more than 100 years ago. But when the federal program ended in 1971, Vietnam vets missed out because many were overseas fighting in the war. An estimated 2,000 veterans are eligible for the program, but as of mid month, only about 25% had filed.20. So far, only a fraction of those applications have been approved. Native vets said they had difficulty meeting the deadline due to a complicated process and limited land availability. Democrats had blocked previous efforts to extend the deadline over fears that the bill would open a backdoor to more development. Sullivan says he ultimately won the extension by attaching his bill to three others that had bipartisan support.
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I think it's a really important day, really good day. And again, I commit to work with all my Senate colleagues on the other commitments.
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The bills that passed along with the extension include measures to sell federal land for an Arizona solar project, a water pipeline for southeast Colorado, and a directive to the Forest Service and Interior Department to publish information on public access to federal waterways for recreation. Senator Lisa Murkowski was a co sponsor of the native veterans bill. Congressman Nick Begaj's House version of the extension passed this summer. Leaders of seven Alaska native organizations, including the Alaska Federation of Natives and the Alaska Native Veterans Council, had written to Senate President John Thune urging passage of the extension. Meanwhile, the Western Arctic caribou herd was once Alaska's largest. This week, state biologists announced that the herd is now at its lowest numbers in five decades. And as Kotz's Desiree Hagan reports, advocates recommend taking drastic measures for the herd's survival.
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121,000 caribou. That's the latest estimate for the Western Arctic caribou herd, one of the world's largest. Its range is the size of California, stretching across a large swath of northern and western Alaska. Here, caribou are not only a central food source, the animals also have considerable cultural significance to the remote communities of the region. The last time the herd's numbers were this low, Jimmy Carter was president over 50 years ago. Alex Hansen is a Kotzebue based wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He says the latest population count from earlier this year is down considerably.
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Basically, based on the last count, 2023, we've lost 20% of the population.
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Hansen's department announced the findings at the annual meeting of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group held in Anchorage. The working group makes recommendations about the herd to state and federal regulators to set policy and bag limits for hunters. The population count led the working group to classify the herd as critical, declining. It's the lowest tier in their management plan. It directs managers to intensify efforts to the maximum extent possible for the survival of the herd. Hanson also urged the working group to be pointed with their recommendations to the Alaska Board of Game, which meets every three years under state law. That board is ultimately responsible for any regulation changes, he says. If the board doesn't act in 2027, the declines could continue unabated until 2036 years.
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We've lost the number of caribou that we have currently, so we can kick the can down the road another few more years. Let's not do anything for the Board of Game this time. Maybe let's wait till next time. That's about five or six years from now. What do we have at that point? Maybe nothing.
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The last time the board met was in Kotzebue in 2024. Back then, the Caribou Working group recommended that the board dramatically reduce the caribou harvest for the region's hunters to 4.4caribou per year, with one permitted cow or female caribou. The board disappointed many subsistence users throughout the herd's range when instead it set the limit to 15 caribou per year and opened up hunting to up to 300 non resident hunters to take one caribou per year. Typically non resident hunters don't hit that limit. Charlie Lean is a working group member representing the Nome region.
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I think we need to make suggestions as we did two years ago at the Board of Game. Maybe the Board of Game will see the light.
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The working group voted again to recommend a 4 caribou per year proposal and to close hunting for non residents. For Game Management Unit 23, an area that includes most of the Northwest Arctic. They also recommended if the herd population drops to 75,000, all hunting would automatically cease. It could resume if the population rebounded to 100,000 caribou. Tom Gray, who represents reindeer herders, shared the same sentiment as many of the working group members. The difficult decision to reduce harvest limits.
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It's not my freezer that I'm worried about. It's. It's the caribou herd itself. And we need to keep that in the back of our heads is we're trying to preserve this caribou herd.
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The working group also recommended a proposal to the Board of Game to make it legal for private citizens to shoot predators from aircraft. We within the herd's range. Predator control for caribou in Alaska is a controversial practice. It has been used in southwest Alaska to try to boost the Molchatna caribou herd's calf population. Proponents could also request an emergency action through the federal Subsistence Board to reduce harvest limits. That board is scheduled to meet in April. On the state management side, the next board of game meeting is scheduled for January 2027. The deadline for proposals to the board is May 2026. In Kotzebue, I'm Desiree Hagan.
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Still to come on Alaska News Nightly, Sitkins celebrate the opening of the community's first permanent supportive housing project.
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There are people in this town who just need a little bit of help to get back on their feet. And this is exactly what this is going to do for us.
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That's ahead. Stay with us. A 37 year old Kodiak man who's been held at an Immigration to Customs Enforcement facility in Washington state for months had a toe amputated after advocates say he was denied adequate medical care while in ICE custody. As KMXT's Davis Hovey reports, his deportation to the Philippines has been temporarily halted.
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Greggy V. Sorio has been held at the Northwest Ice Processing center in Tacoma since at least March. Sorio is from the Philippines and came to the US on a green card in 2007, according to his attorney. He was living in Kodiak prior to being detained by ice, and Luis Carhart, his attorney, told the Seattle Times that Sorio has a partner and two children who still live on the island. Sorio said in a recorded video message posted on Facebook that he suffered multiple instances of medical neglect while he has been detained at the ICE facility for months. The Tacoma Detention center has been reported to the state Department of Health for its poor conditions for several years, according to Komo News in Washington. According to the Seattle Times, Sorio had one of his toes amputated while he was in ICE custody. After being hospitalized for weeks, he developed a chronic inflammatory bowel disease, which requires ongoing medical care. Advocates with the Tongol Magranti movement told KMXT via email that Sorio's medical condition is life threatening and they will continue to advocate for him to receive comprehensive medical care at a hospital and and be released from ICE custody. The movement says they successfully advocated for Suryo to be removed from a Philippine Airlines flight earlier this month after they reported to the airline that he was unfit to travel on a more than 14 hour flight to the Philippines, according to reporting from Fox 13 Seattle. An ICE spokesperson said that ICE is aware of Sorio's medical concerns and that they were working to meet his medical requirements before his scheduled flight on December 7. As of December 8, a federal judge granted Sorio a temporary restraining order preventing him from being deported or removed from Washington state until Dec. 22, according to Alaska court records. Sorio was convicted of recklessly causing an injury to another person in 2024. He was also convicted of reckless injury in 2010, fraudulent use of an access device in 2010, reckless endangerment in 2016, fourth degree assault in 2017 and burglary in 2019. Sorio had already finished serving prison time for all of these crimes in Alaska when he was transferred to Tacoma, according to reporting from the Seattle Times. Reporting in Kodiak, I'm Davis Hovey, a.
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Second defendant in a Klawack murder case was sentenced on Monday to 60 years in jail with 20 years suspended. 25 year old Moses Scott Blanchard pled guilty in June to second degree murder and the death of 80 year old Lincoln Peratrovich. Blanchard and two other defendants attacked Peratrovich at his home in March 2023. Investigators say the attack followed inflammatory comments about the victim which had circulated on social media. Blanchard told investigators that he and an accomplice, 24 year old Blaise Diltz, saw a post alleging that Peratrovich had catcalled an underage girl and pursued her with an axe. Alaska State troopers investigated the allegation and found that no crime had occurred. Peratrovich died as a result of his injuries. In a June plea deal, Blanchard changed his plea to guilty, dropping three other felony charges against him. Ketchikan Superior Court Judge Daniel Doty presided over the case. Blanchard's sentence is higher than Diltz's, who was sentenced in September to 40 years in jail with 25 suspended. Doty says Blanchard sentence reflects his role in the assault. A third defendant in the case, 20 year old Gonzalo Sanchez, is scheduled for sentencing January 26th at the Prince of Wales Courthouse. Meanwhile, members of the Fairbanks North Star Borough assembly have drafted an ordinance that would rebrand a historical park in the center of the Goldenheart City. It comes amid a years long dispute over Pioneer Park's name. The measure is making its first appearance on the assembly agenda on Thursday. As KUAC's Patrick Gilchrist reports, it proposes changing the name of the park back to Alaskaland.
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The name Alaskaland last signified the 44 acre park on the banks of the Chena river in Fairbanks more than two decades ago. Officially, at least, a lot of people.
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Still refer to it as Alaska Land.
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They don't.
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They refuse to refer to it as Pioneer Park.
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That's assembly member Liz Reeves. She and Assemblymember Scott Krass drafted the ordinance to restore the former moniker. The park's history spans about 60 years, with the location playing host to an exposition that celebrated a century since the purchase of Alaska from Russia. And for decades, Alaskaland stuck as the name for the site of that 1967 expo. But it changed to Pioneer park in the early 2000s to more accurately reflect the historical importance of the park and reduce the expectation of a theme park. End quote. That's according to the borough's website. In 2021, the assembly adopted the Pioneer Park Master Plan, which aimed to assess the current status of the park and build a vision for its future. Kress says their proposal pulls from that document and that the measure started taking shape a few months ago.
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The Fairbanks Daily Newsmar the editorial board wrote a editorial and opinion piece that said, hey, remember this Astor plan? Why hasn't anything been done on it?
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The 2021 plan says the park name has proved controversial, drawing on public feedback. It says many people prefer the old name. And the plan also says some community members felt calling the location Pioneer park alienates the region's Alaska Native people. That's One of the sentiments the new ordinance responds to, according to Krass.
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It's important to recognize that for a lot of members in our community, it being for Pioneers speaks to something entirely outside of the experience of being in Alaskan.
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The park master plan also repeated part of the rationale from the early 2000s, saying that Alaska land has a false connotation of a theme park. Kress says he thinks modern methods for accessing information make that a non issue.
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This problem doesn't exist anymore where there's a misunderstanding by name alone. Now we have photos that we look at places before we ever get there online.
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Today, an estimated 350,000 people visit Pioneer park annually. It features things like museums, exhibits and the SS Nenana, a large wooden stern wheeler that's a National Historic Landmark. There's also a playground on the park's grounds and and it has restaurants and other activities in the summer. Reeves says the name of such a central location makes up part of the community's identity and that she wants to keep gathering feedback.
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If people have opinions, I would love to hear it, because this isn't. This is a big thing and it's not. It's not something that I'm taking lightly and I definitely want to hear people's input.
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As written, the ordinance would appropriate $50,000 for the rebrand to Alaskaland. Reeves says that primarily would be to replace the large sign at the entrance. The ordinance is currently set to be referred to the borough's Parks and Rec Commission, with a recommendation due back to the assembly by late February, according to the assembly agenda. In Fairbanks, I'm Patrick Gilchrist.
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A U.S. forest Service plan to revamp the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor center to accommodate more tourists could be upended by a lawsuit brought on by a nearby homeowner. As KTOOO's Alex Solomon reports, Juneau's top attraction might have to consider stemming the flow of visitors instead.
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Catherine Miller has lived near the visitor center for about 22 years.
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It's my backyard, and I do spend quite a bit of time there.
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Last July, she sued the Forest Service, claiming the agency violated the National Environmental Policy act, or nepa, when it designed its Visitor Center Improvement Plan. The plan expands facilities and increases the cap on the number of visitors allowed to come through commercial tour operators. Miller's lawsuit argued that the Forest Service planned the project to accommodate more tourism without considering other options, which it's legally required to do. In September, a federal court agreed and ruled in her favor. Now she's requesting that the U.S. district Court for Alaska throw out the improvement plan altogether. The Forest Service is asking the court to leave the plan in place, arguing there's a serious possibility the agency would reach the same decision to to deal with existing overcrowding. But Miller says it matters how the federal government arrives at decisions.
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Federal agencies like the Forest Service manage resources on behalf of the US Public and their public resources, and I think it's important to hold agencies accountable to include us in that process in a realistic way.
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On top of increasing the number of visitors tour companies can bring to the area, the improvement plan includes building a new welcome center and five new cabins, improving the existing visitor center, paving more parking lots and expanding trails. According to the court decision, the improvements are based on an assumption that tourism will grow 2% each year and the agency's position that it should strive to meet that demand. In its ruling, the court found the agency's options for improving the facilities were all narrowly focused on facilitating more tourism, none focused on restricting the number of visitors. Miller says the Forest Service should have considered a wider range of options, not.
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Just supporting tourism growth, because this isn't something that's necessary. It's something that you want to do, and so you need to explain, you know, why that's better than figuring out a better carrying capacity.
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The annual visitor capacity for the Menenhall Glacier Visitor center is roughly half a million. The improvement plan allows for nearly double that, with the vast majority allocated to commercial use. But to avoid having the plan thrown out, the Forest Service argues it can simply delay raising the capacity and revise lines in the plan that mention the 2% projected tourism growth. And despite citing significant congestion, the Forest Service doesn't have a system for consistently tracking how many people go to the visitor center each year. That's according to Paul Robbins, a spokesperson for the Tongass National Forest. He said a safe estimate is probably around 700,000 per year. Robbins declined to comment on the status of the improvement plan due to the ongoing lawsuit. He said agency staff plan to address deferred maintenance at the visitor center in the fall of 2026, work that was supposed to happen this year. It includes things like lighting, H vac flooring and painting. He said this maintenance is not part of the improvement project. It's unclear when the court will decide whether to throw out the improvement plan, as Miller wants, or choose a different way to address the Forest Service's violation. In Juneau, I'm Alex Solomon.
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Anchorage has a brand new municipal seal. Anchorage assembly members voted to approve the seal design during a meeting last night. North Anchorage assemblymember Daniel Voland introduced the final design, which he says was created in collaboration with the native village of Eklutna Denina artist Sebastian Garber and through public feedback from a city survey.
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I think that it is time to honor our history and to also embrace Anchorage's future, and I think that this is one way that we can do that. I like the fact that the timing aligns with the 50th anniversary, our celebration of munification.
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The new design keeps the city's iconic anchor and a sun in the background while removing a plane and a ship modeled after British explorer James Cook's HMS Resolution. A new addition to the seal is a braided circle around the anchor, inspired by Danana Quill work. East Anchorage's Yarrow Silvers praise the new seal.
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I think this design is very simple. I think it's inclusive of the great diversity within our community. I think it's recognizable, it gives a sense of place.
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Not everyone was a fan. Some assembly members expressed concern over prioritizing a new seal over other government actions. Others, like South Anchorage's Zach Johnson, thought there could have been more public outreach beyond the two week survey and internal assembly discussions.
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I would ultimately hope that we would have an opportunity for the public to weigh in to share more ideas and perhaps start to coalesce around one in particular that we can then decide on.
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Ultimately, the municipal seal design was approved by a narrow vote of 7 to 5. City officials say the new design will be phased in over time, starting with things like letterhead, business cards, the municipal website and replacement vehicles. Meanwhile, since 2022 the Sitka Homeless Coalition has been developing the island's first ever permanent supportive housing project for unhoused Sitkins. Now, after much anticipation and community input, the Hit Kasani community has finally become reality. KCW's Ryan Cotter braved the snow Saturday to attend the grand opening event and has this report.
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Come on, come on.
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At a small one bedroom efficiency apartment that is lined up as bunk sitting area on one side and across from that a full counter with a two burner induction hot plate on it with the single tank sink with a fan over the top and some lockers.
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That is Fortunatus Wayne, a board member for Sitka Homeless Coalition.
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And then in the back and go through the front room area you got on one side a closet and in the back you have a bath, a shower and a lavatory setup.
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Wayne is standing in one of the 12 new Hidkusani tiny homes that are dedicated to providing housing to unhoused Sitkins. Other Visitors file in and out of the room, whether to express awe at the home's modern interior or or to find relief from the snowy 30 degree weather outside. As somebody who has experienced being unhoused himself, Wayne is no stranger to how dangerous it can be to go without access to warm and reliable housing, especially during Alaskan winters. He says the location of the Hikkasani community next to Sitka Mini Storage at the end of Jarvis street is especially meaningful to him. As a teenager growing up in Sitka, he got to know some unhoused folks who hung out in that area, and.
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One in particular he'd probably he'd be going, yes, this is a good thing. But this has been needed since for at least 30 years.
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And Wayne is not the only person excited by the grand opening of Hikasani, which has been in development for three years. Numerous speakers from all across Alaska address the crowd of over 60 to padded applause from attendees. Gloved hands. From Maria Ukatel, who works for Senator Dan Sullivan, to Sitka Mayor Steven Eisenbies.
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There are people in this town who just need a little bit of help to get back on their feet, and this is exactly what this is going to do for us. It's going to strengthen our town in many more ways than just providing a roof over your head. And what an example of a day of why we need this, right? Everybody's out here bundled up in hats, gloves, coats. We're all a little bit cold. Can you imagine if you didn't have one of these to go to after this event?
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After many speeches and much anticipation, the attendees all gathered around as representatives from the Homeless Coalition and Rasmussen foundation cut a bright red ribbon marking the official grand opening of the Hikasani community.
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Okay, okay.
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Ready?
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Ready, set, go.
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Holding one end of the unfurled ribbon is Denise Schaeffer, the programs director for the Homeless Coalition, who is praised by numerous speakers for her work in connecting the organization's clients with the paperwork they need to move into the new homes. For Schaeffer, it is an incredibly touching moment to celebrate all the people who helped make Hikasani a reality.
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It's extremely emotional for me.
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Yeah.
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Because I look around and I see so many people who have been a part of this. Oh, man. In that role as connector, I also got to be supporter. And you know, you can't pour from an empty cup.
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And all these people poured into mine.
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So, yeah, it's good to see them.
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As of Monday, five of the 12 housing units in Hikasani are occupied by new tenants going forward. The Sitka Homeless Coalition hopes to build a services building for Hikasani residents to gather and access essential behavioral health and employment services in Sitka. I'm Ryan Cotter.
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Foreign 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 Rhonda McBride in Anchorage, Desiree Hagan in Kotzebue, Davis Hubby in Kodiak, Hunter Morrison in Ketchikan, Patrick Gilchrist in Fairbanks, Alex Solomon in Juneau, and Ryan Cotter in Sitka. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us at news at alaskapublic. Org. Our audio engineer is Crystal Hyde. Madeline Rose is our producer. And I'm Wesley Early. Good night.
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This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.