This article is part of a series on climate change, the effects of fossil fuels, and ways towards a sustainable future.

You can make your voice heard on these issues.  Alaska’s own Senator Murkowski is the Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.  Tell her to act on climate change by signing our petition, sending a letter we’ve written, or contacting her yourself.  Her office can be reached at 202-224-6665, by mail at 709 Hart Senate Building, Washington, D.C. 20510, or through this contact form.

Despite the massive oil spill in 1989, Exxon has remained on good terms with the Alaskan government, and continues to drill on the North Slope. Photo: John Gap III/AP

Alaska is already feeling the heat of climate change.  Temperatures are rising here at twice the rate of the rest of the country.  Hotter summers have kindled more and more wildfires burning throughout the state, melting permafrost and further accelerating warming.  These rising temperatures are also melting glaciers, contributing to sea level rise that imperils coastal communities.  The Alaskan way of life is threatened by these changes - record-low snow falls saw the 2015 Iditarod rerouted twice, and native villages have had to change their fishing practices in response to ice break up.  As ocean acidification gets worse, fisheries across the state are sure to bear the brunt of the burden.  Yet the state government continues to share a bed, which they make nice and comfy, with the oil corporations driving this environmental degradation.  Alaska has a dangerous dependency on oil money - over 90% of the state’s income comes from the oil and gas industry.  To preserve the natural beauty and resources of this great state, Alaska will have to address this dependency.  First, it must take on the power that big oil wields in its political system.

The politicians who rode comfortably in VECO’s pockets used their political power to give tax breaks to the oil industry at large.

The pinnacle of oil corruption in Alaskan politics came in the early 2000s, when an FBI investigation brought ‘The Corrupt Bastards Club’ into the public’s attention.  This club was made up of Alaskan lawmakers who routinely accepted bribes from the VECO Corporation, an oilfield services company that was acting as a sort of lobby on behalf of the oil industry.  VECO executives were caught on camera shelling out bills in exchange for votes.  The politicians who rode comfortably in VECO’s pockets used their political power to give tax breaks to the oil industry at large.  Of the many involved, twelve were indicted on various charges of corruption, bribery, and failure to disclose gifts.  Some of these saw prison time while others wiggled their way out of reprimand.  Two of those who were alleged to be involved in the Corrupt Bastards Club, but were never indicted, still serve in the Alaska legislature today.  Those two are Mike Hawker and Mike Chenault, who both continue to cater to the desires of the oil industry.

Hold on - they made each other hats? Can we think for a moment about how ridiculous this is?  These corrupt politicians were so proud of their shady dealings that they had to get their own hip headwear printed up.  Couldn't they at least be ashamed of selling out their constituents for oil money?

These two are not the only ones serving big oil in Alaskan politics.  Two state Senators are employed by ConocoPhillips, one of the multinational oil giants drilling on the North Slope.  Peter Micciche, who chairs the committee dealing with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, gets paid six figures by Conoco.  Kevin Meyer is also on the oil giant’s payroll, and chairs the Senate Finance Committee.  Both of these men had a hand in the hearings around senate bill 21, which offered tax cuts to oil companies, and both figured that their employer could use the tax relief.  These tax breaks came despite the oodles of profit Conoco was already making from Alaskan resources.  To their credit, when the vote came to the floor, both tried to recuse themselves for conflicts of interest, but objections by other senators who supported the bill forced them into voting (In the Alaska Legislature, if any one senator objects to an attempt to recuse oneself from voting, the senator must vote on the bill at hand).  The pair cast deciding votes in the 11-9 outcome, sending the bill on through the House, to eventually end up on the desk of Governor Parnell, a former Conoco lobbyist.  Parnell, too, decided that big oil could use a break.

Such tax breaks and credits, rather than creating a flourishing economy, have brought Alaska to the point where it is paying oil companies more than it is taxing them.  Projections for the current fiscal year guess that Alaska will shell out hundreds of millions more in tax credits to big oil than it will receive from tax revenue.  If that’s not a broken system, I don’t know what is.  This state needs to keep in mind that it is every bit as rich in renewable resources as it is in petroleum.  Alaska can lead the country towards sustainability.  This will require a government that puts the interests of the people well ahead of those of the oil companies.  Already, Alaska is taking important steps in this direction, aiming to be run on 50% renewable energy by 2025 and putting programs in place that facilitate this transition.  Equally important is the public taking a stand to say it refuses to have its political institutions corrupted by the oil industry.

This article is part of a series on climate change, the effects of fossil fuels, and ways towards a sustainable future.

You can make your voice heard on these issues.  Alaska’s own Senator Murkowski is the Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.  Tell her to act on climate change by signing our petition, sending a letter we’ve written, or contacting her yourself.  Her office can be reached at 202-224-6665, by mail at 709 Hart Senate Building, Washington, D.C. 20510, or through this contact form.

Oil companies are wreaking havoc on the environment.  Cutting corners in dealing with waste has polluted environments from America to the Amazon.  Oil spills have ruined ecosystems on seas and shores.  And the fundamental aim of these companies – to extract oil from the ground to burn for energy – is leading to climate change and its slew of disastrous consequences.  Surely, the responsibility of a government to serve its people includes protecting the planet they inhabit.  So why have governments done so little to address climate change?  Why do they continue to support and subsidize the destructive fossil fuel industry?  Well, that has something to do with the power of the companies involved in that industry.  These companies are able to use the utterly ridiculous amounts of money they control to manipulate politicians – so that they can make more money, profiting off the Earth’s pains.  They use their power to attack credible science, bribe foreign governments, and tinker with the legal system so they can continue to pollute the world.

The oil and gas industry spent $141 million on lobbying in 2014.  Surely a sizeable sum, but nothing compared to what it nets for these companies.  When President Obama set out to cut $4 billion in federal tax breaks to these companies, he didn’t stand a chance with a congress deep in the pocket of oil lobbies like the American Petroleum Institute.  Some of these massive subsidies date back to a century ago, when these companies were getting off the ground.  It might seem logical that if we’re to keep such subsidies around, we would help out renewable energy companies that now need that same starting boost.  But the fossil fuel industry sees renewables as a threat to business.  Among others with oil interests, the Koch Brothers poured money into lobbying against tax breaks for wind energy.  Because of the wealth that oil companies and their allies wield, they’re able to get directly into the ears of those who make policy.  This has led to seemingly paradoxical exemptions in restrictions on pollution.  Oil companies, whose waste decimates ecosystems, aren’t subject to many environmental regulations.  They are allowed to pump toxins into the air and water due to personalized loopholes in the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts.  These are the privileges that money can buy

.

This infographic from priceofoil.org reveals how efficiently big oil is able to use their lobbying dollars for government kickbacks

Big oil’s money is also being put to use in attempts to manipulate the science behind climate change.  Legal funds supported by oil money have dug through records to try to defame reputable climate scientists, incurring lawsuits for their use of slander.  These funds serve as fronts for oil corporations to make tax-deductible, anonymous donations towards skewing science.  Donors Trust, another of these organizations, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Dr. Willie Soon, a researcher who denies man-made climate change.  Dr. Soon, who often neglects to cite where his money comes from, contrary to publishing standards, claims that changes in the sun’s energy are responsible for global warming.  Many scientists agree that his methods and data are wildly out of date, yet he is cited time and again by climate-denying senators.  Big Oil buys not only politicians, but also scientists, in their efforts to remain on the throne of the energy kingdom.

Big oil is using their political clout to not only allow themselves the freedom to pollute, but also to prevent renewable solutions from being implemented.

By this point, it likely surprises no one to hear that these companies get involved in some corruption.  Transparency International made this fact perfectly clear by conglomerating global surveys and handing the crown of most corrupt industry to oil and gas.  They proved to be the best and most regular bribers of governments.  Some of these bribes went to Muammar el-Qaddafi, when he demanded that oil companies, in exchange for continued access to Libyan oil fields, help him settle his debts with the families of people his military had murdered.  In 2011, the Securities and Exchange Commission tried to crack down on corporate bribes to foreign governments.  The American Petroleum Institute wasn’t having it, however.  They used their massive lobbying power to ensure they wouldn’t have to disclose whatever bribes that oil companies were making.  These bribes allow them to decimate environments – from Ecuador to the Niger Delta, big oil has skirted regulations and shown no regard for the ecosystems they operate in.  Occasionally, in America and abroad, these companies are penalized with fines.  But another advantage of being filthy rich is that they can take these fines as operating costs – they are usually a lot less expensive than actually cleaning up their acts.

 Activists in Nigeria call upon Shell to clean up a massive oil spill.  Photo: Amnesty International

Big oil is using their political clout to not only allow themselves the freedom to pollute, but also to prevent renewable solutions from being implemented.  Even if these companies followed regulation and ethical business practices, they would be destroying our climate.  But their power is such that they have no need to do either of these things.  The corruption and environmental degradation that goes hand in hand with these companies' operations should trigger anyone’s moral radar.  In order to protect the planet we inhabit, we cannot continue to allow the fossil fuel industry to unjustly control so much political power.  We must stand up together to tell our elected officials to stop listening to the selfish desires of these companies and instead take action to address climate change. 

This article is part of a series on climate change, the effects of fossil fuels, and ways towards a sustainable future.

You can make your voice heard on these issues.  Alaska’s own Senator Murkowski is the Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.  Tell her to act on climate change by signing our petition, sending a letter we’ve written, or contacting her yourself.  Her office can be reached at 202-224-6665, by mail at 709 Hart Senate Building, Washington, D.C. 20510, or through this contact form.

Photograph by Accent Alaska

The costs of fossil fuel dependence are many.  Alaska is facing the financial woes of an oil-based economy, and just about every government that deals in oil also has to deal with the corruption that comes along with it.  The heaviest price, however, is paid directly by our planet and the people who inhabit it.  By burning fossil fuels, we taint our water and air, and warm our planet.  The effects of climate change are proving deadly to species across the globe - including humans.  The world is in for full-on climate catastrophe if we do not address our fossil fuel usage, but this does not mean these are the problems of tomorrow.  The world is already feeling the heat of climate change.  Here’s a shortlist of some of the environmental problems the fossil fuel industry is responsible for.

Water Pollution

It’s well known that the oil industry has a history of polluting water.  The Exxon Valdez oil spill remains in the collective memory of Alaskans - largely because it continues to affect the ecosystems around Prince William Sound.  But such massive oil spills are just the tip of the iceberg.  Smaller pipeline leaks are a far too common occurrence, hundreds happening in America alone each year.  The extraction of fossil fuels regularly involves dumping chemicals into water sources - including those where people get their drinking water.  Oil companies who skirted environmental regulations poisoned the waters of the Amazon river, increasing cancer risk for those who live nearby.  America’s watersheds have also been contaminated.  Hydraulic fracturing for natural gas involves the use of chemicals known to be toxic to humans and animals.  It is near impossible, with current technology, to ensure that these toxins stay out of drinking water.  Whole communities have had their tap water compromised by gas extraction, and the ecosystems around our rivers have been damaged as well.

The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill wreaked havoc on Alaskan ecosystems / Photograph by Natalie Fobes

Air Pollution

The extraction and combustion of fossil fuels contaminates not just the water we drink, but also the air we breath.  The fossil fuel industry pumps a wide assortment of chemicals into the atmosphere, with various consequences to our health.  Benzene has been known to cause cancer, nitrogen oxides have been linked to respiratory problems, and sulfur dioxide has recently been proven to cause heart disease.  Thousands of deaths occur every year due to inhalation of the fine particles that fossil fuel-fired power plants produce.  Additionally, these pollutants lead to the fall of acid rain, which damages soil and surface waters.

Warming Climate

Another pollutant that we put into the air by burning fossil fuels is carbon dioxide, which functions as a greenhouse gas, trapping heat in the atmosphere and warming the planet.  Global temperatures have risen close to 1 degree Celsius since the industrial revolution.  Temperatures in Alaska have been rising at twice the rate as the rest of the country.  Just one symptom of this problem has been thawing permafrost.  As the layer of frozen soil gets thinner, trees tilt in ‘drunken forests’.  Lack of snowfall has spelled bad news for Yellow Cedars, which are dying off en masse where there is no longer a layer of snow to protect their roots from freezing.  The ecosystems that relied on previously healthy forests are being thrown into turmoil as well. 

Due to the melting permafrost layer, trees have been tilting over in 'drunken forests' / Photograph by Tingjun Zhang

Rising Seas

Rising temperatures also means melting ice, which in turn means rising sea levels.  Alaska’s glaciers have been a major player in pouring water into the oceans - losing ice roughly at the rate of 75 billion tons a year.  Seas have risen somewhere between 4 and 8 inches in the last hundred years, and it is unclear how much they will continue to rise.  Already, island coastlines are beginning to sink below the waterline - some are in danger of disappearing altogether.  In another hundred years, cities along America’s east coast could go under as well.

Wild Weather

Climate change is already impacting weather across the globe.  As more water enters the seas and atmosphere, rains become heavier and floods more probable.  Many of the pacific islands threatened by rising sea levels have also been faced with floods recently.  Storms, too, have been getting more vicious.  Typhoon Haiyan intensified, due to changes in the climate, to become the most powerful storm to ever hit land, taking thousands of lives with it.  Alaskans haven’t gotten off without their share of extreme weather events.  Last year, a massive storm - the largest the region has ever recorded - brought 100 mile an hour winds to the Shemya Islands.  This February, thundersnow was spotted in Nome - a bizarre indicator for an area that rarely sees any sort of electrical storm. 

Blazing Fires

Changing weather patterns make drier areas drier, cause snow to melt earlier, and may also be sparking more lightning strikes.  All of this has bred the perfect equation for an increase in wildfires.  Nowhere has the burn been felt worse than in Alaska.  It seems we’re on pace to set records in the area of land burned this year.  Particularly worrying about these blazes - besides the immediate threats they pose to human and animal habitats alike - is their potential to accelerate global warming.  When wildfires melt away at the permafrost layer, they release more carbon into the atmosphere - playing into a vicious cycle that will contribute to more fires in the future.

 This wildfire season in Alaska is on pace to blaze by previous records  / Photograph by the Alaskan Type 1 Incident Management Team

Ocean Acidification

Carbon dioxide is not only troubling in the atmosphere.  As we produce more of this gas, more is absorbed into the oceans, increasing the acidity of the water.  Ocean acidification obstructs calcification, so shellfish have a harder time forming their shells.  Coral often become bleached in acidified waters, and algae tend to die off, throwing wrenches into ocean food chains.  The fisheries of the Gulf of Alaska are especially threatened by this changing ocean chemistry.  When organisms at the bottom of the food chain struggle to survive, the fish that people sustain their livelihoods from suffer as well. 

Loss of Species

We’ve all by now probably heard about the plight of the polar bears, whose habitats are literally floating out to sea as arctic ice melts.  But these bears are not the only species feeling the heat.  Human-induced changes to ecosystems, on land and in water, are playing a role in what some scientists are calling the Earth’s sixth mass extinction.  If climate change continues to speed up, we could soon be losing species as fast as they were going when the dinosaurs died off. 

Human Health

Yet another species facing the adverse effects of climate change is Homo Sapiens.  The National Institute of Health lists a whole slew of health problems that climate change can induce - from asthma, to cancer, to neurological conditions.  Already, hundreds of thousands of people die each year, many due to overheating or other weather events.  The developing world has suffered the worst, and is expected to suffer more as food production is threatened by droughts and floods and clean water becomes more scarce.  Nations whose people have the most to lose to climate change also have fewer resources to alleviate the loss - while those countries who are leading contributors to the problem have money set aside to deal with the fallout.  

Typhoon Haiyan left many displaced from their homes in the Phillipines / Photograph by Romeo Ranoco/Reuters

Cultures in Danger

Individual lives aren’t the only thing our species stands to lose to climate change - whole cultures are threatened as well.  The ways of life of indigenous groups are often tightly tied to the land.  The Nukak-Maku people in Colombia need glacial runoff water to subsist in their homelands.  As glaciers retreat, fishing and agriculture become harder for these people, forcing some to abandon their traditions for life in the city.  In Barrow, Alaska, melting ice has made it more difficult for the Native Inupiats to subsist off of bowhead whales as their ancestors have done for ages.  Another Native Alaskan village, Newtok, is being forced to completely relocate, due to erosion accelerated by the melting permafrost.  The people of the Carteret Islands, too, have had to abandon their home due to rising sea levels, becoming refugees to the climate crisis.

Conclusion

Clean water, breathable air, biodiversity, human culture - these things are invaluable.  If we want them to be around much longer, we cannot continue to depend on fossil fuels.  Despite the damages that have already been done, it is not too late to act to address climate change.  By transitioning to renewable energy sources, we can halt the harm we do to our planet by burning fossil fuels.  If we put in the work to take care of the Earth, we will build a future with a liveable, clean climate.

Halibut caught by factory trawlers await separation from the targeted product. Though thousands of tons of halibut are caught by trawlers each year, the directed fishery is facing closure. ©Paul Logan/HO/The Canadian Press

On June 9th (10th?), Alaskan halibut fishermen, who have seen their individual quotas cut by up to 70% over the last ten years gathered to watch the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (NPFMC or North Pacific Council) vote on reduced halibut bycatch caps for trawl fleets fishing in the Bering Sea. Fact sheets from ALFA, stories from KCAW, NPFMC’s Environmental Assessment, and our previous blog post all describe the conservation fight over halibut, but here are a few crucial bullet points as a reminder:

• Individual halibut quotas in the Bering and Gulf of Alaska have been cut by up to 65% in the last decade.

• Last year, seven times as many halibut were caught and discarded as trawl bycatch than were landed in the directed fishery.

• The halibut caught as trawl bycatch are overwhelmingly juveniles (60-80% of the halibut caught are under 28” long). More than 70% of juvenile halibut in the Bering Sea eventually migrate to the Gulf of Alaska and as far south as Northern California.

• Bottom trawling eliminates seafloor complexity by destroying delicate coral reefs. This habitat destruction means that total mortality of prohibited species from bottom trawling is much higher than the observed bycatch.

Faced with these facts as well as public testimony overwhelmingly supportive of much stricter bycatch caps for Bering Sea trawlers, the North Pacific Council chose to do...not enough.

Here’s what the Council did do:

The NPFMC reduced overall bycatch caps in the Bering Sea by 21%. Specific fisheries took on greater or lesser shares of that reduction. The Amendment 80 fleet, the Seattle-based bottom trawlers long portrayed as the greatest villains in this fight, will shoulder a 25% reduction in their bycatch caps. This will require them to reduce their halibut bycatch by more than 17% from last year, hopefully taking some much needed pressure off the stocks. The Trawl Limited Access sector will only suffer a 15% cut in their bycatch cap, while the Community Development Quotas and the non-trawl pacific cod fishery will both take a 20% reduction in bycatch.

Sounds good so far...

Here’s what the Council didn’t do:

Actually reduce bycatch! While the halibut bycatch cap was reduced by 21%, that new cap is still ABOVE the amount of halibut caught as bycatch in 2014 (which, recall, was 7x the number of fish caught by the directed fishery). The Amendment 80 fleet will be required to reduce their bycatch from 2014’s level, but they will be the only ones to do so.

While it would be easy to dismiss the NPFMC’s ruling as a disappointing but ultimately irrelevant policy mistake affecting communities far away from Sitka Sound, the migratory nature of halibut means that those juveniles scooped up by factory trawlers could very well have ended up on your dinner plate instead. Commercial fishermen in Sitka have already been affected by declining halibut populations, as lower directed fishery allocations reduce the number of halibut Individual Fishing Quota holders can take. It would be unreasonably optimistic to expect that sport and subsistence halibut fishing in the Gulf and Sitka Sound will remain unaffected for much longer.

What are our future opportunities to fix this?

Long-term, halibut’s best hope is consumer education. Bottom trawling is akin to clear-cutting, destroying valuable habitat for decades or centuries. Southeast Alaska banned trawlers in 1998. When Silver Bay Seafoods bought trawl-caught fish in 2012, eight Sitka leaders wrote a public letter to the company asking that they respect the ban on trawling in the future by avoiding trawl products. Silver Bay Seafoods indicated that they would. A local victory, but one that could potentially be replicated across the state. Trawling has been described as “clear-cutting” the ocean floor; the same types of consumers who would think twice about buying wood products from clear-cut old-growth forests or rainforests should also think twice about buying cheap, unsustainably harvested groundfish.

From a policy perspective, the NPFMC is where most of our conservation pressure needs to be focused. As Sitka resident Charlie Wilbur wrote in the Sentinel, “The Council has the ability and moral responsibility to correct this festering problem before halibut become 100 percent utilized as trawl bycatch.” The next North Pacific Council meeting is in October. While an agenda has not been posted yet, the Council indicated at this meeting that halibut bycatch will be on their radar for some time to come. We will be ready.

If you are interested in writing a letter to the NPFMC or learning more about this issue, please contact Esther at [email protected].

The North Pacific Council. Hardly the most diverse group, but a uniquely powerful one. Visit the NPFMC page for Council member bios.

Terrible news for the Tongass this week: Around 70,000 acres of the Tongass are being turned over to Sealaska for development.

As Davey Lubin told the Sitka Sentinel this week, “I’m highly disappointed that our treasured, priceless public lands have been privatized. It’s a huge loss for the whole nation … What Theodore Roosevelt established as a national legacy, Lisa Murkowski has squandered.”

This week’s developments show that not even our National Forests are protected from corporate control. Congress and the American public need to give this issue more scrutiny. Read the article below to hear SCS Executive Director Andrew Thoms’s take on the Sealaska Lands Bill. The article below was printed in the Sitka Sentinel on Monday, December 15.

By SHANNON HAUGLAND, Sentinel Staff Writer

A bill transferring 70,000 acres of land from the Tongass National Forest to Sealaska Corp. passed Congress on Friday.

Rodman Bay (Photo provided by Sitka Conservation Society)

“It has taken seven years, but I’m proud to say that we finally completed the land conveyance for Southeast Alaska’s nearly 20,000 Native shareholders, and at the same time ensured that the region’s remaining timber mills have timber,” said U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski in a news release, following the vote on Friday.

The Southeast Alaska Native Land Entitlement Finalization and Jobs Protection Act was included in the bipartisan package of lands bills approved Friday as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. It provides Sealaska with 70,075 acres to finalize the transfer of land owed to the Native shareholders under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

“Some 43 years after passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, the federal government will finally finish paying the debt we owe Natives for the settlement of their aboriginal land claims,” Murkowski said in the announcement.

The land transfer includes more than 68,000 acres available for logging, including land in Rodman Bay and Sinitsin Cove near Sitka, as well as 1,009 acres for renewable energy resources and recreational tourism, and 490 acres of Native cemetery and historic sites.

The legislation also includes about 152,067 acres of old-growth timber in new conservation areas to protect salmon and wildlife habitat, Murkowski said. The bill goes next to the president for his signature.

Representatives of Sealaska Corp. were unavailable for comment.

Sitka Tribe of Alaska Tribal Council Chairman Michael Baines said he was pleased by the news, which he ran across this weekend on Facebook.

“I’m 100 percent pleased, the council is pleased,” he said. He noted that the STA Tribal Council passed a resolution last week in support of the compromise legislation proposed by Murkowski.

Baines said he believes the legislation will be beneficial to tribal citizens.

“I hope it will mean an improved economic development for the corporation which will mean more dividends for the tribal citizens,” he said. “I hope it will mean jobs in Sitka but as far as I know there hasn’t been any jobs from the regional corporation.”

Asked whether he believes the land will be developed and logged any differently than in the past, Baines said, “I hope they’ve learned their lesson. They’ve done that before – and it’s taken decades to bring back more trees that they can log.”

Sitka Conservation Society Andrew Thoms said he was disappointed by the news.

“Anytime that public lands are given to a private corporation, it’s a loss for everyone,” he said. “It’s going to mean 70,000 acres of some of the best timber land in the Tongass put into Sealaska hands, and the old-growth stands they’ve been given are some of the best remaining stands of cedar left on the Tongass. The burden is on Sealaska now to do what’s best for the shareholders in the region.”

He called old-growth cedar a “cultural treasure of the peoples of the Pacific Northwest.”

“As Sealaska now owns those best stands of cedar, are they going to continue to foster that connection, or will it be exported to Asian markets?” Thoms said. “It’s about more than just (habitat). The cedar trees in those stands are thousands of years old, and they won’t grow back in our lifetime.”

He cited Rodman Bay, on the north end of Baranof Island (30 miles north of Sitka), and Sinitsin Cove on North Kruzof (25 miles northeast of Sitka) as two areas closest to Sitka that are identified as “economic development” lands in the transfer.

Clarice Johnson, a Sealaska shareholder, said she was opposed to the lands transfer as proposed. (Johnson works at the nonprofit SCS but specified that she was speaking only as a shareholder.)

“I think there are a number of shareholders who are supportive of receiving our full land selection but not the way it was put in the rider, and they don’t think it will be much benefit to the average shareholder,” she said. “Possibly because Sealaska has lost so much money, they’ll probably cut the land quickly; and a large portion of any natural resource development in regional corporation land will be shared with other regional corporations.”

She noted that this provision – calling for regional corporations to share profits – has made it possible for Sealaska to pay out dividends, since the local regional corporation has not been profitable in recent years. She added that she believes the main beneficiaries of the land transfer and development of the lands will end up being the corporation’s board and staff through salaries and other compensation.

Johnson said she believes one of many results of the transfer will be the inadequate protection of karsts in Southeast.

“There is no protection compared to the U.S. Forest Service,” she said.

Johnson said that although only two “economic development” land selections are near Sitka there are others she believes are designated as “historic sites” including Kalinin Bay. She said the 15-acre site is the fifth largest historic site in the land selection.

Johnson said she’s concerned about what may happen at this location. “They can’t log, and they can’t mine there, but they can develop it,” she said.

Davey Lubin, who has traveled to Washington, D.C., five times in the last six years to testify against the Sealaska lands bill, said he was “highly disappointed” with the news.

“I’m highly disappointed that our treasured, priceless public lands have been privatized,” he said. “It’s a huge loss for the whole nation … What Theodore Roosevelt established as a national legacy, Lisa Murkowski has squandered.”

The Sealaska lands bill is separate from legislation to transfer 11 acres near Redoubt Lake to Sealaska, which is now in the hands of the Bureau of Land Management, Baines said.

Want to learn more about Sitka Conservation Society, the Tongass National Forest, the town of Sitka, and our work? Check out the following resources, compiled all in one place for your convenience. Have questions or want to get involved? Contact us. 

Environmental Education

History of SCS

Landslides

Local Foods

Restoration

SCS Annual Reports

Stewardship

Tongass Resources

SCS is not involved with this project, but we are excited to highlight the exciting science our neighbors at the Sitka Tribe of Alaska are starting. We wish them sunny skies and toxin-free plankton samples!

No Southeast Alaskan wild foods potluck would be complete without butter clams, blue mussels, or geoducks harvested from along our local beaches. Unfortunately, the fear of picking up shellfish contaminated with paralyzing or brain-damaging toxins, such as those found in a “red tide”, is enough to make most shellfish aficionados stick to the grocery stores. Luckily, subsistence and recreational shellfish harvesters got their first helping of good news this week at the Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) conference organized and hosted by the Sitka Tribe of Alaska. Starting next week, seven tribes from Southeast Alaska will begin collecting and analyzing plankton samples from local beaches to use as an early warning system for toxic plankton bloom events. Within a few years, this species monitoring will be accompanied by direct testing of shellfish samples in the Sitka Tribe’s new lab. The end goal, although a few years away, is for subsistence Southeast harvesters to have the up to date information necessary to make an informed decision about the risks of harvesting on a given beach. At stake? An abundant, local, delicious, and currently underutilized source of protein. Let the testing begin!

Many of us have heard of phytoplankton, but not many of us have a working knowledge of the different species or why they might be dangerous. Phytoplankton, or microscopic marine plants, are the world’s most important primary producers and are responsible for at least half of the global annual oxygen production. Microscopic oxygen-emitters floating through our oceans may sound like a dream come true, but phytoplankton are also capable of producing some of the world’s deadliest toxins. The HAB conference was introduced to Alaska’s three main phytoplankton villains: the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia and the dinoflagellates Dinophysis and Alexandrium. Pseudo-nitzschia produces domoic acid, a poison that targets brain cells and leads to permanent short-term memory loss known as Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning (ASP). Dinophysis is the most benign of Alaska’s toxic plankton and merely induces “food-poisoning on steroids”, or Diarrhetic Shellfish Poisoning (DSP). Alexandrium, the most well-known and feared species, produces saxitoxins that inhibit nerve function. This leads to Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) and, occasionally, to death. Saxitoxins are so potent that they have been weaponized by the U.S. military and are classified under Schedule 1 of the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Toxins classified as chemical weapons are terrifying, but plankton are hardly alone among organisms in their ability to produce deadly poisons. The reason planktonic toxins in particular get so much attention is the ease with which they make their way into the human food chain. Plankton are filtered indiscriminately out of the water by shellfish. In a bloom situation, when one plankton species multiplies especially rapidly, any toxins produced can quickly accumulate to lethal levels in all of our favorite mussels, clams, scallops, and even in crustaceans. Humans are not the only species affected by high toxin concentrations in our seafood; sea lions and whales are known to have died from ASP while sea otters in areas with frequent Alexandrium blooms have learned to taste and spit out shellfish with high saxitoxin concentrations.

All this terrifying information from was almost enough to turn me off mussels forever. Thankfully the goal of the HAB conference was not to terrify the tribes in attendance, but rather to empower them to test their own beaches and ultimately to predict risk. That risk is real – in May of 2011, for example, thirteen people in Ketchikan and Metlakatla were admitted to the hospital with symptoms of PSP. But there is hope: in contrast to Southeast Alaska, where recreational shellfish harvesters are playing Russian roulette every time they eat a clam, Washington State has established a highly effective system of early monitoring and shellfish testing throughout Puget Sound. The HAB conference heard from Dr. Vera Trainer (NOAA) and Dr. Jerry Borchert (Washington Department of Health) about how they have coordinated a crew of volunteers and amateurs to make one of the most impressive, comprehensive, and up to date risk maps for the public to use.

Under the tutelage of NOAA scientists Dr. Trainer, Dr. Steve Morton, and Dr. Jennifer Maucher, the HAB conference attendees learned how to collect a plankton sample at a local beach (the primary site for the Sitka Tribe will be at Starrigavan), how to prepare a slide of that sample, and finally how to interpret and identify the organisms present under a microscope. As the attendees ogled at their water samples, they learned to measure the relative abundance of a species. They also learned how to collect and upload our data to a shared website so that all seven tribes involved in this project can see the results of the others. The goal of this plankton monitoring is to use plankton abundances to predict whether there will be a toxicity spike in shellfish in the immediate future.

The Sitka Tribe’s program is modeled after Washington State’s, but the Washington program does have some important differences. First, Washington testers enjoy funding and support from the state’s Department of Health, support that shellfish testers in Alaska will not receive. That support means the Washington DOH can certify beaches as safe or close them to harvesting at any time. The Tribe will have no such authority. No one will be certifying beaches as definitively safe, nor will they be closing beaches that are deemed unsafe. It will be up to us as consumers to pay attention to the Tribe’s data. Secondly, Washington’s program currently consists of both weekly sampling of plankton and of direct testing of shellfish toxin levels. For now, the Alaska program will just consist of plankton sampling, with direct, weekly shellfish testing possibly a year or two away.

So if the beaches won’t be certified, and no one is going to be testing the clams I want to eat next week, and I’m not a member of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, why should I be excited about this HAB conference as a casual harvester? Because this is the first step to what may in the not-too-distant future grow into a Washington-style risk-assessment program. Because coordination between seven far-flung communities in Southeast Alaska will likely give us some surprising insights on plankton movements and habits, and possibly on local currents. Because watching private citizens collect and interpret valuable scientific data may eventually spur the state to get involved. And because waiting a few years to know that your local shellfish are safe is definitely worth it when the alternative is to risk paralysis and suffocation, permanent brain damage, or (best case) horrible food poisoning. In short, we should all be excited because this is the first step anyone in Southeast Alaska has taken to reclaiming some personal ownership of a local food resource. Bravo and smooth sailing to the Sitka Tribe of Alaska!

Do you like wild Alaskan salmon? Then you should also like stream buffers.

What exactly is a stream buffer? It’s the area of land on either side of a stream, river or lake that is excluded from logging when the Forest Service designs timber sales. Stream buffers are extremely important because they ensure that old growth trees are left near salmon spawning and rearing sites. Old growth trees shade salmon spawning grounds and help regulate stream flow to facilitate future salmon runs. Their roots also protect salmon spawning and rearing areas from erosion, without them soils and sediments would wash into the stream choking the water and smothering the eggs. Stream buffers make it possible for delicious wild salmon to appear on your dinner plate!

Want to learn more about stream buffers? Check out the fact sheet below. Also, please take a moment (it will only take 30 seconds) to send an email to Chief Tidwell, the Chief of the Forest Service. Ask him to protect wild Alaskan salmon by prioritizing salmon in Forest Service budgets and management practices. Just copy and paste the blurb below (make sure to fill in your state, name, and address)!

Thanks so much for helping to protect wild salmon, the most vital resource of the Tongass National Forest.

————————————————————–

TO: [email protected]

BCC: [email protected] (BCC me so that we can use your letter as evidence that people are writing to him)

SUBJECT: I support your efforts on the Tongass Transition

Dear Chief Tidwell:

I am an (type your state here) constituent that commends your efforts to protect the wild salmon of Alaska through the Tongass Transition.

The Tongass Transition puts the focus back on salmon and healthy intact forest ecosystems. In other parts of the country, our lack of foresight and the misuse of our resources have significantly impacted salmon populations. Let’s not see the same thing happen in Alaska. We must work to protect salmon habitat and restore damaged salmon streams. Please prioritize salmon in Forest Service budgets and management practices to help us sustain this vital resource.

Chief Tidwell, please continue your work on implementing the Tongass Transition.

Thank you for your time and for protecting our salmon,

Your name

Address

What do Canadian mines have to do with Alaskan wild salmon? Almost everything.

This link became all too apparent on August 4, when a tailings pond breached at Mount Polley mine in British Columbia. Millions of gallons of metal-contaminated water and sand poured out of the tailings pond and into the arteries of the Frasier River system, transforming healthy salmon-spawning rivers into wastelands. Several newspapers referred to the Mount Polley breach as one of the biggest environmental disasters in modern Canadian history.

But it’s not just a Canadian disaster, it’s an Alaskan disaster. While the breach occurred on Canadian soil, it will adversely impact Alaskan waters and Alaska wild salmon. As Senator Begich noted in an August 26 press release, “The dam failure validated the fears that Alaskans have regarding Canada’s proposed development of large-scale hardrock mines near transboundary rivers like the Unuk, Stikine, and Taku Rivers.” For Southeast fishermen, this is not welcome news. And what’s worse…Mount Polley is only the beginning.

In northwest British Columbia (B.C.), a mining boom has begun that could threaten Southeast rivers, salmon, and Alaskan jobs in fishing and tourism. There are currently 21 mining projects in Northwest BC that are either active or in the later stages of exploration. At least 5 of these projects are located along the Stikine, Taku, and Unuk Rivers, key salmon rivers that flow right into Southeast Alaska.

The development of large-scale hardrock mines in BC is alarming. Almost all of the proposed mines involve large-scale hydro projects, transmission lines, roads, and storage areas for acid-generating waste rock and mine tailings. Threats posed by these mines to water quality and salmon habitat include tailings dam breaches, spills, long-term acid mine drainage, and habitat fragmentation. These concerns prompted a group of 36 Canadian and U.S. scientists to write a letter warning officials of the environmental risks posed by transboundary mines. To see the letter in full, click here: Letter of Concern about Proposed Development in the Transboundary Watersheds

In Southeast, salmon are the lifeblood of our economy. Salmon fishing (including commercial, sport, and subsistence fishing) supports over 7,000 jobs in Southeast Alaska alone and generates nearly $1 billion a year for our regional economy. Keeping our waters clear of mine tailing contaminates and acid-mine drainage is vital for our economy and our livelihoods.

What can do we do stop BC mines from contaminating Southeast Alaska waters? We have to raise our individual and collective voices. We must call our representatives and elected officials and ask them to use all means necessary to protect wild salmon runs from BC mining development. We must act locally. On October 14, the Sitka City Assembly voted 5-0 to protect Southeast salmon streams from transboundary mines in BC. Bravo City Assembly members! To see the full resolution, click here: RES 2014-16 Transboundary Mines

With every day that passes, BC mine projects inch closer to completion. Take action today to protect Alaska salmon.

Good news for the Tongass!

This week, the Pacific Northwest Research Station announced it will hire a Research Fisheries Biologist to be stationed in Juneau.

Why is this good news? Because it means the Forest Service once again has a fisheries biologist stationed in Alaska. Several years ago, the Forest Service moved a fisheries research position out of Alaska just when Alaskans needed them to be looking more into salmon habitat, salmon production, and salmon population resilience.

According to Senator Begich, who wrote a strong letter to the Forest Service in support of hiring a fisheries biologist, “It only makes sense that fisheries research in Alaska should be conducted by staff in Alaska, not from a remote office located in another state.” To see the letter itself, click here: Begich Letter Supporting Juneau Position

In his letter, Begich noted that the Forest Service is facing a number of pressing environmental issues that justify an Alaska-based fisheries position. These issues include climate change vulnerability research, watershed restoration and monitoring, fish stream/road crossings, and an amendment to the Tongass Land Management Plan.

The Sitka Conservation Society congratulates Senator Begich for supporting fisheries research in the state of Alaska. In 2013 alone, Southeast fishermen hauled in a record 272 million salmon. Annually, this generates almost a billion dollars in the Southeast Alaska economy! From commercial fishing to sport fishing to tourism, salmon-related jobs are now the mainstays of our economy. Thank you Senator Begich for recognizing the importance of salmon in Southeast and for encouraging the Forest Service to prioritize salmon, not timber, in the state of Alaska.

Let’s hope the Forest Service finds a great candidate to fill this new fisheries biologist position. Interested in applying? Click on the job description here: Outreach Notice Fish Biologist Juneau

For more information on this issue, please contact Sophie Nethercut at the Sitka Conservation Society at [email protected] or call 747-7509.