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Anne Lewis, 94, a longtime resident of Petersburg, Alaska passed away on May 7, 2020 at the Petersburg Medical Center. She was born Sept. 5, 1925, in Petersburg, Alaska, the daughter of late Tom and Lucy Kito. She was proud to say she came into this world while her parents were processing their fish at Blind Slough during the late salmon run at their campsite. She graduated from Petersburg High School in 1943. She enrolled in the Armed Forces as a nurse cadet and attended St. Joseph School of... Full story
The borough assembly approved a public health emergency directive at a special meeting on Tuesday that implements a temporary quarantine and isolation program for first responders, healthcare works and homeless individuals and families to prevent the possible spread of COVID-19 in the community. Borough Incident Commander Karl Hagerman said just after the formation of the Emergency Operations Center, the team identified a need to create a plan on how the borough could help the homeless populatio...
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Conservationists have asked the federal government to provide better protection for a wolf population in Southeast Alaska. A letter sent to the supervisor of Tongass National Forest says a record number of 165 wolves killed by trappers threatens wolves on and around Prince of Wales Island, CoastAlaska reported Monday. The April 13 letter to Forest Supervisor Earl Stewart was signed by representatives of advocacy groups Defenders of Wildlife, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council and the Center for Biological Diversity. ...
The Local Emergency Planning Committee held its third meeting last Friday as a weekly effort to update local businesses and borough officials on how the community is reacting to and taking precautions against COVID-19. Since the previous week's LEPC meeting, Petersburg Public Health Nurse Erin Michael said she has begun conducting contact investigations for people in the state who have been exposed to COVID-19. Some of her investigations have also included local residents who have potentially...
WRANGELL - As any resident of Southeast Alaska knows, rain is a common occurrence. This is no different for Wrangell. One Wrangell resident, Bill Messmer, has made a hobby out of tracking the amount of rainfall the island receives. He has now collected 35 years of data, showing trends and changes to rainfall Wrangell has seen. "Originally I worked for the Forest Service, and there was people that lived in different parts of Wrangell, and we had rain gauges out and there was a variety of v...
Heath Whitacre, of the Petersburg Forest Service, went into detail on the Forest Service's efforts to maintain and restore watershed conditions in the Tongass National Forest late last month as part of a series of science talks featuring local professionals. A properly functioning watershed can create and sustain habitats that can support a diverse population of aquatic wildlife, including salmon. According to Whitacre, 80 percent of the Southeast Alaska commercial salmon harvest comes from...
Eight children, 29 grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and 57 years later, Otis and Diane Marsh are still very much in love. While Otis credits luck for their long and happy marriage, Diane said it's love and determination that has kept them together for so long. "You keep on keeping on, and do what you can," said Diane. A 19-year-old Otis first met Diane at a house party in Cass Lake, Minnesota in 1960. Diane was about 16 years old at the time and was dating somebody else. When they broke...
On Friday, January 24, 2020, David Allen Peterson, husband, father, and friend, passed away after a brief illness, at the age of 64. Dave was born in 1955 in Petersburg, Alaska, to Robert (Bud) and Judy (Allen) Peterson. He graduated from Petersburg High School, and happened to win "The Betty Crocker Homemaking Award", which he applied for in galley cooking. He lettered in wrestling, was on the yearbook committee, and National Honor Society. He fished in middle school, with his cousin on the...
February 6, 1920 The registration books for the coming city election have been opened in the Jorgensen store with Mrs. P. Jorgensen acting as registration clerk. The election will be held on the 6th of April and since the next council will have approximately $300,000 to spend during their term of office only those with the very best qualifications should be chosen. There is a possibility of a hotly contested election and everyone qualified should register. February 2, 1945 Alaska could become the 49th state under a bill introduced by...
Which Alaska region is home to the most fishing boats and where do most of Alaska’s fishermen live? Answers to those questions and many others can be found in the annual report Economic Value of Alaska’s Seafood Industry 2020 by the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI). The colorful, easy to read report, prepared by the McDowell Group, gives a fishing snapshot by Alaska region, including employment rates and tax revenues, and breaks down the industry’s impacts to the nation and the world. Here are some highlights: The seafood indus...
It’s been a long time coming but payments should soon be in hand for Alaska fishermen, processors and coastal communities hurt by the 2016 pink salmon run failure, the worst in 40 years. The funds are earmarked for Kodiak, Prince William Sound, Chignik, Lower Cook Inlet, South Alaska Peninsula, Southeast Alaska and Yakutat. Congress ok’d over $56 million in federal relief in 2017, but the authorization to cut the money loose languished on NOAA desks in DC for over two years. The payouts got delayed again last October when salmon permit hol...
A patchwork of logging roads already exists, and the project would connect those roads to make a 35-mile, single-lane road between Kake and 12-mile Creek north of the city of Kupreanof. The money was allocated in 2012 by State Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, as part of a program called "Roads to Resources" meant to help access to natural resources. "We need to have a transportation system in Southeast," Stedman said in a phone interview. "This road is part of a bigger drive to help stabilize and exp...
January 16, 1920 John Bruce is now engaged in taking the fourteenth census of Petersburg and district, having been appointed to that duty by Charles W. Hawkesworth, of the Bureau of Education. All facts as to the number of residents occupations, businesses and everything pertaining to census statistics will be compiled under date of January 1st, 1920. The number of people listed for Petersburg by Mr. Bruce will determine the listed population of the town for the next ten years. January 12, 1945 With fine reports in on the Sixth War Loan drive,...
The establishment of critical habitat areas running from western Alaska to southern California is a prime example of federal agency overkill and overreach. We don't see a logical pathway whereby NOAA's proposed rule will bring numbers of the three distinct population segments (DPS) of humpbacks back to historic levels. Unanswered by NOAA officials is an explanation of why the Hawaiian population is thriving as seen by population counts in both Alaska and Hawaii, and the three segments of the...
January Following the shutdown of the U.S. government on Dec. 22, 2018, the U.S. Coast Guard stated it would continue offering essential services. The borough assembly approved $600,000 for a new baler. The USCG located debris from an overdue medivac aircraft that had three people onboard that was due to land in Kake several nights before. A decrease in air cargo coming into Petersburg affected the timely arrival of residents' packages after the retirement of Alaska Airlines' combi 737-400...
JUNEAU – As climate change rapidly alters conditions in southeast Alaska, lower snowpack levels have caused a massive decline of yellow-cedar trees. Without an insulating blanket of snow, the shallow roots of yellow-cedar trees freeze during late spring cold snaps. Left behind is a growing expanse of "ghost forests" of dead yellow-cedars, affecting roughly 678,000 acres (nearly the area of Yosemite National Park). The decay-resistant properties of yellow-cedar allow the trees to remain s...
The borough assembly failed to pass a letter to the Secretary of Agriculture and the United States Forest Service at an assembly meeting Monday expressing discontent with the process of reviewing the Roadless Rule in the Tongass National Forest. The letter, which was drafted by Assembly Member Chelsea Tremblay, notes that when the Forest Service presented their six alternatives to the Roadless Rule at a public meeting in November, it seemed as if the decision to go with the alternative six,...
Fish and Game Area Biologist Frank Robbins and Forest Service Regional Biologist Dan Eacker held a lecture on deer and moose harvests and deer density on Mitkof Island last Thursday. Robbins started off the lecture by comparing deer harvests in Unit 1B and Unit 3 from 2011 to 2018. In Unit 1B, the area east of Mitkof Island on the mainland, the average number of deer harvested was 100. In the past five years, the deer harvest in Unit 1B averaged 115. In Unit 3, which includes the Petersburg and...
The borough assembly took a neutral position on the future of the Roadless Rule at Monday's assembly meeting when they voted against a resolution that supported keeping the Roadless Rule intact and a resolution repealing it. Resolution #2019-14 was in support of alternative one of the draft environmental impact statement released by the United States Forest Service regarding the future of the Roadless Rule. Alternative one, or the do nothing option, keeps the Roadless Rule in place. Resolution #...
People in Petersburg know her has their school bus driver or driver's education teacher, but on Friday evening Hoopie Davidson was this year's tree lighter during the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Davidson was born in Petersburg, but moved to Squaw Harbor on Unga Island in third grade with her family to catch crab. The family then moved to Kodiak in time to experience the Good Friday earthquake of 1964, an earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2 that hit near Prince William Sound. Later...
The roadless rule should remain intact To the Editor: The proposed Tongass exemption from the 2001 Roadless Rule is for the singular purpose of accessing the last bastions of high volume old growth timber, which will be largely exported in the round. If approved, this would be at great cost to taxpayers, and at great profit to Viking Lumber of Klawock and Alcan/Transpac Group of Vancouver, BC-both timber exporters. A recent report by Taxpayers for Common Sense, concluded that between 1999-2018,...
The value of Alaska salmon permits has ticked upwards in regions that experienced a good fishery this year while others have tanked. Not surprisingly, the record sockeye fishery at Bristol Bay has boosted sales of driftnet permits to nearly $200,000, up from the mid-$170,000 range prior to the 2019 season. Another strong run forecast of 48.9 million sockeyes for 2020 with a projected harvest of 36.9 million could increase the value even more, said Doug Bowen of Alaska Boats and Permits in Homer. What’s really raising eyebrows, Bowen said, is v...
WRANGELL - Mayor Steve Prysunka travelled to Washington D.C. last week to speak before the Senate Committee on Energy and National Resources. He was invited to speak on behalf of the National Association of Counties, an organization that works to advocate county priorities in federal policymaking. Prysunka spoke last Thursday, Nov. 21, on the importance of the Payment In Lieu of Taxes (PILT) Program and Secure Rural Schools (SRS) funds. "We're somewhat unique because we're actually the third...
A resolution supporting alternative one of the draft environmental impact statement for the exemption of the Roadless Rule in the Tongass National Forest will go before the borough assembly at their first meeting in December after the assembly pushed the vote back by two weeks at their meeting on Monday. The United State Forest Service released the findings of its draft environmental impact statement earlier this month that showed the United States Department of Agriculture supported...
Southeast Alaskans have been given the opportunity to lift the onerous roadless designation from the Tongass National Forest, and yet many have testified to leave it in place. We're astonished. That's not the Alaskan way. Why do we want the federal government to maintain continued control of the Tongass? The roadless designation was put in place as yet another padlock on national forests that were already protected and commercial activity was eliminated or severely stymied. Half of the Tongass...
