For the past few years, smokehouses in the Yukon River village of Anvik have sat empty. After salmon populations crashed, dozens of Alaska Native communities along the river faced a stark new reality, one without the fish that fed families and sustained Yup’ik and Athabascan traditions for generations. This summer, though, smoke once again wafted […]
For decades, dogs have been verboten on the Pribilof Islands under a rule imposed by the federal government to protect the world’s largest concentration of northern fur seals. Now, dogs are welcome — with important caveats. Under a new interim rule enacted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, dogs may be brought to the […]
New analysis of more than 300 bear encounters suggests our canine companions often increase odds of conflict and rarely serve as early warning systems many recreationists assume.
With the 2026 commercial salmon harvests winding down in Alaska, the seafood industry is already calculating how to navigate at a profit in 2027, given dynamic biological, economic, climate and market conditions. Their forecast has a far-reaching socio-economic impact across the state — Bristol Bay’s commercial fishery had about $2 billion in economic impact and […]
Mendenhall Valley residents in the flood zone celebrated Thursday afternoon as the Mendenhall River crested at a level well below initial predictions. The event was much less destructive than disastrous floods that struck over the past three years. The flood crested at 14.7 feet on the Mendenhall Lake gauge at 2:15 p.m., according to the […]
Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday introduced a new natural gas pipeline bill that he characterized as a compromise between conflicting philosophies on oil and gas taxes that he wants lawmakers to pass during the ongoing special session. The new bill would nearly eliminate property taxes that would be charged on the operator of a yet-to-be-built […]
Alaska’s capital city has issued an evacuation advisory for the densely-populated Mendenhall Valley area on Wednesday as glacial outburst flooding begins. Officials and the public are closely watching the Mendenhall Glacier, where climate-change driven melting results in water filling an ice-dammed lake called Suicide Basin each year. That lake eventually bursts and billions of gallons […]
The Trump administration has pulled federal support from the Arctic Report Card, an annual, peer-reviewed report that has been published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 2006. NOAA will no longer provide administrative support for the report, though NOAA scientists and programs will continue to collect climate data, said a statement released by […]
Federal fishery managers would start analyzing the DNA collected in ocean waters to help inform their decisions, under a bipartisan bill introduced in the U.S. Senate, Alaska’s Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski said on Thursday. Called the Fisheries Science Modernization Act, the bill would set up a system for the use of environmental DNA, known […]
Alaska lost a higher percentage of its federal workforce last year than almost all U.S. states to sweeping Trump administration cuts, according to a newly published analysis by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development. By the end of 2025, Alaska’s federal workforce was 10.5% smaller than it had been at the end of […]
