Crab fishing is practically synonymous with Southeast Alaska, but in recent years the Dungeness crab fishery has become less reliable. Many say that recovered sea otter populations are responsible for the decline.

Now, after the summer Dungeness season closed 20 days early, Wrangell is seeking a local disaster declaration. Here’s Wrangell Borough Manager Mason Villarma.

There’s been little to zero action at a regional level to address the sea otter issue, and there’s not very many avenues to work within and get some sort of relief. The salmon fishermen get relief all the time, so why not the shell fishermen?

He was speaking at an August 25 borough assembly meeting.  The borough assembly voted unanimously in support of  a local disaster declaration after the Dungeness closure.

The declaration is intended to bring federal relief to crab fishermen and catalyze the formation of a Southeast shellfish fishing association.

Sea otters are voracious eaters that must consume up to 30% of their body weight – that’s around 25 pounds of food daily for a large male. Their diet consists primarily of shellfish, including clams, oysters, and crabs.

As otters have rebounded from near extinction, they’ve needed more and more food to support their population. In recent years, this has put them directly at odds with Alaska crab fishermen.

The Wrangell assembly vote approves the Borough to ask Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy to support and request a federal fishery resource disaster determination.  If the U.S. government approves a disaster declaration, it could bring financial compensation for the 60 Dungeness crab permit holders residing in Wrangell.

But Villarma says that he understands federal support could be difficult to secure.

What we’ve seen under this administration is a low chance or probability for fishery disasters to be subsidized.

Even without federal support, Villarma says the declaration brings more awareness to the issues fishermen face. It also may push the formation of a shellfish-specific fishing association in Southeast Alaska, which doesn’t exist.

There is currently no such association in the region like there are for seiners, gillnetters, long-liners, and fish processors. Associations like this can give fishermen more agency in addressing issues concerning their livelihood. It can also allow them to pressure government organizations like the National Marine Fisheries Service to fulfill mandated stock assessments and population surveys.

Villarma says the borough will be bringing in an expert to work with fishermen over the next few months to discuss such an organization. He says it will be up to participating groups to decide what the makeup of that association will be.

Whatever the form. I would imagine that it’s going to be a broad array of different user types, but the fishermen being probably the strongest sub user in the association.

The disaster declaration isn’t the first resolution to address the sea otter issue. Last year, Wrangell, Haines and Petersburg passed resolutions seeking a sea otter management plan and for the federal government to relax sea otter protections under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

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Southeast Alaska has seen several geohazards recently – glacial flooding last month in Juneau, a landslide-driven tsunami last year in Tracy Arm, and a deadly landslide in Wrangell in 2023. That followed deadly landslides in Sitka, Haines and Ketchikan in the last decade.

To learn how to prepare for such events, Wrangell residents gathered at City Hall last week for presentations from experts on earthquake, tsunami and landslide risks and preparedness.

The first presentation, given by the Alaska team for the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, showed attendees how earthquakes can drive tsunamis and why the waves are so destructive.

I think it’s important to stress that it is a misconception that communities in the Southeast are completely protected from tsunamigenic earthquakes.

Barrett Salisbury is the hazard program manager at the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

Salisbury says several earthquake scenarios could directly affect Wrangell Island, including quakes from the Aleutian subduction zone, the Haida Gwaii section of the Queen Charlotte Fault offshore British Columbia and activity in the Cascadian Subduction Zone in the Pacific Northwest.

These scenarios will be included in a report that Salisbury and his colleagues are preparing, along with draft maps to provide the borough with the information needed for hazard planning.

Once approved, those maps will also be published for the public at DGGS.Alaska.gov.

The report will also show potential tsunami inundation lines, where the top of the flood waters may reach on the island, which will allow the borough to establish tsunami evacuation routes.

The landslide presentation was given by Jill Nicolazzo, a geological engineer with the Alaska Landslide Hazards Program. Nicolazzo shared models created after Wrangell’s landslide three years ago that killed six people.

The maps showed that – like most other islands in Southeast – the risk for landslides is higher on the western-facing slopes, which are more exposed to ocean winds and storms. This is also where most of the island’s population resides.

The modeling also found that the steeper the landscape, the higher the landslide risk – and that there is a high correlation of landslides and proximity to creeks and waterways.

Landslide Program Manager Molly McCreary says that someone asked after the presentation why they mapped the whole island.

Doing the whole island is good because also people recreate and they drive anywhere there’s a road. So just to keep people aware of the hazards in these areas, I think is the main purpose. But also maybe they can use the map in a productive way to one, be informed and also two, maybe I was thinking of building here and maybe I want to alter my plan.

She says that while the maps’ intended purpose is to inform development, they can also be used to inform people recreating in the backcountry where there may be increased danger during periods of high rainfall.

Mike Lucio is the geohazards mitigation coordinator for the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

We want everyone to be aware of what’s going on, but we also want people to be well educated, understand what’s going on, so we’re not talking from a place of fear or a place of misconceptions or bad information.

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The Wrangell Ranger District has recently wrapped up a large goshawk survey to prepare for potential timber sales. There is a push to increase logging on federally managed lands in Alaska following President Donald Trump’s executive order to “unleash Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential”

Ahead of any logging operation, there are a variety of wildlife surveys required before anything can be cut, including goshawk surveys. Anna Belback is a natural resource technician for the U.S. Forest Service.

We’ve gone kind of all around Wrangell Island, a ton of different areas. Part of the island that I never thought I would see, and some places that I quite frankly don’t really want to hike back into because they’re man, they’re pretty wicked.

Despite her efforts – and two other crew members – no goshawks were identified by this survey. She says that the surveys must happen in two separate years prior to a timber sale, but they don’t have to be consecutive.

To do the surveys, field technicians hike into areas of land, often with no trails, to play bird calls to trigger responses from goshawks and other birds of prey that may be in the area.

In June, Belback says the calls mimic the goshawk alarm call, one a female might give her partner when there is danger in the area. In July, they play a mixture of alarm calls and fledgling begging calls. The ones a baby goshawk would make when asking their parents for food.

They repeated this process over most of the potential federal timber units.

This might seem like a lot of effort to go through to identify some hard-to-locate, sparsely populated birds, but this hawk has a history of contested protection in the Tongass National Forest.

In 1994, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned for this subspecies, the Queen Charlotte gosshawk to be listed under the Endangered Species Act. The petition in some ways led to the renaming of the Northern goshawk to the American goshawk and the Eurasian goshawk, according to Forest Service biologist Joe Delabrue.

The way I understand it, back when it was proposed for listing, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service separated out the two populations: the one in Southeast Alaska and the ones in British Columbia and the ones in B.C. got listed, but the ones in Alaska didn’t.

Whatever you call them, the ones in Alaska were not listed as endangered, at least in part, because of the Tongass resource management plan. 

Cooper Freeman is the Alaska director of the Center for Biological Diversity. He says with surveys only occurring ahead of timber sales, there isn’t consistent population data to compare.

He says that, with the renewed push for logging in the second Trump administration, there have been more surveys, but the methods were not very effective at locating the hawks.

The environmental group is pushing to protect old-growth forests, not only the goshawks, but for many species that Freeman says rely on unfragmented habitat in the region.

I think it would be an error to paint this as birds versus the economy I mean… It’s time for the Tongass to move on and start taking care of its forests and protecting them for their highest value, which is leaving these old-growth trees standing.

He says they would like to see an emphasis on other types of economic activities like hunting and recreation to create a more sustainable Alaska economy.

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The assembly has voted to donate 2.7 acres of borough-owned land to WCA for construction of a memorial park, which the tribe wants to build in honor of the Native children who were “lost or traumatized” at the federally operated boarding school on the same site.

The memorial also will honor Aleuts “who suffered while forced to stay at the internment camp on the same grounds” when they were removed from their homes during World War II, Wrangell Cooperative Association Tribal President Ethan Petticrew wrote to the assembly.

 Last week’s assembly decision approves the transfer of land near Institute Creek, directly north of the Alder Top Village Keishangita.’aan residential subdivision near Shoemaker Bay.

The future memorial and the residential subdivision are on land occupied by the Bureau of Indian Affairs Wrangell Institute boarding school, which operated from 1932 to 1975. The federal government later gave the property to the municipality.

The assembly action Aug. 25 reverses an earlier commitment to give two smaller parcels within the subdivision to WCA for construction of the memorial. In lieu of those lots, the borough and tribe agreed on a larger piece of land just outside the subdivision.

Petticrew, who spoke to the assembly at the Aug. 25 meeting, said the land carries deep cultural and historical significance for the region. Long before modern boundaries were established, Tlingit families lived, gathered and raised their children on the land.

He emphasized the profound meaning of the land transfer during the meeting.

“Tonight we are welcoming land home,” Petticrew said.

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Cruise berths visiting Wrangell almost doubled this season from last year. Visiting ships are providing capacity for nearly 75,000 guests over the season, up from almost 42,000 the previous year.

The borough directly profits from the vessels docking here through a variety of taxes and fees. Businesses also navigate how to make money from this seasonal increase in visitors that varies greatly from week to week and ship to ship.

I don’t expect that everybody that comes off the boat, you know, buys stuff from every store from me or whatever. I like to see people here. I like to see the boats here because we know that they bring money.

Bonnie Ritchie has been selling jewelry near the cruise ship dock for five years and says she has noticed an increase in her sales this year. But she says not every boat is created equal. American Cruise Lines vessels are usually pretty good for her, but guests from the Ritz-Carlton’s Luminara luxury cruise vessel show no interest in her jewelry.

Kristy Herman, who owns the Canoe Lagoon oyster farm with her husband Brian, says business at their storefront off Front Street is actually down this year. The hit-or-miss business can make it hard for her to schedule between having the storefront open or working her other job at the grocery store.

I’ve had one day with the Queen in. I did $60. Doesn’t pay me to be here. Doesn’t pay the electricity. I should have worked at IGA that day.

She’s talking about the Queen Elizabeth, a 2,000 passenger vessel that doubles the population of Wrangell when it arrives.

Because of the type of business license Canoe Lagoon has, they can’t shuck their shellfish for customers. Herman said that can drive away those looking for fresh oysters.

Instead, the Hermans have been looking for other ways to work with cruise companies to make money, in addition to the four restaurants they ship oysters to each week.

Recently they have teamed up with local companies Alaska Waters and Oceanview Gardens to provide food-based shore excursions for passengers on the Luminara. Herman says it has been pretty successful so far, but they are still feeling it out.

Herman says when the Luminara docked in late August, only four guests took part in the excursions. That equaled around $1,000 per guest, split between the three businesses.

For the borough, cruise ships are the primary source of tourism revenue, according to the borough’s economic development director Kate Thomas. The number of independent travelers has been declining since the early 2000s with cuts to the Alaska Marine Highway System.

The borough benefits from the ships in several ways, including wharf fees, port tie-up fees and the state commercial passenger vessel “head tax.” That only applies to ships with more than 250 passengers traveling through Alaska waters for more than one night. Wrangell receives $5 per guest of the $34.50 tax collected by the state.

The borough also received this year a one-time bonus of $375,000 in passenger fees collected by the state over several years that went unspent. The borough will use that money to help fund its downtown waterfront fill project.

Thomas says that increased money spent at businesses also means more sales tax to the borough.

Let’s just assume on a dollars and cents that we increase the sales tax collection for this quarter by $50 to $100,000. I mean that, year over year, makes a significant difference.

The exact amount will not be clear until the numbers for this fiscal quarter are released in November.

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Since Wrangell residents receive their mail at the post office, there hasn’t been much need for uniform street addressing. But without a clear system, finding properties can be hard. For emergency first responders, that’s a problem.

Next month, the borough will start the second phase of its addressing project. Teams will spread out across town to map properties so that they can be given a valid street address. Some houses will receive new addresses and potentially street names, while houses out Zimovia Highway will receive addresses for the first time.

Wrangell’s economic development director Kate Thomas said they’re only going to change what is absolutely necessary.

We are going to maintain to the maximum degree possible every street name and every street or address number that is already in our database, and there are instances where that’s not feasible because it’s not going to follow the new ordinance requirements.

Thomas said situations like duplicate street names will have to be addressed. For example, there are two Grave streets and two Grief streets.

Residents receiving new addresses will eventually need to update personal identification, like driver’s licenses and passports. Land ownership documents, such as titles, are defined by their legal descriptions and should not be affected by street address changes.

Homeowners will also be responsible for making sure their new address is clearly displayed on their property as would be required by a new ordinance. Once the maps are completed, they must be approved by the borough assembly and become law before the end of the fiscal year.

We are looking at providing the high visible, high visible adhesive style stickers that people can place on their property, so that kind of takes one burden off of the property owner.

Although this could create a period of inconvenience as homeowners update their paperwork and label their homes

Aaron Powell leads Wrangell’s volunteer fire department. He said standardized addresses will help his department’s response time

Just so we know when we get called out where we’re going. Depending on the call, seconds can matter if it’s a house fire or someone having cardiac issues.

The borough has contracted with DATAMARK Technologies for mapping services.

The company specializes in mapping for public safety applications.

When mapping starts, workers will wear designated vests and drive vehicles with the borough logo so that the community can identify them. There will also be public notices online with an official start date once it has been set.

It will cost the borough just under $120,000 to finish the project.

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As the sunsets creep earlier and earlier, it’s only a matter of time until winter cold sets in. Alaskans know well that you don’t wait for the cold to arrive to figure out how you’re heating your home.

A pair of Alaska based organizations are encouraging residents who warm their homes with oil, propane or wood to take advantage of their heat-pump rebate program.

There’s still plenty of time for folks that have either woodstoves or oil furnaces to reach out and get their assessment and paperwork in order to qualify for the incentive program.

Robert Venables is the executive director of Southeast Conference, a long running community and economic development organization. The conference received a $39 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2024 for their program transitioning Alaskans to cleaner energy.

To date, 185 heat pumps have been installed across all eligible communities with several hundred more households already approved for funding. [Local only: Of those 14 Wrangell homeowners have taken advantage of the rebate.] The program has funding for up to 6,000 households, so there’s still room for new applicants.

The amount granted depends on the applicant’s income, but there is no income cap to qualify for a rebate. Households making 80% or under the median income for their community are eligible for the maximum grant of $8,500. [web: There is some variation for household size and the rebate amount decreases for higher incomes.]

The maximum rebate amount was set to fully cover the installation of a simple single-head heat pump when the program was first designed, but it may not be enough to cover all expenses in some communities today.

With inflation, that’s definitely changed and gone up since the grant was written and conceived of a few years ago.

Hannah Wilson is the Alaska program manager for Alaska Heat Smart, the clean energy nonprofit responsible for program implementation.

Homeowners who are not approved for a grant that covers the entire installation cost are responsible for the remainder of the bill .

To help bridge the funding gap , they have teamed up with True North Federal Credit Union to offer low-interest loans to cover any leftover expenses from a rebate-funded installation. 

[web: Low-income households also have the option to use an Alaska Heat Smart-approved contractor. If so, Heat Smart will pay the contractor directly, so that the homeowner does not have to spend any money up front. The caveat is that not all communities have approved contractors in their area.] 

Residents are not required to remove their old heating system to participate in the program.

Venables, from Southeast Conference, said that there is plenty of funding to go around.

We’ve got lots of money, so it’s just a matter of folks following through once they get their green light on the assessment and then you choose a contractor and off to the races.

To learn more about the program and how to apply, visit akheatsmart.org/aces

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It’s been a bad month for water line breaks.

Residents near Stikine Avenue and also on Cow Alley awoke last Friday to dry taps. They were the latest in five water main breaks across the borough in August.

That’s six if you count that the break at Stikine Avenue that was reported just after midnight had two breaks that had to be fixed several times.

“We actually fixed the Stikine Avenue one three separate times here this morning,” Public Works Director Tom Wetor said last Friday.

Earlier in the week there was a water main break out Zimovia Highway, near where a pipe had broken a couple weeks earlier. Wetor said that could indicate that the line could be a new weak point, or it could just be a coincidence.

The pipe in Cow Alley had also just been patched in early April, about 30 feet away from this most recent break, according to Wetor.

There are two types of pipes carrying water below Wrangell streets. There are concrete pipes, which were very popular from the 1930s to 1970s, and then there are ductile iron pipes, which were installed in the 1980s.

Many of the older roads in Wrangell — like Stikine Avenue — have water mains made of concrete that are past their life expectancy, according to Wetor. This is also true of the line beneath Cow Alley.

Most of the water mains that broke in August were made of concrete.

The other kind of pipe, ductile iron, was installed throughout Wrangell in the 1980s at the peak of the state oil-revenue boom, Wetor said.

“We probably have more ductile iron pipe in the ground for water mains,” said Amber Al-Haddad, Capital Projects Department director and former director of Public Works. “And we have been seeing early corrosion in the ductile iron pipes, which has been one of our biggest problems for many years.”

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Structure, which plans to next year start assembling in Wrangell its remote monitoring system for utilities and other users, will hold an open house at its Front Street location on Friday, Aug. 28.

“We thought it would be a cool experience” for people in town to see and hear from the team — and ask questions — about what the system does and how it works, said Jake Haas, one of the founders of Structure.

“It will give people confidence to hear from experts in the field,” he said. Hardware and software team members will be at the open house.

“It’s a confusing concept for people,” Blake Rider, chief executive officer of the company, said of the remote monitoring system’s software and hardware.

Structure plans to assemble and market a new system for utilities and businesses to remotely monitor their power lines, water lines, sewage treatment plants or other operations. It will remodel the former Ottesen’s warehouse on Front Street for its work site.

The company, which was established by a trio of Juneau friends and their partners, earlier this year selected Wrangell for its assembly operation.

The open house is set to start at 6 p.m. Friday and will include food and refreshments, and live music by Ketchikan-raised Pat Troll, Haas said.

Structure plans to manufacture its comms vault (communications box) in Wrangell. Routers, switches, radio gear and circuit boards will be assembled into the comms vault, a box about the size of a stereo speaker.

“Our goal is to hire local first,” and provide training, Haas said last month.

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Wrangell sightseeing tour company and water taxi service Muddy Water Adventures has added a new vessel to its fleet. The 52-foot landing craft- dubbed The Dropship- is now their largest vessel.

While it can only carry six passengers right now, company owner Zach Taylor said it will greatly expand their cargo carrying capacity. 

Right now, there’s really no other boats in the area that can move bigger vehicles like that or bigger cargo. The state ferries doing their best, but like we all know, it’s just it’s been reduced and reduced and reduced. So there’s definitely a niche there that I think needs to get filled.

Taylor purchased the vessel in Homer back in May but left it docked up North due to big seas and said he’s happy to finally have it home.

He did not disclose the price, but the vessel is practically brand new, fabricated just last year. It features three Honda 250 motors, allowing it to get up to around 30 mph with no cargo.

Although there are some small products to finish and some upgrades he’d like to do for comfort -like finishing the galley and the bunk below deck- the Dropship is ready to start moving stuff now, and customers are lining up.

I’ve got a bunch of calls already for Petersburg. Going way out different hunting places. Going to Zarembo. Got a couple callers for Ketchikan, a couple callers for Juneau. So there’s stuff to be moved.

Taylor, who is also the assistant fire chief for the Wrangell Volunteer Department said that this also expands their capacity for Search & Rescue operations for Wrangell and neighboring communities.

This will be a primary search and rescue vessel. So that’s nice to have the lights and the ability to drop the ramp. You know, you get whatever’s going on. We’ve got another big boat that in a storm or bad weather can go out and help people.

Taylor purchased the vessel after selling their high-speed catamaran this past March.

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