Photographers have a chance to win a Friends of Anan hoodie, T-shirt or coffee mug in the nonprofit’s first-ever photo contest. Entries in the Anan Wildlife Observatory Community Photo Contest are due by midnight, Friday, July 31.

Even better, the group will run a second photo contest next month, with a deadline of Aug. 31, and with the same prizes for first, second and third, said Andrei Bardin-Siekawitch, a member of Friends of Anan.

Or, people can enter both contests, he said.

Friends of Anan was established a year ago to raise two things: Awareness of the bear viewing area and money to help the Forest Service, which manages the Anan Wildlife Observatory, with maintenance, staff and other expenses.

Now that the group, and its technology team of Wrangell students, has mostly completed the technical work of setting up the livestream bear cam feeds from Anan, they want to focus more on outreach to raise awareness of the bears and the importance of the observatory, said Bardin-Siekawitch, who will be a high school senior when school starts next month.

Anyone who wants to enter their favorite Anan bear photos can go to the Friends of Anan Facebook page to download the QR code, which will send them to the entry form.

Photographers are limited to three entries per contest and will need to provide up to three sentences describing each photo.

The group may use the photos on its website and other promotional materials.

The post Friends of Anan Raising Funds For the Observatory appeared first on KSTK.

Grant EchoHawk is a nonpartisan candidate for House District 1.  EchoHawk visited Wrangell in late July and stopped by KSTK to talk about why he’s running to represent Wrangell, Ketchikan, Metlakatla and parts of Prince of Wales Island.

The post House District 1 Nonpartisan Candidate, Grant EchoHawk appeared first on KSTK.

The candidate filing period for Wrangell’s Oct. 6 municipal election opens Aug. 3.

The ballot will include races for mayor, two seats on the borough assembly, two seats on the port commission and one seat on school board.

Mayor Patty Gilbert, who has served two terms as mayor since 2022, has already decided she will run again this year.

“I want another term to see if I can seal up some of the goals,” she said, listing economic development projects and building and street repairs as her biggest goals.

The mayor’s term is for two years.

Candidates need to fill out a declaration of candidacy form, available at City Hall, and return it with the signature of 10 registered Wrangell voters.

The forms can be turned in at the borough clerk’s office 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, starting Aug. 3. The deadline for filing is 4 p.m. Aug. 31.

In addition to the mayor’s office, the ballot will include two three-year terms on the seven-member assembly; the top two vote-getters on the ballot will win the seats.

The terms of Assembly Members Phillip Mach and John Yeager expire in October.

One of the five school board seats will be on the ballot for a three-year term: John DeRuyter’s term expires.

And two port commission seats will be on the ballot; one for a three-year term and one to fill the remaining two years of a three-year term. The terms of incumbents Antonio Silva and DJ McConachie expire in October.

Candidates for any of the elected offices must be a registered voter and must have lived in town at least one year.

Candidates for mayor, assembly and school board must be at least 18 years old. Port commissioners must be at least 21 years old.

The post Candidate filing period for Wrangell’s Oct. 6th municipal election opens Aug. 3rd appeared first on KSTK.

This is the Recreation and Road Report for July 20th through July 24.

Hello, this is ___ from the Wrangell Ranger District of the Tongass National Forest. I’m here with the weekly Recreation and Road report for July 20-July 24th. 

Road Conditions, Construction and Logging Activity:

• Middle Ridge Road is closed until repairs can be completed next year. A team of engineers visited last week and prepared a design for reconstruction in 2027.
• The mainline, McCormick Creek Road, FS#6265, is washed out and impassable at mile post 13, just past the Highbush Lake Road.
• The Highbush Lake Road, FS#50040, has a slide across it but is passable for high clearance vehicles.
• The Áax’w Sáani Cabin contractor has cleaned up the slide on Nemo loop road, FS #6267.
• The WCA crew is resurfacing the bridge on the FS #6270 road near the intersection of Fools Inlet & Thoms Creek Road. Road #6270 will be closed past that bridge until further notice
• Roosevelt Dock on Zarembo will not be open in time for hunting season, due to contract supply chain issues.
• Trees are down on Zarembo roads near Roosevelt Harbor.
• The Forest Service is working towards repairing roads, but they won’t be finished any time soon. Stay tuned for updates.

Anan Wildlife Observatory:

• Wildlife update from the Anan Rangers: both brown and black bears have been seen daily including a set of triplet black bear cubs.
• The fish are starting to come in, but they are few in numbers at this time. 
• Meanwhile, more bears have been seen on the trail. People are advised to pay close attention to the safety talk at the trailhead to learn how to handle encounters.  Keep in mind that the fish are few and the bears are hungry.

• See the action for yourself! Check out the Anan livestream at Explore.org to view bears at Anan.
• Anan Wildlife Observatory permit season started July 5th. There are still some permits available on recreation.gov, if you have your own boat/floatplane to get there.  
• If there are no more permits available on recreation.gov for the day you are interested in, 4 permits each day are available through weekly lotteries.
• All lottery requests must be made in person at the Wrangell Ranger District office. Weekly requests will be collected by Mondays at 4:30 and awarded on Tuesdays by noon.  

The request schedule is as follows:

• For those who will need to purchase transportation to Anan, contact an authorized guide directly for both passage and permits.

Recreational Reminders:

• Be careful with your campfires! Due to hot and dry conditions, here’s an elevated fire risk. Completely put fires out, don’t leave fires unattended, and make fires on durable surfaces like rock and sand (not on duff)!
• Áax’w Sáani (Little Lakes Cabin) is under construction. It’s expected to be complete sometime in August! Expect short traffic delays on FS road #6277. 
• The USFS interpreter crew is running kids programs every week!
  • Forest Explorers is every Tuesday at Volunteer Trail, and Reading with a Ranger is on Thursdays at the Library!  Kids are invited for some fun summer nature activities and crafts.
• There was a human-bear interaction near Three-Way Pass this month. Due to late pink salmon arrivals in the creeks and late berry availability, bears are seeking food sources. Remember to be extra prepared and aware when in bear country. Bring bear spray, talk loudly, and make noise

This announcement is courtesy of KSTK and your Wrangell Ranger District.

The post Recreation and Road Report for July 20 – 24 appeared first on KSTK.

Structure, a nearly year-old company that plans to design, assemble and market a new system for utilities and businesses to remotely monitor their operations, is buying Ottesen’s former warehouse on Front Street and could start putting together and delivering its equipment next year.

The company, established by a trio of Juneau friends and their business partners, has hung its signs on the building.

The floor plan is mostly open, with offices on a smaller mezzanine level, which will work well for Structure’s assembly operation to put together its controllers, called “comms vault,” or communications vault, said Jake Haas, one of the founders. 

The company is in the business of designing and building a new SCADA (Skay-dah) system, which stands for supervisory control and data acquisition. Older systems have been used since the 1970s to monitor sewage pumps and water lines, including Wrangell’s own utilities, and multiple other production operations.

Sensors on pipelines, power lines, pumps and other components transmit data back to a controller unit, allowing workers to remotely monitor operations.

Structure sees a strong market for its new system, particularly in rural Alaska communities with critical infrastructure spread out, requiring a dependable monitoring system using radio signals, fiber-optic lines, phone lines or wireless signals.

The Wrangell plant will assemble routers, switches, radio gear and circuit boards into the comms vault, a box the size of a stereo speaker, Haas said. Off-the-shelf components will be shipped into town for installation in the box, along with some custom-made pieces.

Kyle Farley-Robinson, another one of the three founding partners, said a rough estimate would be assembling the first units in the building sometime next year.

The initial number of jobs would depend on the number of orders to build the units, Farley-Robinson said last week, but could range from half a dozen to 20 workers on the assembly and testing crews.

The post Structure, a nearly year-old company sets up shop in Wrangell appeared first on KSTK.

The volunteer group BRAVE — which stands for Building Respect and Valuing Everyone — is creating a free online Wrangell Resources Directory

“We’ve been doing the Resilience Fair for eight years,” said BRAVE volunteer Kay Larson. The fair brings together a wide range of service providers for health and family. “However, it’s just once a year and focuses on family services,” she said. “The online directory will provide year-round accessibility and more types of information.”

“Our community has had to be so self-sufficient for so long,” said Maleah Nore, another BRAVE volunteer. “People have always had to ask around but didn’t always know who to ask. We saw this as a need in the community and we’re trying to fill it.”

The directory is planned to serve as a digital hub where people can search for resources by topic or need. Food assistance, addressing domestic violence, senior services, pet services, afterschool programs, cultural activities, child care, taxi phone numbers — anything that benefits the community.

“Everything is coming together,” said Nore. “It won’t be perfect, but we don’t need perfect. We just need information.”

BRAVE is encouraging Wrangell service providers of all categories — public, private and nonprofit — to submit their information by Friday, July 24, to contact@wrangellresources.org.

Launch of the official website is anticipated later this summer.

The post BRAVE Resource Directory appeared first on KSTK.

Jeremy Bynum is the incumbent candidate for House District 1.  Bynum visited Wrangell on July 3^rd and stopped by KSTK to talk about his position on several topics.

The post House District 1 Incumbent – Jeremy Bynum appeared first on KSTK.

Listen to the story:

The Southeast island town of Wrangell is moving forward with plans to build a massive shipyard that could repair state ferries, U.S. Coast Guard ships, research vessels, and military vessels.

Wrangell already has a busy marine service center that hauls out large commercial vessels locally and from nearby communities. This proposed shipyard would service much larger ships, up to 500 feet long, with a lift capacity of about 38,000 tons.

But the price tag is a bit shocking – between $605 and $726 million. The borough has a $50 million grant pending with the federal Economic Development Administration.

“Obviously, $605 on the low end is a staggering figure – we could probably buy Wrangell Island for $605 million,” said Mason Villarma, Wrangell’s borough manager. He admits the cost is enormous, but says developers are approaching it in steps, “phasing the project into digestible chunks.”

Villarma spoke at a recent town hall on July 14 with several project partners, including JAG Marine Group, which would operate the site; the shipyard developers Pearlson&Pearlson; the Southeast Alaska Power Agency, the region’s nonprofit hydropower company; the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority; and others.

Wrangell’s shipyard would be built on an existing 42-acre deep-water port, a former mill site that the borough purchased for $2.5 million in 2022. It’s located six miles south of town. Villarma said there was overwhelming community input on the site’s potential uses.

“We don’t want cruise ships out there,” he said. “We want this to be an industrial complex with blue-collar jobs, trades-based, and that’s really what we focused on.”

The shipyard is estimated to employ up to 500 people at full capacity, which would significantly change the town’s economic landscape, as Wrangell only has a few thousand residents. For decades, many residents worked in the timber industry until the town’s main sawmills started closing in the 1990s. 

The shipyard’s operator, JAG, runs shipyards in Ketchikan and Seward, but is based in Michigan. Charles Minton with the company said the political climate is right for industrial development.

“We want to make sure that the work stays in Alaska, is completed in Alaska,” he said, “and we service the vessels and the assets that are going to be positioned here, not only from a commercial perspective to help maintain commerce, but also from the defensive posture.”

Earlier this year, Wrangell borough leaders visited a shipyard in Florida, which project designer Pearlson & Pearlson worked on. Luke Pitts with the company said they’ll design Wrangell’s shipyard for maintenance and repair, but it would also accommodate building ships.

“We’ve done several of these projects now and have a good kind of baseline of what things cost,” Pitts said. “We’ve also reached out to general contractors that have worked in Alaska in the recent past to kind of back our estimates.”

The partners say the infrastructure needed for the project is there – for power, water and sewer, and fuel. It will take a few years to secure more than a dozen required permits. So, in theory, the project could start construction in two years and take about three more years after that. But first, hundreds of millions of dollars will need to be found.

The post Wrangell’s proposed shipyard could cost up to $726 million appeared first on KSTK.

A 10-year veteran of the emergency services roster took over the Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department’s daily operations this month.

Aaron Powell stepped into the role of fire and EMS administrator on July 6, succeeding Anna Allen, who had managed the department’s paperwork since 2023.

Powell’s new position anchors the business side of an agency that splits its leadership down the middle.

While Fire Chief Jordan Buness retains command over active emergency scenes, tactical field training and crew readiness during dispatches, Powell handles the clerical infrastructure. The administrator position runs the department’s billing systems, patient charting, grant compliance and daily office logistics.

Adapting to the administrative workload represents a fresh challenge for the longtime first responder.

“I’m still learning the system and getting familiar with this side of things,” Powell said. “It’s a lot of stuff to learn.”

Even during the onboarding process, the new administrator is mapping out training operations for the upcoming season. He has initiated regulatory reviews for a live-fire training exercise later this year.

The post Powell steps into role of fire and EMS administrator appeared first on KSTK.

Two mothers are leading an effort to bring Special Olympics programming back to Wrangell, launching a search for community volunteers to help establish a permanent, year-round athletic calendar for residents with special needs.

Organizers Christy Good and Holly Hammer succeeded in getting representatives from the Special Olympics Alaska headquarters in Anchorage to come to Wrangell for an informational meeting at 6 p.m. Aug. 20 at the Elks Lodge for anyone interested in participating or volunteering.

Both women have children with special needs who have previously participated in the organization’s events.

Hammer’s son, Carter, competed in 2017 during the last Special Olympics event held in Wrangell.

Good’s 24-year-old daughter, Keely, has participated in various activities across the nation as the family moved over the years.

Good specifically wants to involve the Elks Lodge bowling alley for the bowling season, which runs from August to November, due to the sport’s immense popularity and accessibility.

To participate in Special Olympics, eligible athletes must be at least 8 years old and have a documented intellectual or developmental disability. There is no maximum age limit for adults. Children ages 2 ½ to 7 can participate in early developmental motor-skill training.

“There are plenty of opportunities to be active with the Special Olympics,” Good said. “That’s why volunteers are so important because everything within the program runs on volunteerism.”

“Every child deserves the chance to be seen for their strengths, not defined by their challenges,” Good added. “Kids with disabilities have incredible resilience, determination and joy to share, and it’s our responsibility to create opportunities where they can shine, belong and reach their full potential.”

The post Bringing Special Olympics Back to Wrangell appeared first on KSTK.