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Alaska to launch $5 million state-run reading academy amid skepticism

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Alaska to launch $5 million state-run reading academy amid skepticism


The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development is set to launch a new reading instruction center for students and teachers, amid concern from some lawmakers that the program appears ill-equipped to meet the needs of the students least likely to achieve reading proficiency.

The budget recently approved by the Legislature includes $5 million for the launch of a reading academy requested by Gov. Mike Dunleavy. The state board of education is scheduled to meet Thursday to approve the creation of the program, which has been quietly developed by the education department and the governor’s office with no public input.

Members of Dunleavy’s administration say the $5 million — which was approved by the Legislature as a one-time appropriation — would go toward an Anchorage-based tutoring center called the “Alyeska Reading Academy and Institute,” which would provide reading instruction to children in kindergarten through third grade, and professional development for teachers.

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An initial budget document provided by Dunleavy’s office when he proposed the program in March stated the academy would serve “up to 100 students total” for an eye-catching average of $50,000 per student for supplemental reading instruction.

“For $50,000 a student, you can teach tires to read,” said Sen. Jesse Kiehl, a Juneau Democrat who opposed adding the funding to the budget.

In subsequent emails, Dunleavy spokesperson Grant Robinson said the tutoring “will not be limited to 100 students” and will include online learning components for students not based in Anchorage, but Robinson did not provide any information on the total number of students the program — set to launch this summer — will accommodate.

According to one assessment, Alaska students score at the bottom of the nation in reading proficiency. In 2022, less than a quarter of all students in the state were proficient in reading by fourth grade. Members of Dunleavy’s administration say the new academy is part of the solution.

“The Alyeska Reading Institute is rooted in evidence-based practices in the science of reading. It will serve Alaska districts, schools, teachers, paraprofessionals, families, and students regardless of geographic location,” Robinson said by email.

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The academy is set to be located in Anchorage — where one-third of students read at grade-level, according to a 2022 assessment. That may seem low, but children in many rural parts of the state are far less likely to read at grade level. In the lowest-performing districts, which are all off the road system, fewer than 5% of students can read at grade level.

Skeptics question whether the reading academy would effectively address the lagging reading abilities of Alaska children where the need is greatest. Some wondered if the program would be laying the groundwork for the creation of a state-run charter school that would skirt rules that currently require Alaska charter schools to be overseen by local district school boards.

“It appears to be a state-run charter school with questionable accountability,” said Sen. Bill Wielechowski, an Anchorage Democrat. “Nobody knows where it’s going to go, so yeah, there was a lot of concern about it.”

Dunleavy — a longtime proponent of “school choice” — has previously advocated for a constitutional amendment that would allow public funding to flow to private and religious schools in the state. But members of his administration have insisted the program is not a charter school. Education Commissioner Heidi Teshner said it would be “more of a tutoring and professional development program for students and teachers.”

‘The philosophy of the governor’

Under a budget plan submitted by the education department, the program would fund 12 new positions, including three administrators, four teachers and four reading coaches. The budget plan also directs $500,000 in annual rent for a 5,000- to 10,000-square-foot space in East or Midtown Anchorage, with areas to accommodate both teachers and children.

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Amid concern from several Senate majority members, the funding included for the academy — which was initially added to the budget by the House on a permanent annual basis — was switched by the Senate to a one-time allotment, meaning that the Dunleavy administration would have to request it again next year if it intends to continue the program.

Sen. Bert Stedman, the Sitka Republican who oversees the operating budget in the Senate, said that approving the academy as a one-time funding item would make it easier for the Legislature to examine how the money is used before deciding whether to make the program permanent.

“I wasn’t that comfortable with that request and that appropriation, particularly when it could use some more transparency, so it was a decision by my office — mainly me — to make it one-time funding,” said Stedman, adding that the changes were made “in the spirit of compromise” with the governor’s office and the House.

“I would not be surprised if the education committees in both bodies take up the subject matter next year,” said Stedman. “You can be assured that there will be a reasonable if not a significant number of legislators that will have some concerns about this.”

Stedman said he saw the Alyeska Reading Academy as “in line with the philosophy of the governor when he was in the Senate.”

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“He was very supportive of charter schools, still is very supportive of charter schools, as far as I know. And myself and the governor, with all due respect, don’t necessarily line up on this issue,” said Stedman. “In my district, the concern isn’t so much with charter schools. Our concern is with public schools and our public education.”

School choice — an idea the governor has celebrated — allows public funds to go toward schools outside of the traditional system of public education. Advocates for school choice say that gives more opportunities to students from disadvantaged neighborhoods, where local schools may underperform compared to schools in more affluent areas.

Opponents of school choice say that the approach would be impossible to implement in most of rural Alaska, which is composed of communities too small to support more than just one traditional public school. Siphoning public funds for charter schools, they argue, leaves less for the rural and neighborhood schools that serve some of the least affluent communities in the state.

Soon after he was elected to the state Senate in 2013, Dunleavy introduced a constitutional amendment that would have deleted language from the state constitution barring public funds from going to private and religious schools. The measure never passed.

Dunleavy has publicly said little about his plans for the reading academy. He first spoke about the idea at the same March press conference where he introduced his controversial “parental rights” bill. Since then, he has not made any comments about the academy.

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At the time, Dunleavy said the funding would go to support a bill passed by the Legislature last year to improve reading proficiency through “conferences, trainings, materials and ongoing professional development through the department of education.”

Deena Bishop, the former Anchorage schools superintendent who now serves as Dunleavy’s special assistant for education issues and a point person for the reading academy, did not respond to an interview request.

‘Why don’t you get a YouTube video?’

The Legislature last year approved a bill that created new reading requirements for schools in an effort to improve Alaska students’ reading performance. The Alaska Reads Act implements new teaching methods and testing requirements meant to improve students’ ability to learn, based on a growing body of research on how kids learn to read that advocates say has led to improvements in reading outcomes in other states.

Dunleavy pitched the funding for the Alyeska Reading Academy as part of the implementation of the Reads Act, and as “another tool to meet the educational needs of Alaska’s students in a sustainable and high-quality manner,” according to an email from Robinson.

But some lawmakers said the academy would include provisions that are not only separate from the Reads Act — they directly conflicted with some of the goals of that bill.

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“There was commitment (in the Reads Act) to put reading specialists to help teachers teach reading in the districts that are struggling the most. They would be on the district team. They would live in the region,” said Kiehl, the Juneau Democrat. But the Alyeska Reading Academy, with its Anchorage-based facility and staff, “didn’t come out of the Reads Act, wasn’t discussed, certainly isn’t what we voted for. I’ll be darned if I can see how it’s going to work.”

Teshner told House lawmakers in a March hearing that the program was designed to enable Alaska teachers from across the state to get the certifications that will soon be required under the Reads Act, which goes into effect in July. Teshner said teachers from rural Alaska — where English is sometimes not the primary language spoken at home and instructor turnover is much higher than on the road system — would be able to travel to Anchorage for in-person training during the summertime.

“If you’ve got reading coaches, presumably they are going to have to travel out to these school districts, right?” said Rep. Bryce Edgmon, a Dillingham independent who co-chairs the House Finance Committee, during a brief hearing on the proposal. “Is it fair to say that a big chunk of this $5 million will accommodate travel to rural schools?”

Teshner said she assumes the funding is meant to cover both travel and housing in Anchorage for teachers from rural communities to benefit from the program.

“This highly supports our rural teachers who might not have the opportunities to get some of this training because they are like a one-man shop in some of our really small schools, so allowing them to come in for a week or two in the summertime and take that knowledge back to the district would be highly beneficial to the small communities,” she told the House Finance Committee.

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But the budget proposal from the education department allots only $10,000 for travel. That amount would be insufficient to cover the travel costs to and from rural communities even for a small number of teachers.

Asked how the travel component will be covered, Robinson, with the governor’s office, said that “for in person professional development of educators in rural Alaska, rather than having a group of teachers travel into Anchorage, the program will send an expert to the community.”

“Why don’t you get a YouTube video?” Kiehl asked. “It will be as relevant to the actual experience of teaching kids in the districts that are struggling.”

‘A hyper expensive centralized school’

Teshner said that the program would be run by the department of education, comparing it to the Alyeska Central School, a statewide correspondence program that was run by the department until 2004, when the Legislature passed a bill to end it.

“We’re just basically reinstituting that model, but in a more statewide brick-and-mortar model,” said Teshner.

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The only other brick-and-mortar school operated by the state education department, rather than one of the state’s 54 school districts, is the Mt. Edgecumbe High School, a residential school in Sitka.

“A hyper expensive centralized school that’s not in a district that’s struggling to teach reading? I’m very dubious,” Kiehl said.

State law requires the state board of education — made up of Dunleavy appointees — to oversee policy and regulation changes for the Department of Education and Early Development. But that board has yet to formally review the Alyeska Reading Academy proposal.

“This is all new to the board. This is the first crack of the board looking at it and seeing it,” said James Fields, chair of the board, referring to the two-day meeting set to begin Wednesday in Kenai, when board members are scheduled to vote on formally establishing the reading academy.

Fields, who meets regularly with the governor, said Dunleavy first mentioned the idea of a reading academy to him late last year.

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“He was just floating an idea and said, ‘What do you think?” said Fields. “I’m always going to be up for trying to help literacy instruction. If he wants to fund more literacy instruction — great.”

Asked about the administration’s decision to launch the reading academy in Anchorage, Fields said, “You’ve got to start somewhere.”

“For all I know, he’s planning on trying to set up satellites,” Fields said, though he added that he doesn’t “necessarily think the intent is to have this thing last forever.”

For now, uncertainty remains over the details for the $5 million appropriation. A webpage for the program states only that more information is “coming soon,” leaving skeptics with a litany of unanswered questions: Which students will have the opportunity to participate? How will it help teachers in the most challenged districts?

“I don’t think anybody really knows exactly what we’re getting for this,” said Wielechowski. “It could be a good thing. I just think there’s some unknowns.”

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Four different schools crowned champions after first week of March Madness Alaska

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Four different schools crowned champions after first week of March Madness Alaska


The ASAA 1A and 2A basketball divisions opened March Madness Alaska in Anchorage with tournaments spanning Wednesday to Saturday. It was madness indeed; not a single No. 1 seed won across the four tournaments. The ASAA 3A and 4A state championships begin Wednesday, March 20 and end on Saturday, March 23.

King Cove won the boys 1A title over top-seeded Kake in a battle of unbeatens, handing the defending state champions their first loss in over two years. Minto (26-3 overall), which lost to Kake in the semifinals, finished third at the state championships a week after winning the Golden Heart 1A Conference tournament at the UAF Patty Center.



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Beaver expansion into Alaska’s Arctic tundra presents problems for people – and opportunities • Arkansas Advocate

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Beaver expansion into Alaska’s Arctic tundra presents problems for people – and opportunities • Arkansas Advocate


When Cyrus Harris first saw a beaver during a camping trip in the tundra territory in the far northwest of Alaska in 1988, the discovery created a stir in his hometown of Kotzebue.

“That made big news then,” he said. He and his companions removed the beaver, which was near Cape Krusenstern just north of the Bering Strait, above the Arctic Circle and, until recently, far north of the Alaska tree line. When they heard about the beaver, Harris said, local Inupiat elders issued a warning that more would appear: “They’re coming, and that’s what’s going to be happening.”

The presence of beavers in the Arctic landscape around Kotzebue is no longer news. The beaver population, previously not an Arctic feature, has exploded in that region – and quickly transformed the landscape.

Cyrus Harris, with University of Alaska Fairbanks ecology professor Ken Tape on Feb. 26, 2024, marks the spot on the map where he first saw a beaver near Cape Krusenstern in 1988. Since then, beavers have become commonplace in Arctic Northwest Alaska. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)

That transformation was summarized at a workshop in late February at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where scientists and community residents shared research findings and observations.

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In a 100-square-kilometer area near Kotzebue — just under 40 square miles — the number of beaver dams jumped from two in 2002 to 98 in 2019, according to UAF research presented at the beginning of the three-day workshop. The workshop was part of a National Science Foundation-funded program called the Arctic Beaver Observation Network, or A-BON. On a wider area of the Baldwin Peninsula, the number went from 94 in 2010 to 409 in 2019. Across a wider area of Arctic Northwest Alaska, their presence went from nothing in the 1950s, as shown in aerial photos, to more than 11,300 beaver ponds identified through satellite imagery by 2019, according to the UAF scientists. The presence of beaver ponds in that region more than doubled between 2004 and 2017, the scientists found.

Satellite images that have tracked beaver expansion over time clearly show not just the number of dams but their drastic impacts, said Ken Tape, the UAF ecology professor who is leading the A-BON program. He pointed to one site as an example. “It basically changes from a little stream into a sprawling wetlands,” he said.

Picture of a beaver dam stretched across Alaskan tundra.
A beaver dam is seen in August 2022 on the Baldwin Peninsula, a finger of tundra-covered land above the Arctic Circle. The northward spread of woody shrubs is enabling movement of beavers into tundra terrain. The beavers, in turn, are engineering their own changes. The dammed water is bringing heat into wider areas of ground and hastening permafrost thaw. (Photo by Ken Tape/University of Alaska Fairbanks)

The proliferation of beavers is attributed to the northward spread of woody plants that they eat and use for their dams and lodges.

While climate change has enabled beavers to live farther north, the animals are exacerbating the effects of Arctic climate change. Through their dam and lodge engineering, they are inundating some areas with water, speeding up permafrost thaw. Elsewhere, they are drying out areas.

A guy standing in front of a white board full of diagrams.
University of Alaska Fairbanks ecology professor Ken Tape, who leads the Arctic Beaver Observation Network, stands on Feb. 27, 2024, next to a whiteboard showing the program’s interconnected areas of study. As climate change has spread woody plants north, beavers have become established in Arctic tundra areas in Alaska and elsewhere. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)

Effects of climate change were already underway on the tundra landscape, with permafrost warming and lakes expanding or draining and woody shrubs growing bigger and farther north, but those were relatively gradual – until the new arrivals began engineering the landscape, Tape said.

“All of a sudden, the beaver shows up. It’s like, wham, just night and day, completely different,” he said.

‘Tundra Be Dammed’

Tape, who got into beaver studies when he and UAF permafrost expert Ben Jones were tracking climate change effects on the tundra, has now become a leading authority on the animals’ northward expansion. A famous study that he led, published in 2018, described the phenomenon in Northwest Alaska and bore a catchy title: Tundra Be Dammed.

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Beavers can be as disruptive to the tundra ecosystem as wildfires are, Tape and his colleagues have concluded.

Beaver presence in Arctic Alaska largely stops at the Continental Divide in the Brooks Range, leaving the North Slope largely beaver-free – for now. There are some exceptions discovered recently: a beaver pond complex that was found on the Kongakut River, which flows through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge near the Canadian border, and some chew marks and tracks left by beavers on the Killik River, which flows from a point in Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve into the bigger Colville River.

But that North Slope situation is expected to change, Tape said. Projections are that if the climate continues its current warming trend and shrubs continue spreading north, beavers will follow, moving down the northern side of the divide to establish themselves across the entire North Slope by century’s end, he said. “They’re poised to swim downstream,” he said.

Picture of mountains shrouded in mist and rain.
Rain and mist sweep through the green summer tundra and bare rock face of the Brooks Range northern foothills near the Kongakut River. (Credit: Lisa Hupp/USFWS)

For many residents, their animals’ new presence is a serious problem.

“We’re surrounded by beaver lodges,” said Ralph Ramoth of Selawik, an Inupiat village about 90 miles east of Kotzebue.

Beaver structures have blocked access to traditional areas for duck hunting and berry-picking, and they’ve created barriers on creeks where fish used to spawn, Ramoth said. They have affected water quality as well, he said.

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“When I was young, you used to be able to drink the water out of the river. Nowadays you don’t,” he said. Those who try, he said, get stomach distress. “People call it ‘beaver fever,’” he said, referring to the unpleasant intestinal infection caused by the parasite giardia.

Beaver sins

There is a long litany of observed or suspected beaver sins in their new Arctic territory that were discussed at the workshop.

Their dams can be insurmountable barriers to fish, particularly to the whitefish that are important subsistence foods but not particularly strong swimmers. That affects people who depend on those fish for their diets – and reverberates through the food web in ways that might seem surprising. Belugas in Arctic waters, for example, depend on whitefish populations that might be harmed by new beaver presence.

As articulated by Ramoth and by residents of Canada’s Northwest Territories who attended the workshop, beaver structures can impede travel, blocking boat routes long used in the summer and turning once-dependable winter ice-travel routes into danger zones.

Snow covering a beaver lodge.
A beaver lodge covered in snow, Selawik National Wildlife Refuge. (Credit: Lisa Hupp/USFWS)

Deteriorated water quality is a widespread concern; Harris noted that beaver complexes are plentiful just upstream of the reservoir that is the drinking-water source for Kotzebue.

There are potentially longer-term and wider-ranging effects as well.

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By speeding permafrost thaw, they are hastening the release of carbon into the atmosphere, scientists said. That is because permafrost holds organic material accumulated over thousands of years that, through freeze, is resistant to decomposition, said Michael Loranty, an associate professor of geography at Colgate University in New York.

“But when you start thawing that out, it starts decomposing,” he said at the workshop. “And if, you know, you’re kind of putting all that permafrost carbon in the bank slowly over tens of thousands of years and then you thaw it out very quickly, it’s kind of a big pulse, potentially, into the atmosphere.”

There is evidence that such pulses are already underway. Work led by UAF researcher Jason Clark detected hotspots of methane emissions from Northwest Alaska beaver ponds. Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas and is known to be produced from permafrost thaw. The discovery of “is an example of a new disturbance regime, wrought by an ecosystem engineer, accelerating the effects of climate change in the Arctic,” said the 2023 study, which was coauthored by Tape, Jones and others at UAF, along with scientists from the National Park Service and the California Institute of Technology.

There are related effects. Though studies are preliminary, there is evidence that beavers are contributing to higher mercury levels in the water systems – and thus in fish populations. Permafrost thaw releases natural elemental mercury that is stored in frozen peat, and beavers stimulate that thaw.. Additionally, the beavers may be inadvertently helping to convert that elemental mercury into methylmercury, the form that is most dangerous to people and animals.

“Beavers bring a lot of wood to streams,” Matthew Mervyn, a graduate student who is studying the question in Canada’s Northwest Territories, said at the workshop. “Since the water slows down, it introduces more bacteria to methyl-ize the mercury.”

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Mervyn, with Canada’s Wilfrid Laurier University, is part of a Canadian-British program called Beavers and Socio-ecological Resilience in Inuit Nunangat, or BARIN. It focuses on the Arctic region of the Northwest Territories. There, Indigenous hunters were the first to document colonization of the Beaufort Sea coast by beavers, with the animals spotted in 2008 and 2009.

Georgia Hole, a researcher with the University of Cambridge, and Callum Pearce, an anthropologist with Anglia Ruskin University, view a snow-covered beaver dam on the Chena River in Fairbanks on Feb. 27. Hole and Pearce, both from the United Kingdom, are among the researchers involved with the Beavers and Socio-ecological Resilience in Inuit Nunangat (BARIN) project focused on Canada’s Northwest Territories. (Photo by Marina Barbosa Santos/University of Alaska Fairbanks)

The benefits of beavers

But there is another side of beavers in the Arctic.

“If I had a T-shirt, it would say, ‘I love beavers.’ I love them. They’re the best things in the world,” Lance Kramer, one of only about three Kotzebue residents who regularly trap beavers, said at the workshop.

He acknowledged that many of his Kotzebue neighbors greeted the news of beaver presence with the expression “Aiee,” a somewhat untranslatable Inupiaq expression of alarm and annoyance.

Kramer, in contrast, has taken advantage of the new arrivals. When he traps a fat beaver, he can use it for meat. The meat from skinny beavers goes to his dog, he said. He is making money selling the pelts. He has created his own detailed map of beaver lodges in the area, with names like “Faceplant Place Lodge” “About Time Lodge” and “Mad Snowman Lake Lodge,” the latter so named because his son became so annoyed about waiting for him to show up there that he built a snowman with an angry face.

He has even taken his love of beavers to show business, albeit subtly. He was an actor in the Alaska-based HBO series True Detective: The Night Country, and in a tense scene where his character brandishes a gun at law enforcement officers, he is wearing a beaver hat made by his mother-in-law.

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Lance Kramer, speaking on Feb. 26, 2024, at the Arctic Beaver Observation Network workshop at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, describes how he traps beavers that have moved into the area around his hometown of Kotzebue. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)

Kramer brought up other beaver benefits. Aside from supplying meat, fur and income, beavers make it easier for him to hunt or trap other animals that gather at the structures, like wolverines and minks. “You can get everything at a beaver lodge. It’s a one-stop shop,” he said.

Evidence, mostly from outside of Alaska, shows that beaver lodges and dams can create habitat for other species, from insects to birds to predators. Research into that is continuing through the A-BON program; one project, explained by UAF graduate student Sebastian Zavoico, is using sound recorders to track bird diversity at recently established Alaska beaver sites.

While many Arctic residents are leery about the impacts of beaver dams and lodges to fish, evidence gathered to date paints a mixed picture.

In the Lower 48, where many riparian systems have been damaged by development, beavers are often considered restorers. Numerous studies there have found that beaver colonization is good for fish.

In Alaska, where study of the beaver-fish relationship is just starting, the evidence is that the animals have been positive influences in some spots and negative in others, according to information presented at the conference by UAF graduate student William Samuel. He has been tracking the relationship between beavers and Arctic grayling – and the relationship between beavers, grayling and wildfire. Within Interior Alaska, he found strong evidence that beaver densities increased in burned areas and that the combination of beavers and fires could be bad for grayling.

But the presence of beavers can make forested areas resistant to fires, too. Dammed areas can serve as fire breaks and help speed ecosystem recovery after wildfires, research in the Lower 48 has found.

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The “beaver fever” name notwithstanding, beavers may not be as responsible as people think for giardia infections, said Glynnis Hood, an environmental science professor at the University of Alberta. “Beavers always get the rap, but humans carry giardia, too, and they don’t always clean up after themselves,” she said at the workshop.

Entrenched in the tundra landscape?

Future action on beavers might address both negative and positive aspects, suggested Andy Bassich of Eagle, an Interior community near the Canadian border.

“I don’t want, really, to use the word ‘infestation,’ but in some people’s minds that’s the appropriate word,” he said. In his region, where beavers have long been established, the animals have become a good source of food that substitutes for traditional food sources like salmon that are in short supply, he said.

If people want to get rid of “nuisance beavers” that might be blocking fish passage or creating other problems, perhaps there should be some kind of combined economic and cultural program that trains young people to hunt and trap them, process them, tan the hides, providing both meat and income, Bassich said.

Andy Bassich of Eagle listens on Feb. 27, 2024, to a presentation by residents of Canada’s Northwest Territories who are part of the Beavers and Socio-ecological Resilience in Inuit Nunangat project, also known as BARIN. Bassich and the Canadian visitors were at the University of Alaska Fairbanks attending a workshop of the Arctic Beaver Observation Network. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)

Whatever Alaskans and Arctic residents decide to do about them, beavers may be in the far north for good.

That was a lesson imparted by Lennie Emaghok, an elder from Tuktoyaktuk, a Northwest Territories Inupiat community on the Beaufort Sea coast.

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He recounted how in 2020, along a relatively short stretch of creek, he and others found 10 beaver structures and quickly removed most of them, including one that was particularly towering.

“When we returned three days later, the dam was built back, as if we had never touched it,” he said.

Hood summarized the power of the wood-chomping rodent. “Never underestimate a beaver,” she said.

Lance Kramer of Kotzebue demonstrates beaver-skinning techniques on Feb. 27 to attendees of the Arctic Beaver Observation Network workshop in Fairbanks. The group met at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and traveled that day to a cabin along the Chena River for some field activities. (Photo by Marina Barbosa Santos/University of Alaska Fairbanks)

Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: [email protected]. Follow Alaska Beacon on Facebook and Twitter.





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Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 now reports cracks in windshield while landing in Portland

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Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 now reports cracks in windshield while landing in Portland


 After a litany of abysmal issues reported with Boeing jets, the inner windshield of Alaska Airlines’ Boeing 737 jet cracked open while landing at Portland International Airport. 

The Alaska Airlines flight’s windshield cracked as it started to descend on the Portland International Airport on Sunday night (Mar 17). 

The Boeing 737-800 jet had 159 passengers and 6 crew members aboard when a small crack appeared on its inner windshield.

“The crew followed their checklists and the aircraft continued safely to its destination as scheduled. Alaska Airlines’ 737 fleet is outfitted with five-layer windscreens that have an outer pane, three inner layers and an inner pane,” said the airline, in a statement. 

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“If an inner pane cracks, the other pane and layers can maintain cabin pressure,” the statement added.

Alaska Airlines said that the authorities will inspect the aircraft and the engineers on the ground will carry out the repair. 

The crack appeared on the windshield after Boeing planes reported a series of mishaps since the beginning of the year. 

“Safety is our highest priority and is at the centre of everything we do,” said Kirby, in an email to customers. 

“Unfortunately, in the past few weeks, our airline has experienced a number of incidents that are reminders of the importance of safety,” said Scott Kirby. 

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“While they are all unrelated, I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus,” he added. 

Not the first time…

This is not the first time such a crack has been reported in a Boeing jet. 

Japan’s biggest airline All Nippon Airways (ANA) in January reported that the cockpit window of its Boeing jet had suffered a crack. 

Boeing 737-800 had developed a crack in the cockpit window midair.

 All Nippon Airways (ANA) spokesperson said that no injuries were reported in the incident and that all 59 passengers and six crew members aboard the flight had been safe.

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Watch: United Airlines finds loose bolts on multiple Boeing 737 Max 9 planes

The crack was found on the outermost of four layers of windows which surrounded the cockpit, said the spokesperson.

“The crack was not something that affected the flight’s control or pressurization,” the spokesperson said.

The ANA Flight 1182 was flying to the southern Toyama airport, however, it returned to the northern Sapporo-New Chitose airport after the crack was discovered. 

(With inputs from agencies)

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