Alaska celebrates the Fourth of July with a unique tradition by launching cars off a 300-foot cliff.

For a moment, everything goes quiet as hundreds of eyes fixate on a patriotic, painted car perched at the edge of a 300-foot cliff. An American flag waves in the crisp Alaskan air as spectators wait in anticipation to witness one of the nation’s most unusual Fourth of July spectacles.

Within seconds, cheers echo across the mountain valley as a vehicle soars through the sky before plummeting down below. All in the name of celebrating freedom.

In Glacier View, Alaska, about two hours north of Anchorage, celebrating America’s Independence Day makes fireworks a thing of the past. Since 2005, visitors have gathered from across the country to witness The Glacier View Fourth of July Car Launch.

Volvo and a moose

The tradition began after founder Arnie Hrncir’s wife hit a moose with her Volvo in 2003. After years of not knowing what to do with the damaged vehicle, they decided, why not just throw it off a cliff?

Parakeet cages filled a room in a modest house in South Anchorage. The birds’ chattering and chirping mixed with country music coming from a boombox below the cages.

As the music swelled at the refrain “Somebody pour me a drank” the birds’ chirping increased, followed by loud squawks.

The sound keeps them company, Karen Rappe said. She hasn’t tried out other kinds of music.

“They get country, and that’s it,” she said, laughing.

Rappe is retired, and has fostered parakeets for years, but right now she has more than usual.

That’s because one man decided to let his birds mate, uncontrolled, she said.

“You start out with two or four,” she said, “and pretty soon you’re pushing 50.”

It’s part of a larger problem. It’s getting increasingly hard to find homes for cage birds like parakeets, parrots and macaws. The situation’s not entirely new though. People get the birds without realizing quite how loud they are, or how high maintenance they can be. But now, the problem is getting worse because in Anchorage, and around the state, the senior population has more than doubled in the last 15 years.

When older people go into assisted living, die, or move down South, their birds often need a new home. The original owner of those 48 parakeets moved South, Rappe said. She found homes for the first batch of 20 earlier this year. They were babies, she said. They were cute and easy to adopt out. She’s working through the rest now, but it’s slow going. The parakeet market is flooded, she said.

Amber Morris is with the Alaska Bird Club, which helps rescue and rehome cage birds like macaws and cockatiels. The man called the club, she said, asking for help rehoming the parakeets when he realized he couldn’t keep them. It’s something she’s seeing more and more.

“Birds owners are leaving them, not necessarily by choice,” she said.

In the past, she said, it was more common for the club to rehome birds when young people went away to school. Sometimes owners developed allergies, or gave the birds up when they got married. But over the last decade more and more elders are needing to rehome their birds.

It’s an issue everywhere, she said.

“It’s not just our populace in Alaska that’s getting older,” she said. “So there are a lot of people who are relinquishing birds. There are a lot of homeless birds.”

The bigger birds can live a long time, she said, 80 to 90 years. That’s a lot of life left when elderly people can’t take care of their parrots or cockatiels anymore.

When a bird needs a new home, the club writes up what Morris calls a “singles ad.” Sometimes that’s easy, if the bird is beautiful, cuddly and has a sparkling personality. Sometimes, it’s not.

The thing about birds, Morris said, is they’re a very…specific type of pet.

Some parrots can scream really loudly. In your house, she said, that’s not always fun.

And they’re messy.

“Birds don’t have lips, and so whenever they eat, food goes everywhere,” she said.

But they can be wonderful for the right person, Morris said.

“It makes you look a little less crazy when you talk to a pet that actually can talk back to you,” she said.

They’re beautiful, they can be very snuggly and they’re interesting to watch, she said. And they’re great imitators: they might cry like a baby or offer to take the dog for a walk.

But it is important to find the right fit, Morris said. They can have strong personalities, like the African grey parrot a few years ago that really hated women. A real misogynist, Morris said. But it worked out, she said, because soon afterward, a gay couple applied to adopt the parrot.

Generally, Morris said, she worries less about the parakeets. They’re easier to rehome because they’re less loud, less messy and less of a commitment in terms of lifespan. They’re great for people who don’t have experience with birds.

Bigger birds, like cockatoos, macaws and African grey parrots, are the hardest to adopt out, Morris said. They are not starter birds. That’s especially true when they’ve been living with someone for a long time, like when older people have to give up their birds, or die.

But sometimes the bird can’t be rehomed, Morris said. That’s what keeps her up at night, worrying.

She’s thinking about the birds she’s seen living in dark garages, or in closets with the door shut.

But Karen Rappe, standing in her bird room, said she doesn’t think it’ll come to that for the parakeets.

“Eventually homes will come,” she said. “I’m hoping.”

Five Norton Sound tribes are asking a federal judge to throw out a key federal permit for a large-scale gold mine proposed in Bonanza Channel, an estuary about 30 miles east of Nome.

The mine, proposed by a Nevada company called IPOP LLC, would dredge roughly 2.7 miles along the channel’s 28-mile estuary bed.

Oral arguments for the case went before a federal judge on June 16 in Anchorage. The tribal governments of the Village of Solomon, Native Village of Council, King Island Native Community, Chinik Eskimo Community and Native Village of White Mountain say that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ignored serious environmental and subsistence concerns when it granted the Clean Water Act permit for the proposed mine in 2024.

Erin Colón is an attorney with the environmental law nonprofit Earthjustice. She’s representing the tribes in the case.

“This is the first large‑scale dredging project, mining project in an estuary in Alaska, and it’s a project that every agency that reviewed it had major concerns about what the environmental impacts would be,” Colón said. “That’s Fish and Wildlife Service, NMFS, EPA, and the Alaska District of the (U.S. Army) Corps.”

The tribes filed the lawsuit a little over a year ago. It argues that the Corps violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Water Act by downplaying impacts to fish and wildlife habitat, migratory birds and marine mammals. And, they say the Corps did not fully consider how around‑the‑clock dredging could disrupt fishing, egg‑gathering and berry‑picking in and around Safety Sound, a critical area for subsistence users.

“It’s not just an estuary where, you know, there aren’t people living nearby, it’s a place with a rich history that is in active use still today,” Colón said.

Colón said tribal members of the Village of Solomon, whose historical homeland overlaps the proposed mining area, filled the courtroom to watch the hearing.

Deilah Johnson is a tribal member, council member and the tribal resources director for the Village of Solomon. She said the Bonanza Channel estuary functions as a year‑round subsistence location for nearby communities and as a place where people teach and pass down cultural practices. She flew into Anchorage from Oregon for the oral arguments, and said she joined more than two dozen other tribal members of all ages in the courtroom.

“Having our youth present with us, teaching them to continue the fight and to continue the important advocacy as our future leaders, I think was also just an incredibly proud moment for us as a community,” Johnson said. “Because that is where they go fishing, that is where they go swimming, that is where we have our own small education classes with our biologists, I mean, that is part of who they are.”

The Village of Solomon has been opposing the large-scale dredge mine since IPOP initially submitted its applications for the project in 2018.

Johnson said this lawsuit is the most recent opposition.

“It constantly feels like we can’t ever let our guard down, no matter what decision was made by who. We have to stay on guard and prepared for anything,” she said.

IPOP was initially denied the Clean Water Act permit by the Corps’ Alaska District office in 2022. The state branch found the project failed to prove it was the least environmentally damaging option, and was not in the public interest. In its statement rejecting the proposal, the Corps noted that less than 1% of permitting applications nationwide are denied, usually because the applicant refused to alter the design, timing or location of the project.

But IPOP filed its own lawsuit against the Corps, arguing the Alaska office acted in bad faith and dragged out the review. The company then filed a modified version of the project with a smaller footprint.

The Corps’ Pacific Ocean Division stepped in, and in 2024 vacated the Alaska District’s denial and issued a permit to the modified proposal.

IPOP’s proposed project

As it stands, the proposed mine would vacuum up the estuary bed, moving 4.5 million cubic yards of material to a nearly 160-acre area of land. IPOP’s permit application says this would turn the area from vegetated shallows to mudflats, but those impacts would be temporary.

Attorneys for the Corps argue that IPOP’s revised project reduces the environmental impacts, and an Environmental Impact Statement typical for large-scale projects permitted by the federal agency is not necessary.

In its written argument, the defense said the area is “expansive” and “mostly uninhabited,” and the impact would be confined to the footprint of the project. Further, they say no “unique subsistence resource” is available within the footprint of the project that couldn’t be found elsewhere and people could subsist in other areas.

The argument states that the Corps determined the Bonanza Channel was not a “particularly productive” area for fishing because of low water levels and higher water temperatures.

But Johnson said that the Corp’s argument effectively sidesteps local expertise and community concerns, and the smaller footprint does not offset the impacts.

“It to me doesn’t make any sense, but they are still claiming that there’s no fish. We proved that there was, and that the Corps didn’t consider the fish that are still with that yardage, regardless of how much smaller they made it,” Johnson said.

IPOP also needs state authorization to mine. A land use permit from the Alaska Division of Mining, Land and Water — within the state Department of Natural Resources — has been denied, and the state recently rejected IPOP’s appeal. Without both the federal and state permits, the company cannot move forward with the project.

Earthjustice attorney Colón said the denial could still be challenged in Superior Court.

“There is no guarantee that the state will stand by its denial, and there’s always a potential that a court could reverse that decision too,” Colón said.

There’s currently no timeline for a ruling, but Colón said she generally expects a written decision within about a year, though it could come sooner.

The U.S Army Corps’ Pacific Ocean Division did not respond to a request for comment for this story. IPOP also could not be immediately reached for comment.

This story originally appeared on KNOM and is republished here with permission.