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Yesterday, the Trump administration overturned an Obama-era ban on hunters in Alaska national preserves baiting bears or killing denning bear cubs and wolf pups and other practices that have been declared barbaric by environmental groups and the Obama administration. As Reuters reported, “Under the new National Park Service rule, effective July 9, hunting on natural […]
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Alaska’s Bristol Bay is home to the world’s most valuable wild salmon fisheries (and also an infamous mining project – the Pebble Mine) but salmon towns in the region lost 30% of their population to the 1918 Spanish Flu and locals fear it will happen again due to lack of medical capacity to handle the virus, unless the Governor, Republican Mike Dunleavy, shuts down fishing for this summer.
Why This Matters: Alaska could be hit hard by a double whammy of no fishing this year and the loss of new oil and gas jobs in the future.
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As the LA Times recently reported, this year, an administrative trial in Washington state could dictate whether the Makah tribe can resume hunting gray whales. The Makah, who live in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula have asked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a waiver from the Marine Mammal Protection Act so they can restart their […]
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Greta Thunberg has nothing on these ladies! Last March, they traveled 3000 miles from their home in Alaska to lobby Congress to continue to conserve the Tongass National Forest, one of the largest carbon sinks on the planet. The Trump Administration is considering lifting current protections on the area. These Tlingit women were part of […]
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As the summer fishing season comes to a close, two recent stories of fish kills made headlines in Alaska and Michigan. CNN reports that In Alaska, the historic heatwave there is, according to scientists, resulting in the death of at least a thousand salmon because they had to swim through water that was too warm — the die-offs include several varieties of Alaskan salmon, including sockeye, chum and pink salmon — and are an added threat to populations of these commercially valuable fish.
Continue Reading 552 wordsIn early August, Greenland lost between12 and 24 billion tons of ice each day, which, The Washington Post reported was about 6 to 18 billion tons greater than the typical rates seen during the same dates during the time period from 1981-2010. According to The Post, the melt season overall — which has about 35 to 40 days to go — is poised to set a new and more significant record, the 2012 record ice loss, which reached 300 billion tons of surface ice mass loss from Greenland.
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Extreme temperatures in Alaska are causing an outbreak of explosive wildfires throughout the state, with Fairbanks, Anchorage experiencing its warmest March to date, as reported recently by Our Daily Planet. Just in the week of July 3rd, more than 600,000 acres of lands burned – doubling the year-to-date burn total which now sits at 1.28 million acres. By the end of the year, it is estimated that 2 million to 3 million acres will have been engulfed in flames. Fires are not only getting more frequent, but increasingly bigger and harder to contain. In Anchorage, the Hess Creek fire is now the largest fire in the U.S. at over 149,000 acres.
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On Independence Day, Anchorage, Alaska hit its highest temperature in recorded history — 90 degrees — by five degrees and beat the previous high for the 4th of July by more than twenty degrees, as records were broken all around the state. However, other cities in Alaska had hit 90 degrees before, but these are rare events, but more records could fall according to Accuweather because Alaska currently sits under a “heat dome” that will last into this week.
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The Trump Administration in 2017 had decided to continue the Obama Administration’s decision to block the highly controversial Pebble Mine in Alaska, but yesterday they reversed themselves and are now restarting a process that could result in the EPA lifting the Clean Water Act restrictions and letting the proposed gold, copper and molybdenum mine move forward.
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For most people, a mild end to the long winter is a blessing, but for the people of Alaska, it may be too much of a good thing. Temperatures in Alaska reached record highs for the month of March — with an unprecedented 70-degree day in the Southeastern town of Klawock on March 19 — the earliest any spot in the state has hit that high. — beating the previous first warm day by almost a month.
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A federal judge in Alaska dealt a major blow late Friday to the Trump Administration’s plan to allow drilling for oil and gas in the ocean waters off the North Slope of Alaska and in deep-sea canyons in the Atlantic Ocean. President Obama used his statutory authority under the law governing ocean oil and gas drilling to “withdraw” these areas from ANY subsequent plan to lease them out, but three months after taking office, President Trump “revoked” the Obama decision.
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While most of the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency are in a seemingly endless shutdown limbo, the priorities of the Trump Administration go on without a hitch. Two high profile examples came to light over the weekend — the preparation for newly nominated Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s confirmation hearing and the busiest […]
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