The dashboard is hosted by the Sitka Sound Science Center in collaboration with a number of other organizations.

Editor’s Note: This is a developing story and may be updated.

A male brown bear in Sitka known locally as Tum-Tum drowned at Redoubt Falls earlier this summer during a state-run research project.

Researchers with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game are currently in year two of a six-year project to count the number of bears on Baranof Island, which covers 1,600 square miles. 

State wildlife biologist Stephanie Sell said in a statement Monday that research staff were capturing and collaring brown bears at Redoubt Lake over a four-day period in late July when the drowning occurred. She said the five-year-old brown bear, who was highly habituated, was darted and took a trail that led to salt water.

Sell said staff made every effort to resuscitate him, including rescue breathing and CPR, without success. ADF&G staff ceased all captures in the area immediately afterward.

Sell said it was “a highly unfortunate accident” that they don’t take lightly.  However, she said, wildlife management and research come with inherent risks to both staff and animals. 

“Despite the skilled and professional biologists’ best efforts, across North America, occasionally an accident occurs which results in loss of the animal,” she said.

For the past decade, it’s been one man’s mission to go to every National Park System site across the country. And he just crossed number 400 off his list.

Pete Selleck visited Sitka National Historical Park on Thursday (8-27-26) to continue his quest to see all 433 sites. These places fall under an array of designations — parks, monuments, seashores, and battlefields to name a few. Selleck lives in Greenville, South Carolina, and says most of the destinations he has yet to visit are in Alaska. 

“As you can imagine, logistically, it’s a challenge to get to all these places, to get the weather just right and get the outfitters that can fly you to the right places at the right time,” Selleck said.

The National Park Service has added 16 sites since Selleck started chipping away at the long list. He says this journey is a way for him to marvel at the country’s scenery and reflect on its complicated history. 

“We made some mistakes, but at the same time, we have been trying to become a more perfect union, as we stated in the Constitution,” he said. “We’ve been trying to improve as time has gone on, and I think we’ve overcome a lot of things. We still have a long ways to go, but it does make me appreciate even more the opportunities that we all have being Americans.”

Selleck’s next stop is Glacier Bay, which will count for two — it’s a national park and a national preserve. Though that will help him reach his ultimate goal, he says he wouldn’t mind a change of pace.

“I’m kind of slowing down a little bit because I’ve really had a good time doing all this. And I’m going to miss the trips that I’ve taken with my brother, who’s been one of my co-travelers, and my wife,” he said.

Selleck may be nearing the end of his list, but his travels are far from over. He and his wife plan to take their two oldest granddaughters to Yellowstone next year. He hopes their trip to the nation’s oldest national park will spark the same wonder for the next generation. 

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include Pete Selleck’s hometown, Greenville, South Carolina.

The Sitka Assembly, acting as a quasi-judicial body, unanimously denied a citizen’s appeal over a public records request at its meeting Tuesday night (8-25-26). 

Austin Cranford submitted a records request to the city clerk’s office in June, asking for information on changes to the city’s public records request process online. The city launched a new portal in June to address a massive increase in requests over the past decade and make the process more efficient. 

Cranford wants the city to provide legal justification for two additions to the requester’s form. 

“The city’s digital portal requires every online requester to sign a certificate of non-litigation affiliation and runs the request through a set of automated narrowing prompts,” he told the assembly Tuesday. “The paper form does neither. So I ask the city to identify the ordinance, statute, opinion, directive, or memo behind those extra requirements on the digital side. I did not ask anyone to write me an essay. Only what rule or rules this is based on and who decided it? This is the whole appeal.”

In his appeal, Cranford said the city refused to search for, or respond to, his request for the “legal framework,” and did not confirm that the records don’t exist. 

Municipal Attorney Rachel Jones said this portion of Cranford’s request did not ask for a public record — it was asking for legal analysis, which goes beyond the scope of a public records request. 

“It would be like asking a librarian to review Lord of the Rings and assess if it was a good authorship decision to have Sam and Frodo have a bromance instead of having a romance or an enemy relationship,” she said. “You’d have to go through every page where the character development happened. You’d have to apply the narrative structure of heroic epics. You’d have to look at brotherly love and why that’s a good narrative choice or not, and then pull every page that shows why that was a justified or unjustified decision. That would be asking a librarian to conduct literary analysis, and it’s the same thing here.”

The assembly said they believed Jones made a clear argument and unanimously denied Cranford’s request in a 6-0 vote. 

Cranford is a former Sitka Assembly candidate, and he’s fought several public records request denials before the assembly since 2024. He also sued the city in 2025, alleging censorship on the Sitka Police Department’s Facebook page. He’s the son of former police sergeant Gary Cranford, who sued the city several years ago and settled for over $300,000 out of court. 

She joins three other candidates running for two open assembly seats – they are JJ Carlson, Sherri Blankenship and Darrell Windsor.  

Hall declined KCAW’s request for an interview. 

Sitka’s municipal election is Tuesday, October 6.

In Cranford’s appeal, he says the city refused to search for, or respond to, his request for a “legal framework” for the additions, but did not confirm that the records don’t exist, so he’s fighting the decision. A brief from Municipal Attorney Rachel Jones says this portion of Cranford’s request did not ask for a public record– it was asking for legal analysis. A “legal framework” Jones says, is beyond the scope of a public records request. 

Tonight, the assembly will hear arguments from both Cranford and city staff. Acting as a quasi-judicial body, the group may grant or deny the appeal.

Cranford is a former Sitka Assembly candidate, and this the latest of several records appeals he has made before the assembly since 2024. He also sued the city in 2025, alleging censorship on the Sitka Police Department’s Facebook page. He’s the son of former police sergeant Gary Cranford, who sued the city several years ago, alleging he was unfairly demoted from sergeant to officer in breach of his union contract. The case was settled out of court for over $300,000. 

In other business, at tonight’s meeting the assembly will review an updated sub lease with Alaska Airlines. And it will consider the municipal administrator’s recommendation to hire the city’s interim fire chief, Brian McLaughlin, into the full-time, permanent position.

The Sitka Assembly meets at 6 p.m. tonight. Raven News will broadcast the meeting live, following Alaska News Nightly.

The Sitka Assembly has offered a second interview to a candidate for the city’s top job.

In a special meeting on Friday (8-21-26) the assembly interviewed Gerrie Cotter for the municipal administrator post. Cotter has a law degree from Loyola University Law School in New Orleans, and a bachelor’s degree in international studies from West Virginia University. She currently works as the administrator of Perry Township in Stark County Ohio, a community of just under thirty thousand people.

“We have police, fire, zoning, parks, and roads departments,” she told the assembly during a video call. “I’ve been township administrator there for the past year, and I’ve done quite a bit to help them modernize their processes.”

Before moving into the township administration job last year, Cotter spent nearly 14 years working for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, where she led a statewide workforce development program for young adults, and did policy work. She has also served as a trustee for a township in Ohio, and on a local school board. 

“So I’ve got a wide range of experience, much of it with local government. I really enjoy being able to see the improvements that you’re making at the local level. It’s much easier to see those improvements when you’re working in a particular community. So I do like that aspect of it,” she said.

“I’m also a licensed attorney in the state of New York,” she continued. “So I’m certainly capable of interpreting, drafting, recommending policy.”

The assembly prompted Cotter to share her experience in a variety of areas, from negotiating contracts with unions and doing public outreach, to building a budget and building a team.

“I think just being open-minded and listening to staff to hear what their concerns might be or what they’d like to see changed, and being flexible enough to consider those things is really important, especially when you’re dealing with diverse folks,” Cotter said. “I also think there’s ways that you can, you know, maybe create some more camaraderie and find commonalities and things that folks enjoy doing together to try and create that team environment too.” 

After interviewing Cotter for around an hour, the assembly went behind closed doors in an executive session. When the group returned, Mayor Steven Eisenbeisz announced that they would advance Cotter to a second interview.

Right now, Cotter is the only candidate in the running for the municipal administrator job. The assembly began its search for a new administrator when John Leach, signaled plans to resign last fall. Leach originally planned to step down in May, but extended his work with the city through December.

Cotter’s next interview date has not yet been announced. You can listen back to the full interview here.

Sitka teacher Bridgette Reynolds was recognized at Our Cultural Landscape, Sealaska Heritage Institute’s 2026 culturally responsive education conference, earlier this month (8-6-26). 

Reynolds received SHI’s Distinguished Educator Award, which recognizes teachers who integrate Indigenous knowledge into their lessons. Reynolds teaches science, technology, engineering, and math at Pacific High School. She’s also an adjunct professor at University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, where she leads dual enrollment courses for rural students across the region.

She looks to validate her students’ existing knowledge of math and science.

“Science is just stories about data, and our data keeps getting more exact and more exact and more exact,” Reynolds says. “But as we look back, — the stories we’ve told, our understanding of things — we’ve always been doing science wherever you are.”

Reynolds says practices like constructing ocean-going canoes, managing fisheries, and creating natural paints are all rooted in thousands of years of science. Reynolds says she ties these ideas into her lessons so students can see themselves in the things they’re learning.

Jamie Shanley is SHI’s language and primary education director. She says the award highlights teachers like Reynolds who are transforming their craft to weave Indigenous techniques into their classrooms and their communities.

“Teaching is a very hard job, and it is undervalued in many ways. Sealaska Heritage really wants to uphold our educators,” Shanley says.

Principal Matt Groen says Pacific High School’s place-based, hands-on approach fosters learning outside of the classroom. He says Reynolds champions inclusive and innovative education. 

“She’s always constantly challenging what education should be,” Groen says. “Is it reaching all learners of all backgrounds? Is it relevant? Is it rigorous? Is it taking students to that next level? And are we helping our students make that transition into adulthood?”

Groen says these ideas have been staples in Reynold’s classroom since she joined the Sitka School District over a decade ago. 

“So we went around the other side of the house where the front door was, and began attacking the fire,” he said. “We found the fire to be in one of the first floor bedrooms, which was very, very much engulfed in fire at that point, and the house had filled pretty significantly with smoke throughout.”  

McLaughlin said the crew knocked down the initial blaze, and then began working to vent smoke out of the house. After about two hours, first responders were able to secure the scene and return to the fire hall.

He said the home was vacant at the time of the fire, and the cause is currently under investigation. While the source of ignition is still unclear, he believes the fire started in the first floor bedroom which suffered significant damage. 

“Throughout the rest of the house, there was smoke damage as well. So it’ll be a lot of cleaning and some significant repairs in that bedroom for sure,” he said.

“The person walking by, who saw the smoke and took the the minute to call us, saved that house,” he said. “If they if they just kept walking and forgotten about it, the house probably would have burned down. It would have gotten out of control.”

McLaughlin said don’t be afraid to call 911. He also asked that folks in the vicinity of a fire response keep a safe distance, and follow the instructions of emergency responders at the scene for their safety. 

Last year, a small group gathered at Sitka Public Library for the Big Ideas Book Club. For a couple of months, they’d meet weekly to discuss short stories and novellas across eras and perspectives. Earlier this month (8-18-26), the book club returned for its second year— this time with a new, historical focus.

Garrett Faulkner sits at one of six tables circled up in the middle of Sitka’s public library. He teaches writing and literature at Outer Coast, an undergraduate liberal arts program in town, and he’s helping lead this year’s Big Ideas Book Club. 

“History of any type — especially American history — is so put together and kind of reconstituted every time we think about it, and so I thought it would be interesting to look at the way that different pieces of American art are thinking about American history and American culture,” Faulkner says.

This year marked the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Faulkner, alongside Adult Services Librarian Margot O’Connell, selected texts, visual art, and music that look back on the nation’s history from different perspectives.

“We like to celebrate big anniversaries, but also those are sort of moments of reflection and reckoning with our own memories, how things are collectively remembered, how things are memorialized,” O’Connell says.

To prepare for today’s conversation, Sitkans read three excerpts: the opening chapter of Benjamin Franklin’s memoir, a lesser known short story by 19th century writer Nathaniel Hawthorne called “My Kinsmen, Major Molineux,” and an article from The Atlantic reflecting on Hawthorne’s point of view in that piece. 

“We’re kind of looking at like founding myths of the republic, and how people — some of whom were much more contemporary to those times — were looking back on those times and remembering them,” O’Connell says.

Lynn Bastoky, an English teacher at Mt. Edgecumbe High School, is a returning book club member. For Bastoky, the big ideas in this week’s readings are spurring some big questions. 

“As we move through history and change and evolve, how do we feel about our past? How do we feel about ourselves now? How did we feel about our past when we were in the past?” Bastoky asks.

Faulkner says historical content can spark conversations about how diverse people from different time periods perceive the past. 

“Art doesn’t have to treat with history necessarily, but when it does, it introduces all sorts of contradictions and points of contention,” he says. “Not that it has to be something especially contentious, but it is definitely fun to talk about with peers in the community.”

O’Connell says we consume a lot of information — the things we see in the news or on social media. But we don’t always have the time to digest it all. In response to that, this book club offers some breathing room. 

“It is valuable to look at things with intent and to look at things carefully, and then to kind of sit with how you feel about those things to present that to other people, and also to be challenged by other people’s ideas,” O’Connell says.

In the coming weeks, the Big Ideas Book Club will analyze how sculpture, public art, and music capture American culture and memory. The group is full, but O’Connell hopes this creates conversations across the community.