Next week, the Sitka Conservation Society is hosting the first of several annual fundraising cruises. Heather Bauscher joined KCAW’s Brooke Schafer to discuss three of the Society’s cruises this summer: Birds, Intertidal, and Kruzof Wildlife and Geology. Listen here:

Tickets for the Kruzof Bird Cruise are $65 per person and are available for purchase at Old Harbor Books. For more info, call 747-7509 or email info@sitkawild.org.

The Sitka Conservation Society is holding its annual meeting on Sunday, February 13th, on Zoom. Policy Director Katie Riley joined KCAW’s Erin Fulton to discuss the event, a celebration of the organization’s past year’s work and looking forward to what is on the horizon for 2022. Listen here:

This week, the Sitka Conservation Society is hosting a town-hall-style meeting on the released Roadless Rule Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) and how to take action. Katie Riley and Heather Bauscher joined KCAW’s Erin Fulton in the studio to discuss the event, happening at 7 p.m. Wednesday, October 14, via Zoom. Listen here:

Downloadable audio.

The 16th Annual Parade of the Species will take place this Friday, April 21, the day before Earth Day. Julia Tawney with Sitka Conservation Society and co-organizer Marian Allen will be in promote this and other Earth Week events.

Make sure to dress as your favorite species for the costume contest. Post-parade fun and snacks will be provided at the Sitka Sound Science Center.

Line up by 2:45 at Totem Square for costume judging. Parade begins at 3:00 pm and goes down Lincoln Street to the Sitka Sound Science Center (834 Lincoln Street).

Prizes will be awarded for Best Group, Best Local Animal or Plant, Best Use of Recycled Materials and Most Realistic. The Best Group winner will receive a voucher for up to 4 tickets to use on a SCS boat cruise this summer!

For more info visit www.sitkawild.org or contact Julia at SCS. 747-7509 or julia@sitkawild.org

Downloadable audio.

If you think your Thanksgiving is the biggest, most mouth-watering meal of the year, then you haven’t been to Sitka’s Wild Foods Potluck. Long tables covered with casserole dishes of all shapes and sizes fill Harrigan Centennial Hall. Smells of soups and stews, cakes and cobblers waft through the air.

“It’s our opportunity to say ‘Thank you,’ to the community,” explains Sophie Nethercut.

Fish pie, featuring rock fish, pink salmon, homegrown potatoes, and organic carrots. (Emily Russell/KCAW Photo)

Nethercut is the community organizer for Sitka Conservation Society, an environmental nonprofit. SCS has hosted the Wild Foods Potluck every November for the last fifteen years.

“Who doesn’t  love the idea of bringing a dish and coming to a space where their taste buds can go crazy all night?” asks Nethercut.

And go crazy they most certainly will. Hundreds of people carry in platters of food they’ve either hunted or harvested. There are jars of stringy green beach asparagus, plates of shiny black cod tips, and, of course, no shortage of salmon dips.

The dishes are just as diverse as the crowd. Fishermen and their families fill chairs, kids crawl underneath tables, and couples mingle in line.

Venison meatballs with homegrown cabbage, kale, and hand-picked chanterelle mushrooms. (Emily Russell/KCAW Photo)

Zoe Trafton is in line, but she’s not mingling. She’s 10 and her plate is almost full.

Trafton explains what she has so far: “A meatball, herring egg sushi– my family made it– some ribs, some venison stew, I’m not totally sure what that is, some mac ‘n cheese, pumpkin bread, and gnocchi,” 

Along with a wide variety of foods, there’s also a full spectrum of flavors, from sweet applesauce, savory stews, and even some spiciness thrown into the mix.

“Would you like some kelp fries?” asks a mother to her young daughter.

She says her daughter’s first food was salmon eggs, so spicy kelp fries don’t scare her.

Behind them in line is Ellen Frankenstein. She’s here with her husband, Spencer, and says the potluck is one of Sitka’s best events.

 “It is really wonderful, because one thing we can still do is share food and protect our resources and be connected to each other and what we care about.” And, Frankenstein adds, “look for what is actually common between us.”

Frankenstein is referring to the recent election, because what’s a holiday without some talk of politics. But tonight the focus is on food.

Frankenstein’s plate is already piled high.

“I have some Chicken of the Woods curry, I think I have some black cod, I have some caribou sausage, I have some chowder I think made by high schoolers,” Frankenstein says.

Moses Wiseman, from Chefornak, and Christian Charlie, from Marshall, are students at Mt. Edgecumbe High School. (Emily Russell/KCAW Photo)

Moses Wiseman is a student at Mt. Edgecumbe High School. ” I’m from Chefornak. It’s far away,” explains Wiseman.

Wiseman says the food here is pretty fancy, but really good, he says. He smiles when he thinks about how food is prepared in his home village.

 “When somebody catches a bearded seal they take their guts out and the boy starts biting on it,” Wiseman explains. “When they come home the mother or the girls start cleaning it. After it’s really clean, then you rinse it. You cook it or you can eat it raw,” Wiseman says.

Wiseman is sitting next to his friend Christian Charlie. Charlie is also a student at Mt. Edgecumbe High School and is from Marshall, a village north of Chefornak on the Yukon River.

“The food here is different, but it’s really good,” Charlie says. “It makes you think of home.”

He’s chewing on fry bread at the moment, a staple in many Alaska Native villages.

A few tables away, Nelson Frank gears up for dessert. Frank is from Sitka and grew up subsisting off the land and the sea. He’s 70 now, so knows good smoked salmon when he tastes it, and says tonight it was perfect.

Nelson Frank is from Sitka and grew up subsisting off the land and the sea. (Emily Russell/KCAW Photo)

But there were a few things Frank was missing.

“I only wished that they had some more traditional food, like fermented eggs,” says Frank. Mixed with berries, Frank says, it make for a delicious dessert.

“Kanéegwál’. Salmon– fermented eggs– and highbush cranberries,” Frank explains.

For all you fishing and foraging out there, Frank is looking at you to round out the dessert table at next year’s Wild Foods Potluck.

About forty people turned out for a meeting organized by the Sitka Conservation Society to discuss HB77, a controversial permitting bill before the Alaska legislature. (KCAW photo/Rachel Waldholz)

Last week (Thurs 2-13-2014), about 40 people jammed into the Homeport Eatery in downtown Sitka to speak out against a proposed law, House Bill 77. HB77 is part of an effort by the Parnell Administration to streamline the permitting process at the Department of Natural Resources. But some Sitkans are joining a chorus of critics who say the bill goes too far.

Listen to iFriendly audio.

About half an hour into the meeting, moderator Eric Jordan asked if anyone wanted to speak in favor of HB77.

JORDAN: Is there anybody here who wants to speak in favor of the bill?

Nobody did. Instead, most of the evening’s testimony sounded something like this:

BAINES: The Sitka Tribe has taken a stance in opposition of HB77.
SCORZELLI: We’re against it. We’re against HB77.
HARRIS: I think the whole bill should pretty much just be scrapped.

That was Michael Baines, of the Sitka Tribe; Andrew Scorzelli of the Chum Trollers’ Association; and Scott Harris of the Sitka Conservation Society.

HB77 would make a host of changes, large and small, to the way the Department of Natural Resources permits projects on state land. Critics say the bill would severely curtail public input on resource decisions. The Parnell administration says Alaska needs a more streamlined permitting process to ease development.

“We had gotten into quite a hole with backlogs of authorizations,” said Wyn Menefee, the Chief of Operations for the Division of Mining, Land and Water at the DNR. Menefee was supposed to attend the meeting in Sitka, but his flight was cancelled because of snow. Speaking later to KCAW, Menefee said that HB77 will make the DNR more efficient.

“We’re trying to tackle that and trying to make sure that we can be an agency that can provide timely, certain and efficient authorizations for folks,” Menefee said.

But at the meeting in Sitka, speakers said the bill is an overreach.

“I think everybody has seen situations – hatcheries is a perfect example – where the permitting process can seem overly burdensome,” said Linda Behnken, executive director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association. “But overly burdensome is better than irreparable harm.
”

Speakers at the meeting worried that the bill would give the DNR commissioner too much authority, and limit the public’s right to appeal DNR decisions. The bill would restrict appeals to people who can prove they are “substantially and adversely affected” by a decision, as opposed to simply “aggrieved” in the current language; another section stipulates that only people who  participate “meaningfully” in the public comment period will be allowed to appeal.

Speakers at the Sitka meeting also raised the question of water reservations.

“Right now, individuals, organizations, tribal governments can apply for permits to protect in-stream flow to make sure there’s adequate water to meet the needs of salmon in a stream at any time of year,” Behnken said. “And that opportunity will be precluded with HB77.”

Whereas a water appropriation takes a certain amount of water out of a river or lake, a water reservation keeps a certain amount in a body of water – for instance to protect fish habitat or water quality. Right now, anybody can apply for a water reservation – including any individual, nonprofit, or tribe. The wording in HB77 would limit that right to government agencies.

Until now, water reservations haven’t been a major issue in Southeast. That’s because it applies to state land, and most land in Southeast is federal. But, speakers said, it represents what they object to most in the bill: stripping away the ability of the public to participate in resource decisions.

Menefee said that individuals can still partner with government agencies to apply for water reservations. He said this section of HB77 grew out of a worry that the reservations were being abused as a tactic to stop major projects.

“There are reservations filed on rivers for pretty much the biggest projects around,” Menefee said. “For instance there’s reservations on the Chuitna coal area, on Pebble, on Susitna Dam, on the coal development in Sutton. I mean, if you go through and you look at the different larger projects that are going along, each one of them has a person applying for a water reservation on them.”

But, Menefee said, in response to public opposition, the DNR is working with legislators to make some changes to the bill before it comes up for a vote in the Senate.

“We heard loud and clear the concerns about still allowing people to apply,” Menefee said. “So we’re trying to find language that we can address that.”

Both of Sitka’s legislators, Senator Bert Stedman, a Republican, and Representative Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a Democrat, oppose the bill.

Stedman said that the bill was written too broadly, and pushed through without enough public input.

“This is a classic example where an issue is driven mainly by railbelt elected officials, in an attempt to basically drive it right over the coastal legislators,” Stedman said.

The bill passed the House last year; to become law, it has to pass the Senate and be signed by the Governor. The bill is currently in the Senate Rules Committee — in Stedman’s words,
 “about one inch away from a vote.
”

Back in Sitka, Scott Harris spoke for many in the room when he said, “The people that manage public resources need to listen to the public.”

“That’s America,” Harris said. “That’s Alaska. That’s democracy. And yes, it’s harder, it takes more time, you have to find consensus among different opinions, but tough, that’s the way it needs to be if you’re talking about public resources.”