After nearly 30 years, the Tongass Land Management Plan will be undergoing a major revision that will influence how the nation’s largest national forest will be managed for the next 30 years. Sitka Conservation Society’s Executive Director Andrew Thoms joins KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the potential changes to the plan, and how Sitkans can make their voices heard.

Sitka’s Fish to Schools program set a record for the most amount of fish donated in a school year. 

For 15 years, the Sitka Conservation Society has been a steward for the program, enabling local schools to serve fish caught from the neighboring waters on the same lunch trays known for sloppy joes and rectangular pizza. Communications Director Caitlin Blaisdell says some favorite school lunches have emerged from the program. 

“Kids love the rockfish tacos. That is just a hit every single time. But being able to go in and see the program hands-on, I’ve been able to see a few other meals, like their salmon chowder at Mount Edgecumbe High School. Oh my goodness, it’s some of the best chowder I have ever had,” says Blaisdell. “You can’t beat that in a school lunch program, and you’re looking for whole foods, nutritious foods, less processed foods, and nourishing our kids.”

Last year, the nonprofit received a record-breaking 6700 pounds of donated fish for the 2025-2026 school year. One fisherman and longtime donor, Andrew Friske, said for his crew, the decision to give a portion of their catch this year was personal. 

“[My crew was] made up of four teenagers, all who have gone either through the Sitka School District or Mount Edgecumbe High School. And we talked about donating part of their catch as part of their crew shares. They were super excited to do it,” said Friske. “We ended up donating 20 or 30 whole frozen at sea cohos to the program this year, which will hopefully feed or have already fed a bunch of students.”

In addition to individual donations by fishermen, Fish to Schools’ record-breaking year was also enabled by the generosity of local organizations. Shee Atiká, Sitka’s urban Native corporation, donated nearly 4000 pounds of sockeye salmon, the first time it has ever been served through Fish to Schools. 

For Blaisdell, reaching this milestone is especially meaningful after scaling back the program following the initial outbreak of COVID-19. The Sitka School Board voted this past March to determine their own lunch menus, which means that Fish to Schools meals will make a more regular appearance in cafeterias this year.

“Knowing that this has been a 15-year-long program, and it’s still going strong, and it’s going stronger than ever, really leans towards showing that community driven vision and that community passion of bringing fish into schools is really, really strong here,” said Blaisdell. “And we love to see it, and we love to support it, and we love to take it to the next level, and hopefully reach out to more communities to show them how that how they can do this too.”

As longtime Sitkans and both parents to kids growing up in Sitka schools, both Blaisdell and Friske feel that Fish to Schools provides an invaluable service in connecting students with healthy and culturally-meaningful meals. For Friske, it makes the work he does as a fisherman even more meaningful.

“Just being able to offer some of the best food in the world, which is only a couple miles from our doorsteps, and put it on [the] plates of our students, was amazing,” said Friske. “And just to see firsthand the kids enjoying salmon or halibut or black cod is one of the reasons why we go fishing, and to be able to see it firsthand is the biggest reward.”

Friske is looking forward to donating to the program this year, challenging himself and other fishermen to have 2026 beat last year’s record. 

Eleven-year-old Thomas Montion wanders down the aisle between two long tables covered in dishes of herring egg pasta, tandoori salmon bites, octopus and potatoes, and bull kelp pickles. Two hundred Sitkans line up in the hall, anticipating the many dishes they’ll try at this year’s feast.

They’re here for Sitka Conservation Society’s annual wild foods potluck, where locals share dishes featuring ingredients fished, foraged, hunted, or cultivated in Southeast Alaska. 

“All of this stuff looks so good. I’m going to get some of these black bear enchiladas…black bears don’t live here, so they must have hunted this somewhere else,” Thomas says, as he places a spoonful on his plate. “I’m going to get some of these salmon cakes. Venison, mushroom, meatballs? That sounds good. I’m gonna get one of these. I love deer.”

Thomas is joined by his mom, dad, three siblings, and friend Luke. 

“I’m really excited just to see what different types of food they have that I’ve never heard about before,” Thomas says. 

Thomas’s dad is in the U.S. Coast Guard, and moved with his family from Oregon to Sitka in June. Since then, Thomas started a Youtube channel called “The Wild Tom & Chuck Show,” where he and his brother make videos about “fishing, exploring and messing around outside.” Tonight, he’s using his GoPro to film his experience at the annual potluck.

“Oregon was sort of like here, just not quite as big of a salmon run,” Thomas said. “It used to be really big along the Columbia River, but kind of was overfished and dammed. We had some seafood, but not quite as much as here. So it’s been a really cool experience to have all this wild food.”

Kathleen Montion, Thomas’ mom, says Thomas is known for his adventurous palate.

“We have really good eaters,” she says. “We do a lot of foraging and hunting and fishing. We’re not super good at it, but we try, and they love finding chicken of the woods and all different sorts of things. They’re always up for trying anything.”

Kathleen says Sitka has been extremely welcoming to her family, and she wants her four kids to understand how lucky they are to live in such an abundant environment as the Tongass. 

“I want them to know just what a unique experience that is, and how we’re so blessed to have all of these foods available to us, and definitely how important it is to make sure that the food sources are protected so that we can continue to do this in the future as well,” she says.

SCS has hosted this potluck for about two decades. Deputy Director Katie Riley says this year, the gathering is a celebration of the many ways we connect with the public lands and waters that sustain us — through the foods we harvest, the cultures we practice, the places we explore, and the communities we build together. She says the theme is especially important in light of the Trump administration’s recent efforts to develop and reduce protections for public lands.

Riley says the event is the conservation society’s chance to say thank you to the community, and celebrate all of the effort that everyone puts into protecting this place and caring about their neighbors. And sharing food, she says, is such a great way to do that.

“One of the things that’s so unique about Sitka and about Southeast Alaska is that food is really one of the core reasons that people have been able to thrive here for so long. Like these healthy, abundant salmon runs that provided for Indigenous people to really be able to flourish in this place,” Riley says. “So when I think about food, I think about my connection to place, land. I think about sharing all of these values that we want to instill in current and future generations about how to take care of a place. It’s really how we can take care of the place that nourishes us and provides us with so much.”

Riley says every year, community members bring a variety of dishes to the event, and usually there are a couple of really exciting, novel things that people might not get a chance to try in their everyday lives. One that stood out to her this year? The black bear enchiladas.

“This black bear was harvested this spring in 2025 and we made sure to save enough for the wild foods potluck,” says Jordan Tanguay, who, along with her partner, harvested the bear near Juneau, where they used to live.

This is their second year participating in the potluck.

“It’s great to see the community come together,” Tanguay says. “And understanding what it means to be a conservation society, I think that theme came through really strongly last year. This year, we’re talking about being connected to the land and why it matters to us. And I think during this time, I find myself really finding that joy of being outside, and a lot of our recreation in not only the state of Alaska, but elsewhere, is really based on things like this.”

Wrapping back around to Thomas towards the end of the potluck, I ask him what his favorite dish was, and the answer is no surprise.

“I think my favorite food was probably the bear enchiladas. Black bear enchiladas. That was very good,” he says. “I think it had some sort of jalapeno pepper in there, very spicy, and I loved it.”

But what’s even better than the bear enchiladas, he says, is the community. 

“It’s so fun that everybody showed up, like everybody’s here, almost everybody from around the island,” Thomas says. “A lot of people showed up. So it’s really fun.”

And, he says, he looks forward to trying even more local foods at next year’s event.

With the voices of students Vance Balovich and Colton McGraw, teacher Mike Vieira, Sitka Community Land Trust director Randy Hughey, and Sitka Conservation Society director Andrew Thoms.

Saw cutting wood…

Vance Balovich: We’re building sheds for those houses that were recently built. And so this is all funded by a grant, I’m pretty sure, from the Land Trust, all this material that we’re using. So they give us some materials, and we just give them a finished product. 

KCAW: How’s  it been working with locally-milled lumber?

Balovich: It makes me feel like Sitka is more independent by using their own lumber instead of relying on other people’s lumber. And it is just a little harder to work with because it’s all rough cut, so it’s not straight. So we have to make the cuts straight, and make everything flat and plumb and flush.

Randy Hughey: The Alaska Community Foundation gave the grant. It was for $45,000 and it was for three semesters of work, which will wrap up in May, and there’s a possibility that we can re-up to get a total of 14 little sheds for the neighborhood. The Alaska Community Foundation has a local branch, the Sitka Legacy Foundation, and they’ve done a lot of good work. This is just the largest and most interesting of the projects that we’ve funded through them,

Mike Vieira: It’s a very small footprint, just the size of a 4×8 sheet of plywood. And really, the intention is that those homes are so tight to give those folks a chance to put their Costco totes and their crab pots and their strollers and their bikes up out of the rain. We were able to kind of come up with an architectural design on the outside that allowed us to use some of the lap siding – spruce lap siding – that was milled in Tenakee by Gordon Chew, and then put a little flavor on top of that with some good old Sitka T1-11 that gave us kind of that vertical batten look.

KCAW: What grade are you in? 

Colton McGraw: Sophomore?

KCAW: What do you think your educational plans are for the next couple of years, and then beyond?

McGraw: Just trying to take these classes throughout high school and then college, and going try to do some type of construction management program or business.

KCAW: Has working with Tongass lumber had any sort of impact on you? Would you like to use this material more in the future?

McGraw: Yes and no. It’s definitely cool to be using the wood. But lumber that you buy from the store is definitely a little nicer. It’s like, not as twisted, and it’s just easier to cut, easier to work with.

Vieira: I’ve worked with yellow cedar, locally-milled. I’ve worked with alder, the spruce that Gordon does really is a good product. It’s really very stable. It’s really very predictable. It’s something that I can have success with students. So we’re interested in seeing Gordon and his son continue to produce product, and other mills in the region try to replicate what we got there. 

Andrew Thoms: Yeah, this project’s worked really well for us, because it’s helping us figure out what we can use our local timber resource for, what the opportunities are, and what the constraints are for sourcing local lumber. And we’re training youth to be on career pathways to do construction work, and we need a lot of workers in Sitka to do construction work, and there’s a dearth of those. So putting them through this program and that they’re either going into the workforce or able to work on their own homes is a real good thing for us.

Balovich: Vance Balovich.

KCAW: Vance, your family is in the construction business?   

Balovich: Yes, my dad owns CBC construction. 

McGraw: Colton McGraw. 

KCAW: And McGraw is a familiar name in the construction industry here. What’s your place in the McGraw clan?

McGraw: Chris McGraw is my dad. Chuck McGraw is my grandpa. He owns McG Constructors.

KCAW: Are you thinking about getting into the construction business?

McGraw: I am, yes.

KCAW: Do you want to be part of the hands-on construction?

McGraw: Probably both, honestly. I want to be part of the family business, but I also want to work in the field as well.

Vieira: One of the fun things from this semester is that I had a lot of names in there that are synonymous with construction in Sitka: Balovich, McGraw, Martin. A lot of sons of contractors who work professionally. And, you know, it’s fun to work with that crew, because it was obvious that they’ve worked their whole lives, and so I didn’t have to teach them how to work. I just had to teach them the basics of carpentry and construction, and they were eager to go to work and apply those skills. But we kind of dangled a free breakfast at the Nugget in front of them in the last month, and it came down to the very last day, and I said, ‘Land Trust is buying breakfast at the Nugget, if you guys can get this thing wrapped up.’ And you know, at the end of the semester, kids kind of finish up in other classes. They’ve taken their finals. They’ve got a day or two where they’re just kind of killing (time) until the semester ends. And Vance Balovich was down every class period for the last two days of the semester and making sure that his shed got finished, so that we could get to the Nugget and have our breakfast.

KCAW: Are you thinking about a career in construction? 

Balovich: It’s a second choice. My first choice is to go to college and then dental school and then be a dentist.

Andrew Thoms is the director of the Sitka Conservation Society. SCS is holding its annual Wild Foods Potluck this 5 p.m. Sunday, November 10, at Harrigan Centennial Hall. Food is one of the closest humans have to the natural environment. In addition, the Society will present on some of its work. The event is open to the public.

For many high-school students, junior year is a whirlwind of academics, extracurriculars, and test prep. One group of students in Sitka has added something else to their load – a class on how to navigate the Federal Subsistence Board process.

In a conference room at University of Alaska-Southeast in Sitka, Mt. Edgecumbe High School students Elizabeth Griggs and Naomi Jones are eating strips of smoked salmon and talking about what subsistence means to them. Jones, who grew up in the village of Tyonek on the Kenai Peninsula, harvests moose and salmon with her family. 

“It’s a good snack to have as a family or as a meal, and it helps bring up the stories of when my papa was little and how he shares those with us and makes it all fun,” she says. “It just makes me happy.”

Griggs considers the smoked salmon in her hand as she talks about her experience in the western village of Koliganek.

“It just reminds you of home,” Griggs says. “And it kind of grounds you. You could be feeling some sort of way, or anxious or homesick, and you just want to go home, and then just having that little pick-me-up reminds you of home and your family and just your way of life. Because that’s what it is, it’s how you live your life.”

Jones and Griggs aren’t sharing this information just for fun – they’re preparing testimony to share with the Federal Subsistence Board when they meet next week in Anchorage. They’re part of a class offered by the US Forest Service and Sitka Conservation Society that prepares high school students to navigate the board process. 

Heather Bauscher is the Fisheries Community Engagement Specialist for Sitka Conservation Society and Salmon State. Bauscher has been teaching this class for seven years now, and she says the goal is to make students more comfortable with a challenging, bureaucratic process. The Federal Subsistence Board oversees subsistence harvest of fish and wildlife on federal lands and waters. They’re also tasked with assigning rural designation – a designation that Ketchikan is currently seeking.

“As many people in this community and other communities know, engaging in these processes can be really difficult and can feel very overwhelming at first,” Bauscher says.

It’s a process that can be especially difficult for rural Alaskans and elders, who may have limited connectivity or ability to travel. Bauscher and her co-instructor, Forest Service fish biologist Ashley Bolwerk, are helping students to break down the process into bite-sized pieces. Today, they tackle the structure of the board and the regional advisory councils. Later this week, they’re meeting virtually with the board chair, Tony Christianson. And next week, the students head to Anchorage.  

“I think it’s really important to provide experiential learning opportunities to go into these spaces and learn how to navigate this, because I don’t think there’s a way to learn it through books,” Bauscher says. “You have to show up in these spaces, and you have to practice going through it and being there.”

In Anchorage, students will attend the three-and-a-half day meeting and testify in front of the board, using the material they’ve practiced. They’ll meet members of the board, follow proposals, and learn how to network. Griggs says she’s nervous, but excited, to testify. 

“I’m pretty anxious about it, but I think it will be a good opportunity for me to be able to talk about this and advocate for this and show that youth are getting involved, and youth do care,” she says. “So I’m nervous. But for the most part, I’m pretty excited, and excited to learn more about how I can use my voice to really advocate for the things I believe in.”

The Federal Subsistence Board meets April 2-5 in Anchorage. 

What began as a tiny garden bed on the front lawn, has blossomed into a full-fledged Farm-to-Table program for Sitka’s alternative high school.

Pacific High in Sitka this year opened an 1,100-square foot  greenhouse on school grounds, supplemented by an extensive outdoor garden.

Principal Mandy Summer outlined the program for the Sitka School Board on Wednesday (12-6-23). She said that it’s not just about growing plants.

“So the purpose of our program is really to build career, technical, and general skills in youth that they will need to thrive in the future,” said Summer. “We have classes and activities that are 100-percent based in our farm-to-table program, and these include our spring gardening, our garden construction classes, our culinary classes that happen all year long, and our school-wide stewardship days. 

“And so the garden and culinary program also support other classes and learning opportunities by providing space for other projects in science classes, math classes, and our Alaska studies class. We have elementary school field trips from Baranof come over and do potato planting projects in our garden. We’ve had Outer Coast students come and do services. And there’s a high potential for more things like this to happen, as staffing and capacity allows, particularly by offering summer programming opportunities.”

Pacific High has a small student population, relative to the other high schools in Sitka. When the first garden plot was built in 2011, there was only one class associated with it, called “Reading and Weeding.” Now there are tie-ins to classes in all academic areas, and a grant-funded garden coordinator, Andrea Fraga, who corrals over forty volunteers in summertime to support student gardeners. And Mandy Summer says that at Pacific High, all the students are gardeners.

“When we have garden stewardship days, even our most disengaged students inside the building and inside the classroom, are very engaged outside in the garden,” she said. “The work is supporting their confidence and their pride, supporting their development of a good work ethic. And the kitchen and garden spaces also allow us to make connections with traditional foods for our majority indigenous student body.”

Pacific High’s Farm-to-Table program receives significant support from the Sitka Conservation Society, which at first served as administrator for the garden coordinator job, but has since spearheaded raising over $150,000 to construct the greenhouse. Gardening might not be at the top of the list of many conservation organizations, but the Society’s Chandler O’Connell said the program is in the SCS wheelhouse.

“We strongly believe in youth development as an essential pathway for building sustainable thriving communities,” said O’Connell. “The youth and Southeast are so amazing, and they often have so many incredible opportunities thanks to the environment and communities and cultures that hold them and surround them. And they also face really significant challenges. As you all know, people experiencing poverty, violence, trauma, struggling with mental health challenges. And so programs that focus on early intervention, prevention, and also early exposure to career pathways that are rooted and values in place can make a really big difference.”

Although the structure is complete, there is still much to do to make the new greenhouse fully functional. Principal Summer said that there are outstanding grant applications for funding to supply utilities to the building, and for other equipment to heat the garden beds in winter.

The Sitka School Board was impressed with the program. Member Steve Morse said the district owed “a big thank you” to the Conservation Society for their work to build the program.

Chandler O’Connell responded that “the students are building this program themselves right now. And that’s been going on for 12 years. And that’s really where the success lies.”

The annual Sitka Conservation Society Wild Foods Potluck and annual meeting is coming up, promising dishes that feature ingredients foraged, hunted, or grown in Sitka. SCS Executive Director Andrew Thoms and board member Adrienne Wilber joined KCAW’s Brooke Schafer to talk wild foods, conservation, and community. Listen to the full interview here:

The 2023 Wild Foods Potluck will be held Sunday, November 19 at 5 pm at Harrigan Centennial Hall. For more information, email info@sitkawild.org or call 907-747-7509.

A new exhibit is opening in Sitka, in honor of artists Eric and Pam Bealer. 

The year-long project is a collaboration between a visual artist and a writer, both of whom found inspiration in the extraordinary lives of the Bealers, and in the extraordinary nature of their passing.

Note: The Squirrel and the Bear opening reception will be 5-7 pm Friday, April 7, in the first floor of the Venneburg Insurance building on Harbor Drive. All are welcome. The exhibit will be up until April 21. For purposes of disclosure, Maite Lorente serves on the board of directors of KCAW.

Eric Bealer was a wood engraver. Even if you don’t recognize his name, you’ll instantly recognize his art: Intricately detailed prints of the Southeast Alaskan landscape surrounding the home he made with his wife Pam, a textile artist, in Phonograph Creek, just outside of Pelican, on Chichagof Island.

In most ways, the Bealers were like so many other Alaskans living off the grid,  forging a life from the land. But in one way they were quite different: Although it’s been five years since the couple died, their home – and their spirit – are very much alive.

“The interesting thing about that couple is when you go there, her presence is strong, really strong,” said Steve Lawrie, a portrait artist and painter who’s been out to Phonograph Creek several times.

“And Eric not so much, until you get out into the boat shop because he built boats, in addition to other things. He built all the buildings on the property. They built boats. It’s not that they’re any different in some ways than a lot of Alaskans. You know, you can look around and see people living out in the sticks and right there around Pelican. It’s the amount of art that Eric produced with Pam’s help. That’s pretty amazing.”

Then and now, Eric Bealer’s engravings remain some of the most iconic work produced in Alaska, and they can be found in homes and galleries everywhere. The exhibit installed in Sitka isn’t a wall filled with Bealer’s prints, however, it is a collection of over 50 paintings by Lawrie and his literary collaborator, Maite Lorente, which illuminate the lives of these remarkable people.

The exhibit is called The Squirrel and the Bear.

“Eric identified – if you like – as a squirrel, and boy, it is appropriate,” said Lawrie. “I don’t know if you’ve ever met him but he’s very frenetic. Like a squirrel. His wife Pam, more grounded, more solid to the earth. She identified with bear,  so that’s how the title came about.”

“They tried to live as close to the earth as possible,’ said Andrew Thoms, the director of the Sitka Conservation Society.

“They tried to have as small of an environmental footprint as they could. They built their house out of beach logs that they salvaged. They practiced a subsistence lifestyle and put up all their food, they had gardens and grew stuff,  and they made a lot of their art from what they found and gathered and were inspired by in the surrounding environment. And it was a really Alaskan way of life off the grid.”\

In  widely publicized news at the time, the Bealers disappeared from their home at Phonograph Creek in the fall of 2018 (and also from their remote property at Green Top, on Yakobi Island), leaving behind packages and postage, notes for friends and family, and a message for everyone else that they had chosen to end their lives together, and to waste no time or money trying to find their bodies.

They were both in their late 50s, Pam suffering from increasingly debilitating multiple sclerosis , and Eric – as far as is known – in good health.

They left their Phonograph Creek property and its contents to the Sitka Conservation Society, to benefit the Society’s Living Wilderness Fund, and it’s now a retreat built by artists, for artists.

“Eric and Pam lived and built their property and designed – everything that they had up there was a work of art,” said Thoms, “you know, just like the artwork that they did. They were true artists to their core, and it was infused in everything that they did. They had a very strong connection with the lands and waters around them. And you can feel that they’re in the property. And the Living Wilderness Fund honors them, and the founders of the Conservation Society, and the people that really did great work to help preserve this place for future generations.

Although some will say the Bealers’ lives ended tragically, Steve Lawrie doesn’t. The context of The Squirrel and the Bear is much greater than the detail of their deaths.

“It’s a love story,” he said. “ Look at me, I’m an older guy: We all know how life works. But this couple met when they were young. And within two days, they started a life together and they never deviated. They went from back East to Haines, Alaska. They lived there for four or five years and then moved to Phonograph Creek when that property became available. And they never deviated from what Andrew just described, which is a life far less impactful life than I live for example. And I really admire their tenacity and in doing it.” 

Lawrie has become well-known in recent years for his oversized portraits – paintings large enough for the National Portrait Gallery, but displaying, in most cases, only his subjects’ faces in painstaking detail. While this might recommend him as an interpreter of Eric Bealer’s work, Lawrie goes in a different direction for The Squirrel and the Bear, and the departure has resulted in some surprising – and profound – new work.

“They’re all paintings that describe the Bealers,” Lawrie said. “There are several portraits. The home, the interior of the home, the exterior of the home. Basically, I became an illustrator in this series of paintings, I suppose it would be fair to say. I think they explain their lives – this whole thing will help explain their lives.”

Lawrie credits his collaborator, Maite Lorente, for pouring over the journals and photos the Bealers left behind, including their notes to one another, and giving the exhibit a structure. Some of Lorente’s poems and excerpts from other writings are incorporated into the paintings themselves – over 50 in all.The Squirrel and the Bear seems made-to-order for a book someday, but the Sitka Conservation Society doesn’t have a timeline. For now, it’s both a tribute to the Bealers and to their home in the Tongass, as well as fresh insight into the lives they led, and the choices they made.

Sitka Conservation Society and the U.S. Forest Service invite Sitkans to a community potluck and workshop this Saturday to learn about the Federal Subsistence Board process. The workshop will include an introduction to the board process and help participants learn how to navigate regulatory meetings. Heather Bauscher and Ashley Bolwerk joined KCAW’s Erin Fulton to share more details. Listen to the full interview here:

This event will be held February 25 from 12:30-5pm at Centennial Hall. For more information, contact Ashley Bolwerk at 907-747-4299 / ashley.bolwerk@usda.gov or Heather Bauscher at 907-747-7509 / heather@sitkawild.org.