What you need to know:

• Mat-Su district schools will soon have at least two doses of opioid overdose reversal drugs on hand under a new state law aimed at reducing drug-related deaths.
• Some Mat-Su schools already stock the medication, and school staff administered at least several doses last year, district officials said. The new rule will boost those schools’ supply and provide the medication to others for the first time, they said. State officials will provide schools with a training video on administering the medication.
• Alaska has seen a 47% increase in overdose deaths in the last year, with most cases involving opioids like fentanyl, according to federal data. The state’s per capita rate of fentanyl poisoning is among the highest in the nation.

PALMER — All Mat-Su schools will soon have at least two doses of an opioid overdose reversal drug on hand under a new state law aimed at reducing drug-related deaths.

The legislation requiring schools to have opioid overdose reversal drugs was signed into law Friday by Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy during a ceremony at the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District administration building in Palmer.

The law requires all public schools statewide to have at least two doses of the medication in their main building and at least one dose available during school-sponsored events on campus. Rep. DeLena Johnson, a Republican from Palmer, sponsored the legislation.

“Should the unthinkable occur and someone fall unresponsive because of an opioid overdose, the right device for a person trained to use it is going to be within reach to save a life,” Alaska Chief Medical Officer Dr. Robert Lawrence said during the bill-signing ceremony.

Many Mat-Su schools already have one such dose on hand, Deputy Superintendent Katie Gardner said in an interview Friday. The new law will increase supplies to three doses in some locations and the required two doses in others, she said.

The medications were used at least several times in Mat-Su schools during the 2023-24 school year, Gardner said. More details about those incidents are not available because of student privacy rules, she said. No doses have been used so far this school year, she said.

Overdose-related deaths in Alaska increased 47% between 2022 and 2023, according to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Between August 2021 and August 2022, there were 264 overdose deaths in the state; over the past year, there were 388, federal data show. Most of those deaths were related to opioids, including fentanyl, according to state data. The rate is among the highest in the nation.

Life-saving overdose reversal drugs, typically administered as a nasal spray, can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose within minutes. Of the 75 nonfatal overdoses recorded by state health officials in January, 62 involved the use of such drugs, according to state health data.

“Alaska suffers from an opiate crisis,” Dunleavy said during remarks at the bill signing. “We know that Alaska has one of the highest, if not the highest, per capita rates of fentanyl poisoning here this past year. It’s not something that any of us are proud of.”

The new opioid overdose kits, which come in black zippered pouches, will be distributed across the state over the next several weeks, state health officials said. The kits include two doses of the nasal spray drug, safety gloves, a CPR face shield and strips that can test drugs for fentanyl. They said training on how to administer the medication will be provided through a short online video.

State officials recommend that school administrators store the kits in a central location with the school’s heart defibrillator, which they also are required to keep on hand. School staff will regularly monitor the kits to ensure the drugs have not reached their expiration dates, officials said.

Mat-Su addiction recovery activist and former teacher Michael Carson said he hopes to someday see the anti-overdose medication requirement extended to school buses, where students can spend hours each day with little supervision. Such a provision was originally included in the legislation but was removed before passage. Without a state mandate, the decision to carry the drug on buses in Mat-Su would be up to bus contractor Durham, school district officials said.

The law requiring anti-overdose medication in schools, signed Friday, also includes a separate, unrelated measure ensuring that correspondence schools can continue to operate following an Alaska Supreme Court decision in May that found some public funding of the program violated the state constitution.

Dunleavy also signed a series of unrelated health care bills during a ceremony at a Capstone medical clinic in Wasilla earlier Friday, including legislation allowing medical clinics in the state to offer care through a subscription service known as “direct health.”

Capstone co-owner Dr. Wade Erickson, who has spent nearly a decade advocating for the change, said the new law simplifies the cost of health care by allowing clinics to sell it in a membership package instead of through complicated health insurance plans. Such programs could lower employee healthcare costs for small businesses while reducing the burden of processing health insurance claims for clinics like his, he said.

Capstone clinics will offer direct care options under the new rule and continue to accept a variety of insurance plans, he said.

— Amy Bushatz can be contacted at abushatz@matsusentinel.com.

What you need to know:

• Mat-Su Borough officials want to fund road projects by asking taxpayers to regularly approve new bond measures, a plan they say will keep tax rates steady rather than letting them fall as old debt is repaid.
• A new road projects bond measure that could be headed to voters in November is part of that strategy. The measure would fund seven projects across the region, including an extension of Engstrom Road and fixes to Settlers Bay Road. The measure will go before the Assembly on Aug. 6.
• The same proposal would also ask the Assembly to approve new bond sales that could cover shortfalls in funding for a series of three previously approved projects.
• Mat-Su’s growing population has increased road usage and maintenance costs, outpacing available funds. Over the last 15 years, the borough has increasingly relied on voter-approved bonds due to increased repair needs paired with decreased outside funding.

PALMER – A proposed Mat-Su bond measure that would fund seven new road projects across the region is part of a long-term borough plan to ask voters to approve a steady stream of new debt over the coming years, all of which would be repaid through property taxes.

Bond debt-related property taxes traditionally grow or shrink based on factors that include interest rates and how much voter-approved debt the borough holds.

Rather than letting borough debt and related taxes fall as bonds are repaid, the plan would keep the tax rate steady by consistently adding new debt to the old, Borough Manager Mike Brown said.

The plan requires borough voters to periodically approve new projects funded at least in part by bond sales. Borough officials hope to put a new bond package on the ballot every three to five years, he said.

“We have to find a rhythm that financially makes sense,” he said. “That’s what we’re working on.”

Keeping the borough’s transportation-related bond debt even by cycling in new voter-approved projects gives the borough both the construction authority and a way to pay for the constant parade of needed road repairs and extensions across the region, Brown said. Federal and state funding could also pay for portions of the approved projects, he said.

The bond measure currently under consideration asks Matanuska-Susitna Borough voters to approve $33.3 million in bonds for seven area road projects. It is scheduled for a vote by the borough assembly on Aug. 6. If approved, it would go before voters in November. It is sponsored by Assembly Member Dmitri Fonov, whose district includes parts of Wasilla.

Mat-Su’s steady population growth has put unsustainable pressure on roads originally designed to handle limited neighborhood traffic, Brown said, while also accelerating wear and tear on major traffic collectors.

As Mat-Su grows, the cost of those repairs has outpaced the money available through Road Service Areas, a system through which residents pay road maintenance levies that vary by region.

Mat-Su is the only area of the state projected to grow in population over the next several decades, according to state demographers.

Even as Mat-Su’s population and corresponding road use have grown, available state funding has decreased, Brown said, and officials have increasingly turned to voter-approved bond sales to help fund the projects.

Only one such bond measure was approved by voters before 2011, he said. If approved, the current bond proposal would be the fifth such measure approved to fund road construction packages in 15 years and the third since 2020.

That total includes a list of 2021 projects that have not yet required bond sales to fund, Brown said, and a ballot measure passed by voters last year that approved 17 projects as long as half the construction costs were funded through a federal or state grant. Money for those projects was not included in the 2025 state budget signed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy earlier this month; the projects remain unfunded.

Road bond measure proposed for 2024 ballots

The new proposal does not require state or federal funding. Three of the projects approved by voters last year are also in the new measure because completing them is a priority, and approving them without a match requirement would move them forward, Brown said. An additional four projects included in the proposal are newly selected for work, according to the proposal.

The previously approved projects are:

• Grading, paving and related reconstruction of Green Forest Drive, which connects Palmer-Wasilla Highway to Bogard Road. Estimated cost: $6.2 million. Project completion year: 2027.
• Traffic and safety improvements around Shaw Elementary School on Wasilla-Fishhook Road include adding access to the school from East Foxtrot Avenue. Estimated cost: $12 million. Project completion year: 2027.
• Grading, paving, drainage, and related reconstruction of King Arthur Drive between No Name Hill Drive and George Parks Highway. Estimated cost: $2.1 million. Project completion year: 2026.

The newly selected projects are:

• A nearly 1-mile northern extension of Engstrom Road to Tex Al Drive. Estimated cost: $6.1 million. Project completion year: 2027.
• Improvements to nearly 2 miles of Johnsons Road, which runs from Hollywood Road to George Parks Highway, including grading, drainage, paving and shoulder widening. Estimated cost: $3.3 million. Project completion year: 2026.
• Paving, resurfacing and related improvements on about 1.5 miles of Settlers Bay Drive between Turner Drive and Knik-Goose Bay Road. Estimated cost: $2.7 million. Project completion year: 2026.
• Paving, resurfacing and related improvements on about 1 mile of Lakeview Road between Wasilla-Fishhook Road and Seldon Road. Estimated cost: $920,000. Project completion year: 2026.

The proposal could be amended by the assembly next month before it is approved for the November ballot, with projects added or removed.

A second bond measure, also scheduled for consideration Aug. 6, would seek voter approval for $58 million in funding for building expansions or new construction at three borough school district charter schools. Combined, the two measures would authorize about $100 million in bond debt.

The area-wide mill rate for 2024 paid by all borough property owners is 8.748 mills, or $874.80 per $100,000 of assessed property value. This rate includes levies for a variety of previously approved bond packages while also covering most borough and Mat-Su Borough School operating costs not paid for by federal or state grants or allocations. Of that 0.521 mills, or $52.10 per $100,000 of assessed property value, covers borough-wide nonschool debt.

Residents who live outside Palmer, Houston or Wasilla city limits also pay a non-area-wide rate of 0.38 mills, or $38 per $100,000 of assessed value.

If approved, the proposed road measure would add as much as $18.30 per $100,000 to tax bills, effective once the bonds are sold.

The ordinance that would place the road projects bond measure on the ballot also asks the assembly to approve a funding increase for four projects approved by voters for bond funding in 2021.

Brown said those projects need an additional $18.5 million because of inflation-related cost increases. Because bond sales must be authorized by the assembly even after they are approved by voters, a vote by the assembly is needed to move forward with the additional funding.

The projects that require additional funding are:

• Extension of Hemmer Road to connect Valley Pathways School on France Road to Palmer-Wasilla Highway. Estimated cost: $6.5 million. Project completion year: 2027.
• Upgrades, reconstruction and a bicycle lane for Fern Street between Fairview Loop Road and Knik-Goose Bay Road. Estimated cost: $4 million. Completion date: 2026.
• Reconstruction, a turn lane to Tanaina Elementary School and upgrades to a bike lane on Lucille Street from Spruce Street to Seldon Road. Estimated cost: $4 million. Completion date: 2027.
• Extension of Tex Al Drive from its existing terminus west of Palmer-Fishhook Drive to Engstrom Road to create a major collector for three miles from Wasilla-Fishhook Drive to Palmer-Fishhook Drive; improvements to the existing section of Tex Al Drive. Estimated cost: $4 million. Completion date: 2028.

Borough residents can give public comment on the bond measures or any other issue during the Aug. 6 assembly meeting, scheduled for 6 p.m. in the assembly chambers at the Borough Administration Building in Palmer.

— Amy Bushatz can be contacted at abushatz@matsusentinel.com.

What you need to know:

• A new Mat-Su Borough citizens’ library advisory committee will examine its first book at a public meeting set for Aug. 12. The panel will first consider “Identical” by Ellen Hopkins, one of three books currently slated for review, according to a borough website.
• Both books were previously recommended for removal from school library shelves by a separate yet similar school district panel. The titles were ultimately cleared for return to school shelves by district administrators.
• The borough committee will use a 17-question Library Material Review Score Card to evaluate material challenged by borough residents and selected by the committee for review. Questions on the scorecard consider factors ranging from frequency of use to potential criminal obscenity. The committee will then vote on whether to recommend removing, relocating, or retaining the material. A final decision on the book will be made by the borough’s community development director.

PALMER – A new citizens’ advisory committee tasked with examining challenged books in Matanuska-Susitna Borough public libraries selected its first title for consideration during a meeting Monday and scheduled the review date for early next month.

The committee is the first government-ordered citizens’ advisory group empaneled to review books in the region’s public libraries. A similar committee was created by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District last year to review questioned books only in school district libraries.

The panelists voted during Monday’s meeting to consider “Identical” by Ellen Hopkins at their first review session, scheduled for Aug. 12. It is one of three books listed on a borough website as awaiting review.

The second pending title, “Red Hood” by Elana K. Arnold, will be scheduled for review at a later date, committee members said during Monday’s meeting.

A third book, “Damsel,” also by Elana K. Arnold, was listed on the citizens’ committee agenda Monday. At the time of the meeting it was incorrectly included in the library reconsideration portal as awaiting review, borough Community Development Director Jillian Morrisey said this month.

That title was first flagged by a borough resident last year, then later withdrawn from the review process, Morrisey said. The title has since been changed on the borough website to indicate it is awaiting panel review.

The new panel replaces the borough’s previous book reconsideration board, which consisted of librarians and library advisory board members. That board was disbanded by district officials earlier this year after a meeting ended in chaos.

The new committee was ordered by the Assembly early this year to give community members control over whether children have access to books that some members of the public consider obscene, borough assembly members said in April. It is the latest change sparked by an ongoing series of debates over materials on library shelves across Mat-Su.

Alaska state law prohibits the distribution of “indecent material” to children younger than 16. A letter sent last year by Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor to school and public library officials warned against distributing such material to minors.

The new borough committee is charged with reviewing books based on a 17-question borough-issued Library Material Review Score Card and voting to recommend whether a title should be removed from circulation, moved to another section, or left as is.

The assigned scoring questions are wide-ranging, with several addressing whether the material has been used frequently by patrons or is a priority for the library collection, according to the scorecard, which was distributed at Monday’s meeting.

A series of four other questions examine whether the material is criminally obscene, borough officials said. For example, one such scoring question asks, “Does the material depict the following actual or simulated conduct?” and then lists six types of sexual contact that are also listed in the state statute.

The upcoming borough committee review is not the first time “Red Hood” and “Identical” have been considered for removal from libraries in the region. Both titles were among 16 books pulled from school district shelves and ultimately returned to school collections by district administrators following an internal review ordered by the school board. Both titles had been recommended for permanent removal by the district’s citizens’ committee, which was tasked with making recommendations on 56 challenged books.

Of the books examined by the district committee, the school board has so far voted to permanently remove seven from school library shelves, while 30 have been returned to the collection either by a school board vote or after district review. Fifteen of the original 56 titles were ultimately not reviewed by the committee because they are no longer available on district shelves; four reviewed titles are still awaiting school board consideration.

The school district citizens’ committee disbanded last month. An ongoing lawsuit filed by two civil rights organizations on behalf of eight Mat-Su students contends the district violated their constitutional rights by removing questioned books from school library shelves.

Unlike the school citizens’ committee, which was given its list of books to review by the school board, all books selected for review by the borough panel should follow a multistep process that begins with a meeting between the patron requesting the review and the librarian at the branch where the material is shelved, borough officials said Monday.

If the patron isn’t satisfied with the outcome of that meeting, they can submit the book to the borough panel through an online portal, a borough library policy states. Those requests will be received by borough staff, paired with notes from the librarian who held the initial meeting, and forwarded to the citizens’ committee, borough officials said at Monday’s meeting. The committee can then choose whether to accept the material for review and a recommendation vote, according to the policy.

The final decision on whether material is retained, reshelved, or removed following committee review is up to the borough’s community development director, the policy states.

Books can be questioned only by borough residents who have a library card, according to the policy.

While members of the citizen advisory board may individually submit their own material reconsideration requests, they must recuse themselves from any committee process that reviews that title, said Borough Attorney Nicholas Spiropoulos. The panel cannot vote to add books to their review list, he said.

Panelists are provided copies of the book under consideration and are required to “perform a review” of the material based on the scorecard, according to the ordinance. The ordinance does not explicitly require panelists to read the material selected for review.

The scorecard must be completed during the public meeting, the ordinance states. All scorecards and panel votes are public record.

Members selected for the committee are required to have “expertise and knowledge of the community,” according to the ordinance. The ordinance does not require them to have any other expertise. Current members were nominated by Borough Mayor Edna DeVries earlier this year and confirmed by a vote of the assembly in May.

The borough board’s first book review meeting is scheduled for Aug.12 at 5 p.m. and will be held in the Borough Assembly chambers at the borough administration building in Palmer.

Public comment is permitted during the borough book reconsideration meetings and is limited to two minutes per person.

Meetings will be held on the second Monday of each month as long as there is material to review, board chairman Chad Scott said Monday.

— Amy Bushatz can be contacted at abushatz@matsusentinel.com

This story was updated July 11 to reflect a change in the review status of the book “Damsel” by Elana K. Arnold. A change to the book listing in the borough review portal made after the panel’s meeting notes that it is currently pending review.

Over the course of 17 days, the team killed 94 brown bears — including several year-old cubs, who stuck close to their mothers, and 11 newer cubs that were still nursing — five black bears and five wolves. That was nearly four times the number of animals the agency planned to cull. Fish and Game says this reduced the area’s bear population by 74%, though no baseline studies to determine their numbers were conducted in the area. 

The goal was to help the dwindling number of Mulchatna caribou by reducing the number of predators around their calving grounds. The herd’s population has plummeted, from 200,000 in 1997 to around 12,000 today. But the killings set off a political and scientific storm, with many biologists and advocates saying the operation called into question the core of the agency’s approach to managing wildlife, and may have even violated the state constitution.

The Board of Game, which has regulatory authority over wildlife, insisted that intensive control of predators in Wood-Tikchik was the best way to support the struggling herd. But the caribou, which provide essential food and cultural resources for many Alaska Native communities, are facing multiple threats: A slew of climate-related impacts have hampered their grazing, wildfires have burned the forage they rely on, warmer winters may have increased disease, and thawing permafrost has disrupted their migrations.

With conditions rapidly changing as the planet warms, wildlife managers nationwide are facing similar biodiversity crises. Rather than do the difficult work of mitigating rising temperatures, state agencies across the country are finding it easier to blame these declines on predation.

“We don’t want to talk about how the tundra is changing, because that’s something we can’t fix,” says Christi Heun, a former research biologist at Alaska Fish and Game.

“We don’t want to talk about how the tundra is changing, because that’s something we can’t fix.”

In Wyoming, where a deadly winter decimated pronghorn and mule deer, the state spent a record $4.2 million killing coyotes and other predators and is considering expanding bear and mountain lion hunts. Wildlife officials in Washington are contemplating killing sea lions and seals to save faltering salmon populations from extinction. In Minnesota, hunters are inaccurately blaming wolves for low deer numbers and calling for authorities to reduce their population. Culls like these are appealing because they are tangible actions — even when evidence suggests the true threat is much more complex. “You’re putting a Band-Aid on the wrong elbow,” says Heun, who now works for the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife. 

As the climate crisis intensifies, she and others say, wildlife management strategies need to shift too. “All we can do is just kind of cross our fingers and mitigate the best we can,” she adds. For people whose job is to control natural systems, “that’s a hard pill to swallow.” 

IN JANUARY 2022, a flurry of snow fell as the Alaska Board of Game gathered in Wasilla, far from where the Mulchatna caribou pawed through drifts, steam rising from their shaggy backs. Its seven members are appointed by the governor. Though they make important decisions like when hunting seasons open, how long they last, and how many animals hunters can take, they are not required to have a background in biology or natural resources. They also do not have to possess any expertise in the matters they decide. Board members, who did not respond to requests for comment, tend to reflect the politics of the administration in office; currently, under Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy, they are sport hunters, trappers, and guides. 

That day, the agenda included a proposal to expand a wolf control program from Wood-Tikchik onto the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge — though that would require federal approval from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; the government ultimately rejected the proposal.

The conversation began with two Fish and Game biologists summarizing their research for the board on the herd. Nick Demma explained that, like most ungulates, on average half of Mulchatna’s calves survive. In a study he conducted, many died within two weeks of birth; he mentioned as an aside that their primary predators are brown bears. “But I want to stress that this basic cause of death and mortality rate information is of little use,” he quickly added. Predator and prey dynamics are complex: The calves may have died anyway from injury or disease, and their removal may reduce competition for food and resources, improving the herd’s overall health. 

When Demma tried to analyze the existing wolf control program, he found he didn’t have the data he needed to see if removing the canines helped calves survive. In fact, from 2010 to 2021, when Fish and Game was actively shooting wolves, fewer caribou survived. So the researchers turned their attention to other challenges the herd might be facing. 

His colleague, Renae Sattler, explained that preliminary data from a three-year study suggested there could be a problem with forage quality or quantity, especially in the summer. This could lower pregnancy rates or increase disease and calf mortality. In the 1990s, the herd had swelled as part of a natural boom-and-bust cycle, leading to overgrazing. The slow-growing lichen the animals rely on takes 20 to 50 years to recover. Compounding that, climate change is altering the tundra ecosystem the animals rely upon. She also found that today, 37% of the sampled animals had, or were recently exposed to, brucellosis, which can cause abortions, stillbirths, and injuries. Biologists consider such high levels of disease an outbreak and cause for concern.

Sattler also noted that half of the animals that died in the study’s first year were killed by hunters taking them out of season — meaning the predators killing the most adult caribou were people. For all these reasons, the biologists suggested that the Board of Game reconsider the wolf control program.

Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang, who oversees the agency, immediately questioned their conclusions, and their recommendation. Killing predators, he said during the meeting, “seems like one of the only things that’s within our direct control.” In other words, it was better than doing nothing. 

Demma seemed taken aback, and chose his words carefully. “I guess what we are kind of trying to present there is just the information,” he told the board. “It’s — you know — wolves aren’t an important factor right now.” The meeting broke for lunch. When it resumed, the board unanimously voted to continue the wolf program through 2028, and, even more surprisingly, to add brown and black bears over a larger area. The public and Fish and Game biologists didn’t have the typical opportunity to comment on this expansion of predator control.

When he heard what happened, “I just was stunned. I was shocked,” says Joel Bennett, a lawyer and a former member of the Board of Game for 13 years. A hunter himself, Bennett served on the board under four governors and recalls his colleagues having a greater diversity of backgrounds and perspectives. Their votes were always split, even on less contentious issues. The unanimous vote “in itself indicates it’s a stacked deck,” he says. That’s a problem, because “the system only works fairly if there is true representation.”

In August, Bennett and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance filed a lawsuit claiming the agency approved the operation without the necessary “reasoned decision-making,” and without regard for the state’s due process requirements. Bennett also was troubled that the state has tried to keep information about the cull private, including where the bears were killed. He suspects that, to have slain so many animals in just 17 days, the flights might have veered beyond the targeted area. He also wonders if any animals were left wounded. “Why are they hiding so many of the details?” he asked. A public records request reveals that although the board expected the removal of fewer than 20 bears, almost five times that many were culled without any additional consideration. 

Alaska’s wildlife is officially a public resource. Provisions in the state constitution mandate game managers provide for “sustained yields,” including for big game animals like bears. That sometimes clashes with the Dunleavy administration’s focus on predator control. In 2020, for example, the board authorized a no-limit wolf trapping season on the Alexander Archipelago, a patchwork of remote islands in southeast Alaska. It resulted in the deaths of all but five of the genetically distinct canines. The Alaska Wildlife Alliance sued, a case Bennett is now arguing before the state Supreme Court. “That was a gross violation of ‘sustained yield’ in anyone’s definition,” he says, adding that even today, there is no limit on trapping wolves there.

“That was a gross violation of ‘sustained yield’ in anyone’s definition.”

Once, shooting bison from moving trains and leaving them to rot was widely accepted. Attitudes have evolved, as have understandings about predators’ importance — recent research suggests their stabilizing presence may play a crucial role in mitigating some of the effects of climate change. Other studies show predators may help prey adapt more quickly to shifting conditions. But Bennett worries that, just as Alaska’s wildlife faces new pressures in a warming world, management priorities are reverting to earlier stances on how to treat animals. “I’ve certainly done my time in the so-called ‘wolf wars,’” Bennett says, “but we’re entering a new era here with other predators.”

EVEN AS LEGAL CHALLENGES to the board’s decisions move forward, scientific debate over the effectiveness of predator control has flourished. Part of the problem is that game management decisions are rarely studied in the way scientists would design an experiment. “You’ve got a wild system, with free-ranging animals, and weather, and other factors that are constantly changing,” says Tom Paragi, a wildlife biologist for the state Department of Fish and Game. “It’s just not amenable to the classic research design.” Even getting baseline data can take years, and remote areas like Wood-Tikchik, which is accessible only by air or boat, are challenging and expensive places to work. 

Paragi has for more than a decade monitored the state’s intensive wildlife management programs and believes predator control can be effective. Looking at data collected since 2003, he notes that when Alaska culled wolves in four areas in a bid to bolster moose, caribou, and deer populations, their numbers increased. They also remained low in those areas where wolves were left alone. (His examination of this data has not yet been published or subject to peer review.) Elsewhere in the state, removing 96% of black bears in 2003 and 2004, reducing hunting, and killing wolves boosted the number of moose. Heavy snowfall during the next two winters killed many of the calves, and most of the bears returned within six years, but Paragi still considers the efforts a success. By 2009, the moose population had almost doubled.

He’s also not convinced that Demma and Sattler were right when they told board members that predation doesn’t appear to be the most pressing issue for the Mulchatna caribou. He says record salmon runs have likely brought more bears near the park and the calving grounds, and warmer temperatures have fostered the growth of vegetation that provides places to hide as they stalk caribou. As to the suggestion that the herd is suffering from inadequate food supplies, he notes that their birth rate has been high since 2009. That’s often a strong indicator of good nutrition. 

But Sattler says, “It isn’t that cut-and-dried.” A female caribou’s body condition, she explains, exists on a spectrum and affects her survival, the size and strength of any calves, and how long she can nurse or how quickly she gets pregnant again. “The impact of nutrition is wide-reaching and complex, and it isn’t captured in pregnancy rates alone.” Understanding how nutrition, brucellosis, and other factors are impacting the herd is complicated, she says.

“We can present the data, but what you do with the data is ultimately a political decision.”

There are a lot of interacting factors at play on the tundra — and among those trying to determine how best to help the herd. “Part of the frustration on all sides of this is that people have different value systems related to managing wild systems,” Paragi says. To him, last spring’s bear kill wasn’t truly a question of science. “We can present the data, but what you do with the data is ultimately a political decision,” he says. 

Sterling Miller, a retired Fish and Game research biologist and former president of the International Association for Bear Research and Management, acknowledges that crafting regulations is left to the politically appointed Board of Game. But Miller says the agency tends to dismiss criticism of its predator control, when there are valid scientific questions about its effectiveness. In 2022, Miller and his colleagues published an analysis, using Fish and Game harvest data, showing that 40 years of killing predators in an area of south-central Alaska didn’t result in more harvests of moose. “Fish and Game has never pointed out any factual or analytical errors in the analyses that I’ve been involved with,” he says. “Instead, they try to undercut our work by saying it’s based on values.”  

Miller also was involved in what remains one of the agency’s best examples of predator relocations. In 1979, he and another biologist moved 47 brown bears out of a region in south-central Alaska, which resulted in a “significant” increase in the survival of moose calves the next fall. But Miller says Fish and Game often misquotes that work. In reality, due to a lack of funding, Miller didn’t study the young animals long enough to see if they actually reached adulthood. Similarly, Fish and Game conducted an aerial survey this fall of the Mulchatna herd, finding more calves survived after the bear cullings. But Miller and other biologists say that’s not the best metric to measure the operation’s success: These calves may still perish during their first winter. 

The Alaska government is the only one in the world whose goal is to reduce the number of brown bears, Miller says, despite the absence of baseline studies on how many bears are in this part of the state. It irks him that the state continues to use his research as justification for allowing predator measures like bear baiting. In most parts of Alaska, Miller says, “the liberalization of bear hunting regulations has just been so extreme.”

“The liberalization of bear hunting regulations has just been so extreme.”

While last year’s bear killings were particularly egregious, similar cullings have gone largely unnoticed. State data shows over 1,000 wolves and 3,500 brown and black bears have been killed since 2008 alone. In 2016, for example, the federal government shared radio tag information with the state, which used it to kill wolves when they left the safety of the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve — destroying so many packs that it ended a 20-year study on predator-prey relationships. “There weren’t enough survivors to maintain a self-sustaining population,” recounted an investigation by the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The nearby caribou herd still failed to recover. 

Multiple employees for Fish and Game, who didn’t want to be named amid fear of repercussions, told Grist that the agency was ignoring basic scientific principles, and that political appointees to the Board were not equipped to judge the effectiveness of these programs.

Even these criticisms of the agency’s science have been subject to politics: This summer, a committee of the American Society of Mammalogists drafted a resolution speaking out about Alaska’s predator control — only for it to be leaked to Fish and Game, which put up enough fuss that it was dropped. Link Olson, the curator of mammals at the University of Alaska Museum of the North, was one of many who supported the group taking a position on the issue. Olson says that even as someone who “actively collect[s] mammal specimens for science,” he is deeply concerned with Alaska’s approach to managing predators.

A month later, 34 retired wildlife managers and biologists wrote an open letter criticizing the bear cull and calling the agency’s management goals for the Mulchatna herd “unrealistic.” Meanwhile, neither Demma nor Sattler, the biologists who cautioned the board, are still studying the herd; Demma now works in a different area of the agency, and Sattler has left the state and taken a new job, for what she says are a variety of reasons.

EVERY FALL, millions of people follow a live-streamed view of the biggest bears in Katmai National Park, which sits southeast of Wood-Tikchik. The animals jockey for fish before their hibernation, in an annual bulking up that the National Park Service has turned into a playful competition, giving the bears nicknames like “Chunk,” and, for a particularly large behemoth, 747. 

Though marked on maps, animals like 747 don’t know where the comparative safety of the national park ends and where state management begins. This can mean the difference between life and death, as Alaska and federal agencies have taken very different approaches to predator control: The National Park Service generally prohibits it. This has sparked a years-long federalism battle. Back in 2015, for example, the Board of Game passed a rule allowing brown bear baiting in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, leading the Fish and Wildlife Service to ban it in 2016. The state sued, and in 2020 the Trump administration proposed forcing national wildlife refuges to adopt Alaska’s hunting regulations. Similarly, the National Park Service challenged whether it had to allow practices like using spotlights to blind and shoot hibernating bears in their dens in national park preserves. In 2022, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal agencies have ultimate authority over state laws in refuges; last year, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

How these agencies interact with local communities is markedly different, too. Both Alaska Fish and Game and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have regional advisory groups where residents can weigh in on game regulations, but Alissa Nadine Rogers, a resident of the Yukon- Kuskokwim Delta who sits on each, says that, unlike the federal government, it feels like “the state of Alaska does not recognize subsistence users as a priority.” On paper, the state prioritizes subsistence use, but under its constitution, Alaska can’t distinguish between residents, whereas the federal government can put the needs of local and traditional users first. This has frequently led to separate and overlapping state and federal regulations on public lands in Alaska. 

Many people in the region rely on wildlife for a substantial part of their diet. Since the area isn’t connected by roads, groceries must be barged or flown in, making them expensive — a gallon of milk can cost almost $20. In addition to being an important food source, caribou are a traditional part of her Yupik culture, Rogers explains, used for tools and regalia. It’s a real burden for local communities to be told they can’t hunt caribou, which has driven poaching. As state and federal regulations have increased restrictions on hunting, she says residents have difficulty obtaining enough protein to sustain themselves through the winter. “If people don’t understand how it is to live out here, what true perspective do they have?” she asks. “Subsistence users are the ones who bear the burden when it comes to management. And a lot of the time, folks aren’t feeling that their voices are being heard or adequately represented.”

Yet Rogers says state and federal systems can provide an important balance to each other, and she approves of Fish and Game’s predator control efforts. As the former director of natural resources for the Orutsararmiut Native Council, she helped the council write a resolution, later passed by the statewide Alaska Federation of Natives, supporting last spring’s bear and wolf cull. She thinks officials should focus more on climate change but believes culling remains a useful tool. “It gives a vital chance for the [caribou] population and immediately supports growth and recovery,” Rogers says. She also asked Fish and Game to institute a five-year moratorium on all hunting of the herd. “If we go any lower, then we’re pretty much gonna be facing extinction.”

Who gets to make choices about the state’s fish and wildlife resources is a point of increasing tension this year, as a lawsuit unfolds between the state and federal government over who should manage salmon fisheries on the Kuskokwim River, to the west of the Togiak refuge. All five of its salmon returns have faltered for over a decade — making game like caribou even more critical for local communities. (In sharp contrast, to the east of the river, Bristol Bay has seen record recent returns, showing how variable climate impacts can be.) The Alaska Native Federation and the federal government say fishing should be limited to subsistence users, while the state has opened fishing to all state residents.

To ensure Alaska Native communities have a voice in such critical decisions, the Federation called for tribally designated seats on the Board of Game this fall. “We need to have a balanced Board of Game that represents all Alaskans,” says former Governor Tony Knowles. He, too, recommends passing a law to designate seats on the board for different types of wildlife stakeholders, including Alaska Native and rural residents, conservationists, biologists, recreational users, and others. Knowles also proposes an inquiry into Fish and Game’s bear killings, including recommendations on how to better involve the public in these decisions. “We deserve to know how this all happened so it won’t happen again.”

It’s clear to many that business as usual isn’t working. “I have no idea how the state comes up with their management strategy,” says Brice Eningowuk, the tribal administrator for the council of the Traditional Village of Togiak, an Alaska Native village on the outskirts of the Togiak refuge. He says Fish and Game didn’t tell his community about the bear cull, and he expressed skepticism that primarily killing bears would work. “Bears will eat caribou, but that’s not their primary food source,” he says.

Part of the solution is setting more realistic wildlife goals, according to Pat Walsh, whose career as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist involved supervising the caribou program in the Togiak refuge. Recently retired, he says the current goal for the Mulchatna herd size was set 15 years ago, when the population was at 30,000, and is no longer realistic. Reducing that goal could allow targeted subsistence use — which might help ease some of the poaching. Though Fish and Game has killed wolves around the Mulchatna herd for 12 years, he points out the caribou population has steadily dropped. “We recommended the board reassess the ecological situation,” he says, and develop goals “based on the current conditions, not something that occurred in the past.” 

Today’s landscape already looks quite different. Alaska has warmed twice as quickly as the global average, faster than any other state. When Rogers was in high school, she tested the permafrost near her house as an experiment. As a freshman, she only had to jam the spade in the ground before she hit ice. By the time she was a senior, it thawed to a depth of 23 inches — and in one location, to 4 feet. Summers have been cold and wet, and winters have brought crippling ice storms, rather than snow. Berry seasons have failed, and the normally firm and springy tundra has “disintegrated into mush,” Rogers says.

Feeling the very ground change beneath her feet highlights how little sway she has over these shifts. “How are you gonna yell at the clouds? ‘Hey, quit raining. Hey, you, quit snowing’?” Rogers asked. “There’s no way you can change something that is completely out of your control. We can only adapt.”

Yet despite how quickly these ecosystems are shifting, the Department of Fish and Game has no climate scientists. In the meantime, the agency is authorized to continue killing bears on the Mulchatna calving grounds every year until 2028. (The board plans to hear an annual report on the state’s intensive management later this month.) As Walsh summarizes wryly, “It’s difficult to address habitat problems. It’s difficult to address disease problems. It’s easy to say, ‘Well, let’s go shoot.’”

“It’s difficult to address habitat problems. It’s difficult to address disease problems. It’s easy to say, ‘Well, let’s go shoot.’”

Management decisions can feel stark in the face of nature’s complexity. The tundra is quite literally made from relationships. The lichen the caribou feed on is a symbiotic partnership between two organisms. Fungus provides its intricately branching structure, absorbing water and minerals from the air, while algae produces its energy, bringing together sunlight and soil, inseparable from the habitat they form. These connections sustain the life that blooms and eats and dies under a curving sweep of sky. It’s a system, in the truest and most obvious sense — one that includes the humans deciding what a population can recover from, and what a society can tolerate. 

As another season of snow settles in, the caribou cross the landscape in great, meandering lines. There are thousands of years of migrations behind them and an uncertain future ahead. Like so much in nature, it’s hard to draw a clear threshold. “Everything is going to change,” Rogers says.

Lois Parshley is an award-winning independent investigative journalist. Follow more of her climate reporting @loisparshley on social media. We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

(RNS) — A Native Alaskan midwife known for her healing love, especially toward abused women, has become the first female Orthodox Christian saint from North America after she was glorified at a meeting of bishops of the Orthodox Church in America in Chicago this week.

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The nation’s highest court recently upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act in a major case over the law’s constitutionality, a decision hailed by many as a victory for Indigenous children and their families.

But while the 7-2 majority decision in the Brackeen v. Haaland case firmly rejected key arguments against the law known as ICWA, state-level challenges have been moving through lower courts across the country, with varying degrees of success.

Cases in Nebraska, Alaska, Iowa, Montana and Oklahoma center on different legal issues than those decided by the U.S. Supreme Court last month. Plaintiffs in Brackeen v. Haaland — a group of states along with white adoptive parents seeking custody of Native children — argued unsuccessfully that ICWA was unconstitutional because it exceeds the “plenary powers” of Congress to pass legislation governing tribal affairs, “commandeers” states to follow federal law and violates equal protection guarantees.

Yet while the Supreme Court upheld ICWA’s constitutionality for now, legal experts who are both supporters and critics of the 45-year-old federal law say the Brackeen case doesn’t rule out future challenges to tribal sovereignty.

What’s more, justices declined to delve into the equal protection arguments in the case, stating only that the plaintiffs “lack standing” on that issue because the adoptions of Indigenous children they sought had been finalized. Some court watchers say that leaves open the possibility of future lawsuits on equal protection issues.

The 1978 law in question seeks to repair damage caused by centuries of forced attendance at Indian boarding schools and coercive adoptions into white, Christian homes. That legacy has endured in Indian Country, where the rate of foster care removals remains far higher than in other racial and ethnic communities.

Under ICWA, state child welfare agencies must determine whether a child facing foster care, adoption or guardianship is a member of a Native American tribe. If they are an enrolled member or have a parent who is enrolled and are eligible for tribal membership, the case takes a different pathway than for other children. Tribes must be offered the opportunity to take jurisdiction from the state court; tribal members and Indigenous foster parents and kin must be prioritized for placements; and social service agencies must make “active” rather than “reasonable” efforts to help parents accused of maltreatment reunite with their children.

Kate Fort, director of the Indian Law Clinic at Michigan State University College of Law, outlined the most common reasons for an ICWA appeal in the March edition of the Juvenile and Family Court Journal.

She wrote that between 2017 and 2022, more than 40 percent of all such cases were remanded — sent back to lower courts — or reversed. Plaintiffs in 87 percent of the ICWA-based appeals were biological parents of an Indigenous child. About half the cases were appealed based on parents’ belief that the court improperly determined ICWA’s application to their child’s case.

“These data indicate that agencies and courts are still struggling with the first step in an ICWA case — whether they have an ICWA case at all,” Fort wrote in the paper.

Two ICWA-related cases were decided by the Alaska Supreme Court in July 2022.

They involved the federal law’s provision requiring that a “qualified expert witness” testify about the Indigenous child’s tribe, customs and traditions before their parent’s rights can be terminated. Those challenges did not prevail.

Recent disputes over ICWA in state courts center on tribal jurisdiction, the definition of a Native child, and termination of parental rights, among other issues. The following is a summary of some recent cases:

Oklahoma

Tribal court jurisdiction in child welfare cases lost ground in an April ruling in Oklahoma. In the decision — involving a child identified as S.J.W. — the state Supreme Court gave lower courts increased ability to grant custody of Native children living on a reservation that is not their own.

S.J.W.’s parents argued that “the Chickasaw tribal court has exclusive jurisdiction regardless of the fact that S.J.W. is a nonmember Indian child,” according to court documents. The state maintained it had shared jurisdiction on cases involving ICWA.

Critics call the ruling involving a Muscogee child living on Chickasaw Nation’s reservation deeply flawed.

The state Supreme Court “misunderstands tribal sovereignty,” the Choctaw Nation’s senior executive officer of legal and compliance Brian Danker told a National Public Radio affiliate. “This ruling could impact a tribe’s ability to protect tribal citizens’ social, cultural and familial connections as it attempts to chip away at the foundations of tribal sovereignty in the state of Oklahoma.”

Fort described the Oklahoma ICWA case as unique, and a “truly unfortunate opinion with absurdly weak analysis.” Fort said tribes’ ability to retain jurisdiction over child welfare cases remains an ongoing fight in multiple states.

Iowa and Nebraska

In another suit filed this past April by the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, the Supreme Court in Nebraska denied the tribe’s request to intervene, because it had previously been determined the child in question did not meet the criteria of an “Indian child.” The child’s mother was eligible for tribal enrollment, but was not yet enrolled.

The tribe argued the spirit of ICWA should apply to the case, but the state of Nebraska opposed that position, and was victorious in court. Ultimately, the state’s highest court ruled that ICWA’s specific requirements to determine a child’s eligibility for its protections should be strictly applied.

In April 2022, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld a juvenile court’s ruling that denied a child ICWA protections, affirming a prior decision to terminate the rights of the child’s parent. The juvenile court found the state’s “reasonable efforts” to avoid out-of-home placement — instead of the “active efforts” required for tribal members under ICWA — were adequate because the child was deemed to be non-Native.

Montana

ICWA was affirmed in a Montana case decided by the state Supreme Court in January, a ruling that underscored how the federal law applies to guardianships and third-party custody proceedings, in addition to adoption and foster care cases.

The child’s mother, an enrolled member of the Native Village of Kotzebue Tribe in Alaska, provided the court with verification that her three children were eligible for ICWA protections. She asked the courts to remove her children from the Montana home of their paternal grandparents — who had full custodial rights — and restore her custody. The case was sent back to lower courts for further proceedings to determine if the children should be returned to their mother.

Minnesota

Nearly two weeks after the Brackeen decision in mid-June, the U.S. Supreme Court denied review of a recent Minnesota case making a related equal protection argument — that ICWA discriminates against non-Native foster and adoptive parents.

In March 2022, Hennepin County was sued by two Indigenous foster parents who were unsuccessful in the adoption of the Indigenous child they were fostering. Instead, the child’s tribe, Red Lake Band of Chippewa, took over the proceedings and granted custody to the child’s maternal grandmother. The foster parents were considered “nonmembers” in the ICWA case, because one is enrolled in the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa and the other is a White Earth Nation descendant.

The plaintiffs in the case — who, under ICWA, lost priority in their adoption efforts in favor of the child’s relative despite having adopted the child’s siblings — were represented by Minnetonka attorney Mark Fiddler, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. He also represented the white adoptive couples seeking to overturn ICWA in Brackeen v. Haaland. The conservative Goldwater Institute filed amicus briefs in both cases, challenging ICWA’s constitutionality.

In an email, Fiddler said that while the institute attacked ICWA as unconstitutional, the plaintiffs did not. “Rather, they argued ICWA could and should be interpreted to be constitutional by not forcing nonmembers into a jurisdiction foreign to them,” he said.

“Petitioners were improperly subjected to the personal and subject matter jurisdiction of a state foreign to them, one where they have no right to vote,” plaintiffs stated in Denise Halvorson v. Hennepin County Children’s Services Department case documents. As a result, the lower court violated “their due process rights to fundamental fairness and equal protection.”

But the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied on June 26.

Fiddler said despite the high court upholding ICWA in Brackeen and its denial of the Hennepin County case, establishing standing in an equal protection case against ICWA “would be easy,” and he fully expects continued challenges to the law on this issue and others.

“Any foster or adoptive parent would have the right to move to strike down ICWA in state court, so long as he or she was jeopardized by it somehow,” Fiddler stated shortly after the Brackeen decision.

The Imprint is a non-profit, non-partisan news publication dedicated to reporting on child welfare.

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