Unleashed Dogs
Dear Editor: I know this will fall on deaf ears for the most part BUT… this morning as I took my daily walk with my dog, on her leash, in a public area, we were once again accosted not once but twice by unleashed dogs. The usual scenario ensued… I physically place myself between the dogs as their “friendly” pet makes a beeline for my dog with ears back and hackles up… until the owner “catch’s up” and feigns surprise at the behavior and, after lots of repetitious yelling of the dog’s name (which it ignores), the always reassuring yell to me … ‘‘don’t worry he/she is friendly’’ (refer back to previously mentioned ‘‘ears back and hackles up’’…). Then, if a leash is available and attached, the usual yanking with the occasional thumping and verbal abuse directed towards the dog’s unbelievable behavior.
The point of this is to clue anyone who might need clueing in to the fact that, just because your dog tolerates ‘‘you,’’ which you interpret as being “friendly,” means absolutely nothing pertaining to random interaction with other dogs and/or people. Maybe that’s the intent of leash laws? And all the yanking, thumping and verbal abuse after the fact says absolutely nothing about the dog… but says an awful lot about you.
Now about all the poop….
Joseph Mac Donald, Sitka
BHV Annual Meeting
Dear Editor: Brave Heart Volunteers invites community members to join us at our annual meeting and potluck, Wednesday, Feb. 27, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Pioneers Home Manager’s House. We will be sharing updates from our work this past year.
The “heart” of Brave Heart Volunteers is the people we serve and the volunteers who serve them. Google “volunteering” and you will find multiple articles and information about the benefits. Volunteering strengthens community, ends loneliness, increases socialization, builds bonds, creates friendships and can increase self-esteem and improve overall health. “Volunteering is at the very core of being a human. No one has made it through life without someone else’s help.” (Heather French Henry.)
Come and learn more about what we do and how you can be involved to support our mission: we provide, with our volunteers and community partners, compassionate care, companionship, respite and education, to those facing illness, isolation, end of life and grief.”
Cheri Hample, Board President,
Brave Heart Volunteers
Governor’s Budget
Dear Editor: I am very concerned with the current governor’s proposal to cut the funding for Alaska’s Marine Highway System.
For those who live elsewhere, imagine no roads, and only being able to get to the closest town by airplane or by your own boat. The ferry system is how we get our school sports teams to games, how we ship our cars and trucks, how we get produce to our stores, how our clients travel through coastal Alaska, how we travel for funerals, weddings, and festivals, how our dance groups, artists and musicians tour for performances and, arguably, are as economically important to Alaskan coastal communities as salmon.
We are asking all Sitka and Southeast Alaska businesses to join us in protesting, and perhaps litigating against, any attempt to further cut our ferry service.
Any reduction in ferry service is unacceptable; We are already at a bare minimum of sailings, and we cannot take more cuts. Any proposal to privatize the ferry service must be very thoroughly researched and a fund established to re-establish state ownership, should it fail. It should not be lightly suggested and carelessly attempted. It is way too important. One reason bookings are likely down for the ferry is due to this uncertainty. People are unwilling to book travel on an airline if they thought the airline may go bankrupt soon.
Incidentally, trading a functioning marine highway system, children’s education, senior housing and healthcare, fisheries and wildlife protection, emergency services, our universities, and nearly 700 state employees – for a one-time payout of the Permanent Fund Dividend is immoral and intractably opposite to who we are as Alaskans. We respect our elderly and children. We share with those who don’t have as much as we do, and we care about our neighbors. And we NEED a functioning marine ferry system.
The Alaska Chamber of Commerce is dead wrong to support these cuts. This is a proposal that impacts the small business and impacts the oil and gas, mining sector, large corporations, and cruise lines not at all. As a business owner, I will be drastically affected in many ways by this proposal. Instead of punishing small business the Chamber should be finding ways to support them.
If you own a small business in Southeast Alaska, please consider joining us in protesting Gov. Dunleavy’s attempt to destroy our communities, and dramatically harm our economy for a short-sighted political whim. While you are at it, I would urge you to write a letter to the Alaska Chamber of Commerce protesting their support.
Sources:
–https://www.adn.com/politics/2019/02/13/gov-dunleavy-launches-massive-budget-cut-plan/
–https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/400-million-in-Petroleum-Property-Taxes-would-offset--505820361.html
–http://www.alaskachamber.com/
Capt. Blain Anderson
Sound Sailing, S/V BOB, Sitka
Sac Roe Fishery
Dear Editor: We are writing because of our profound disappointment in the way Sitka Sound’s sac roe herring fishery has been mismanaged. For decades, ADFG has been studying herring as if they could only be understood through a scientific microscope, instead of as part of a larger environmental and cultural ecosystem of which ADFG’s limited data was only one part. For decades, in a barely veiled act of institutional racism against the Tlingit people, state managers and regulators have discounted any facts or narrative that didn’t fit under their microscope. Also for decades, many well intentioned Sitkans have favored an incrementalist approach to protecting herring - a few miles of protected area here, a proposed (but always failed) minor reduction in GHL there.
Both ADFG’s myopic scientific approach and the incrementalism of concerned citizens have missed two of the fundamental risks of the situation. The first is that herring are a fundamental lynchpin in the ecosystem of what makes Sitka a unique and successful community: its traditional Tlingit culture and its thriving marine ecosystem. Whether you’re talking about commercial fishing, SEARHC or tourism, these are the backbones of our community’s health and economy, and they all depend in some way on herring.
The second is the bleak fact that every single Southeast sac roe fishery ADFG has ever managed has collapsed catastrophically, except, so far, Sitka Sound’s. And all the evidence beyond ADFG’s microscope points towards the collapse of Sitka Sound next.
We are profoundly disappointed and concerned, but not surprised, by the ruling to deny Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s petition for an injunction on the sac roe fishery earlier this week, but we are also motivated to work harder than ever before. And although we celebrate any and all actions in support of herring, we are profoundly concerned that the risks are too great to focus on incrementalist approaches. The disastrous year of 2018, capping off a decade of disrupted, scattered and disappointing herring spawns in which only two out of 10 years met the amount necessary for subsistence needs, only emphasized the big-picture risks we have long known herring face.
We can only hope that the state will look up from its microscope in time to save Southeast Alaska’s last herring population. But their decision to increase the guideline harvest level in 2019, to continuously rebut and belittle tribal and community concerns and their conscious choice to align with a small but wealthy interest group of seiners, give us little hope that the state will respond constructively.
For these reasons we believe that the time for incremental and procedural change has passed, and that the time for direct, community action has arrived. We hope that the community can rally around Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s lawsuit and beyond.
We encourage conservation organizations, local and tribal governments, and businesses to take official stances calling for a halt to commercial herring harvests until a holistic approach to management that encompasses both a broad scientific view, and more importantly, the traditional ecological knowledge of the people who have been here longest. We are speaking up, and inviting our neighbors and community members to express themselves as well, loudly and publicly.
We are at a pivotal moment in the history of our oceans and of Sitka Sound’s ecosystem. If we don’t act decisively soon, we may never have the chance.
Louise Brady, Lakota Harden,
Elsa Sebastian, Carrie James,
Matthew Jackson, Peter Bradley
