Month: March 2026

Toksook Bay youth joined advocates at the Alaska State Capitol as survivors of suicide loss to raise awareness for suicide prevention, and urge state support for funding mental health services, including the state’s 988 crisis line.

“I’ve lost a couple people to suicide. It made me feel like my family was broken,” said Jacob Nicolai, a 20-year-old from Toksook Bay in Western Alaska. “Losing a loved one through suicide is hard. It can feel like a part of you is gone too. It takes a long time to forgive and accept.”

A pair of bills now in the Alaska House and Senate, House Bill 138 and Senate Bill 196, would implement a $0.98 surcharge per month on all phone lines in Alaska to go toward a behavioral health crisis services fund. The surcharge is expected to generate $6 to $8 million toward the fund, which would be administered by the Alaska Department of Health and go to support the 988 crisis line, support services, training for at-risk communities and public awareness campaigns around suicide prevention.

Alaska has the highest rates of suicide of any state in the nation — more than double the national rate — a trend that has remained consistent for decades. In 2024, the most recent year of publicly available data, 222 Alaskans died by suicide, with boys and men making up the large majority of suicide deaths at 83% of those deaths. However, more women and girls are hospitalized each year due to suicide attempts.

Alaska youth ages 15 to 24 continue to have the highest rates of any age group, with roughly 48 deaths per 100,000 people in 2024. 

“Suicide prevention is important to me because I believe all of us are here for a reason,” Nicolai said. “We’re here to live and show our loved ones what we are capable of. We are here because we matter. Sometimes people forget how much they matter. So it’s our job, all of us, to check in with our co-workers, family and friends, and ask how they are feeling.”

He was among the youth, advocates and lawmakers that held a news conference on the steps of the Capitol on Thursday to urge passage of legislation in the Alaska House and Senate in part to provide state funding for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline – a 24/7 free, confidential hotline for not only suicidal ideation, but for anyone in need of resources or support for depression, relationships or mental health issues.

“I’ve lost relatives and friends and seen the after effects of suicide in my community,” said Johnny Nicolai, his younger brother, an 18-year-old junior at Nelson Island School in Toksook Bay. “That’s why it is important for me and my friends to see people happy and supported. I want people to know that they’re not alone.”

Nicole Bick, an Alaska advocate with the national non-profit Inseparable, which focuses on improving mental health, said one life is lost to suicide every two days in Alaska. “One life lost to suicide is one too many,” she said. “Each loss sends shock waves through families, communities and classrooms.”

Jennifer Johnson-Sahaba, site administrator for Nelson Island School in Toksook Bay, spoke about the shock and grief of losing her seventh grade student to suicide last year.

“Thirteen years old, a life with so many unwritten chapters, so many possibilities, so many moments that will never come to pass. His laughter, his future, the person he might have become, all gone far too soon. His loss is something that I carry with me every single day,” she said.

Johnson-Sahaba said she feels a renewed sense of responsibility to listen and care for her students, to ensure that no one feels so alone.  

“I never want another child to feel that kind of loneliness, despair and darkness that leads them to believe that their life does not matter. I never want another student to feel so unseen, so unheard and so overwhelmed that they believe there’s no way forward. Our children deserve more than that. They deserve to feel safe. They deserve to feel loved,” she said.

Rep. Genevieve Mina, D-Anchorage, is sponsoring the legislation in the House and spoke about losing her father to suicide.

“Although my family was aware that he was struggling, he never asked for help. He was ashamed to talk about his struggles, and maybe it was guilt or shame from culture or stigma, but he never talked about it,” she said. She said she didn’t talk about it much either, until many years later.

Mina said the state should be doing more to provide support, but stable funding for the crisis line is a start. 

“When we don’t treat mental health conditions, they worsen in our emergency rooms. They also impact our families… There are far too many Alaskans that are experiencing this isolation and that are dealing with these struggles. We need a better and more stable support network,” she said.

In 2022, the Biden administration established the national 988 crisis line following legislation passed by the U.S. Congress. In Alaska, the crisis line is based in Fairbanks, and has seen a growing number of calls in the years since. Last year, the state crisis line received nearly 44,000 calls from Alaskans. 

Alaska Native residents experience the highest rates of suicide in the state. Rural communities have seen much higher suicide rates per capita, according to state data, with the highest rates in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region. The lowest suicide rates in 2024 were seen in the Kenai Peninsula region. 

The Nicolai brothers said they have been volunteering with suicide prevention efforts with the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention Alaska chapter in their community for the last several years, which holds events focused on Alaska Native community and culture to raise awareness and promote healing for those who’ve experienced suicide loss.

“Open healing is a week long event in our community where we remember those we’ve lost to suicides,” said Johnny Nicolai. “We start off with our traditional blessing song, then we listen to elders talk about life lessons and stories. After that, we separate classes into groups and they do cultural activities. Hope and healing brings people together and reminds us that our culture and community can help us.”

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An early look at Tongass National Forest management plan revisions intended to suit the Trump administration shows, as pledged, a focus on expanding timber and other natural resource development.

A 117-page document referred to as “Preliminary Draft Plan Content” was released Monday by the U.S. Forest Service. Among its extensive recommendations are expanding second-growth timber harvesting activity, allowing “a projected timber sale quantity increasing to 72 million board feet per year in the next decade, due to more young growth reaching harvestable age.”

“The volume of young growth as part of the yearly offer increases annually until young growth is the dominant portion of what is offered,” the draft adds.

The official plan last updated in 2016 calls for an average harvest of 46 million board feet annually. The draft released Monday notes the Forest Service is conducting a new long-term timber demand analysis as part of the revised management plan.

Another major recommendation in the draft is reducing the number of management areas and “simplifying” regulations in those areas.

The document released Monday “is not a complete Draft Forest Plan,” the U.S. Forest Service noted at its website.

“It is a starting point meant to elicit feedback, and will likely change by the time this goes out as a complete Draft Forest Plan,” the website states.

The release also marks the beginning of a public comment period scheduled through May 6, with online and in-person meetings scheduled throughout Southeast starting this week. Those include an online town hall from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Wednesday when “an overview of the recently released preliminary draft plan materials” will be presented and an in-person meeting in Juneau from 5-7 p.m. April 15 at the Juneau Ranger District office.

“This feedback period is meant to focus primarily on the preliminary content,” the Forest Service website notes. “At this time, public feedback will be used to refine a proposed action, help develop alternatives, and determine which substantive issues will be analyzed in detail in the Environmental Impact Statement. Your feedback on plan content would be most helpful if it focused on these goals.”

Areas where an “overarching need to change” exists, according to the draft:

• “Update and modernize the plan consistent with the 2012 Planning Rule by simplifying, clarifying, reorganizing, and reducing the number of management areas for concise, easy to follow direction.”

• “Prioritize local and regional prosperity of Southeast Alaska by contributing to timber, minerals, tourism, recreation, and other important economic drivers.”

• “Incorporate strategies to address significant changes in recreation and tourism, including the increase in cruise ship visitation.”

• “Include plan content that encourages collaboration and shared stewardship with a variety of partners in pursuit of common objectives. These partners can include local, state, and tribal governments; Alaska Native Corporations; industry stakeholders; and other non-governmental organizations.”

• “Consider needs for subsistence uses such as hunting, fishing and gathering when developing the revised plan.”

• “Consider indigenous knowledge related to land stewardship, cultural issues, and culturally significant sites.”

The Forest Service just completed another comment period on the revised plan Friday. Nearly 600 comments were submitted between Feb. 17 and March 20. The agency prior to that comment period made it clear President Donald Trump’s goal of expanding natural resource industries in Alaska would be a goal of the revision.

A press release issued by the Forest Service at that time spells out the past and new parameters that will be considered in the revised draft.

“Public comments will help identify changes that are needed to the current plan, adopted in 1997, to align with best available science, as well as laws and regulations, including President Trump’s Executive Order 14225 – Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production to support American economies and improve forest health and Executive Order 14153 Unleash Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential, benefitting the Nation and the American citizens who call Alaska home,” the Forest Service announcement in February stated.

Notably, the draft does include recommendations to mitigate impacts caused by climate change, which Trump has called a hoax and sought to eliminate as a factor from a wide range of federal policymaking. Among the references in the Tongass report published Monday are ensuring “winter trails and trailheads” and “watersheds and associated aquatic ecosystems” are resilient to climate change, along with factoring climate into timber-related reforestation efforts.

The Forest Service’s timeline, as of Monday, calls for a draft Environmental Impact Statement by August of this year, a final EIS by May of 2027, a decision by October of 2027 and implementation of the revised plan by November of 2027.

This story was originally published by the Juneau Independent.

The post Rough draft of revised Tongass plan envisioning more resource development released for public comment appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Chilkat Valley News reporter Will Steinfeld sat down with KHNS news director Melinda Munson to talk about the upcoming Haines Borough Assembly meeting.

Melinda Munson: Will, let’s start by talking about what you’re doing in Juneau right now.

Will Steinfeld: I’ll be here for a month, and I’m covering the state legislature while they’re in session. So I’ll be still writing for the Chilkat Valley News but bringing you some coverage from the capital.

It is a hefty agenda for the meeting this Tuesday. There’s just no other way to describe it. Is this going to be the second hearing for the bulk ore containerization ordinance?

This is. We have the second hearing for bulk ore. And then, kind of related, we have a first public hearing for severance tax. And both of these are regulations that are kind of dealing with trying to regulate heavy industry in some way. So if industries like logging or mining come to the valley, the Assembly is trying to get on the books some way to get money back from that, or put in environmental protections. Otherwise, be prepared as the assembly members have put it.

And then that leads into the other hefty agenda item, which is a “Safety Belt” ordinance. Which again is a – what is the word I’m looking for –  preemptive ordinance. Tell us about that.

All of a sudden there’s this whole spate of these types of regulations. And what I’m watching here is the severance tax and the Safety Belt are actually advancing on kind of separate tracks. 

So the severance tax comes from the Assembly’s Commerce Committee, and then the Safety Belt comes from Assembly Members Forster and Thomas. They have overlap. Safety Belt has a payment in lieu of tax. Safety Belt discusses some of the things that severance tax would do. So, there’s a chance that maybe they’ll decide to fold these together, or drop one and keep the other. It’s unclear right now, so we’ll see what they decide to do, or maybe they’ll advance with both. 

The accessory dwelling unit ordinance is up for a second hearing. Can you give me an idea of the public feedback it received last time?

There hasn’t been too much public feedback yet on this, especially compared to the last time this issue was heard in front of the Assembly last year. In fact, last year the feedback was so great from residents of Mud Bay in particular, that the borough’s decision makers at the Planning Commission actually decided to exempt Lutak and Mud Bay from this.

…This time, Lutak and Mud Bay are back in there. If this passes, then accessory dwelling units would be generally allowed in both neighborhoods. So we’ll see if that gets people out to public comment.

And what are the parameters that are being proposed in this updated ADU ordinance?

As it stands right now, you’re allowed to have an accessory apartment, which is basically a small apartment on your property. It would replace that with an accessory dwelling unit, which you can rent out. It has slightly different parameters. 

The purpose of this is to allow people to have these small units in their backyards or attached to their homes, to increase the housing supply. 

This version of the bill has introduced a lot of stipulations that address some of the concerns that came up last year. You would have to have at least one off-road parking spot, if you were to build one of these. There’s a max height limit. You would have to get a conditional use permit if your lot is very small, if it’s under 10,000 square feet.

And I imagine a large portion of Tuesday’s meeting will be taken up with the Campbell appeal. Why don’t you give us a rundown of what that could look like?

The mayor last meeting was issuing ominous warnings about this potentially being a two day meeting, so it could go long, in large part because of this appeal. The Assembly is going to be reviewing a Planning Commission decision where the Planning Commission denied a new conditional use permit for George and Lynette Campbell’s helicopter use at their airstrip at 26 Mile. 

So what the Assembly can do here, at least according to the borough manager, is they can confirm the Planning Commission’s decision, they can overturn it, or they could change specific conditions for this permit. 

The Campbell’s dispute that. They say that according to past litigation, court decisions, the borough’s own decisions, what the Assembly should be doing is only reviewing permit conditions. And they say they should have permission to land helicopters at their property.

Will, thanks for joining us, and we’ll see you back in Haines soon.

Yep, can’t wait. Thanks for having me. 

The post Listen: Assembly to consider accessory dwelling units, bulk ore containerization and a contentious heliport permit decision appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.