After more than an hour of testimony from residents, the Haines Borough Finance Committee last week recommended to let voters in the fall municipal election decide the fate of the 1 percent tax for tourism and economic development.
Committee members Ron Jackson and Diana Lapham supported the recommendation; Tresham Gregg was opposed. The assembly will take up the question as a discussion item at its Tuesday meeting.
The issue came to the committee after commercial fisherman J.R. Churchill submitted a letter to the assembly last month asking the group to put on the November ballot via a referendum.
“The borough needs to put its finger on the pulse of whether or not people still support this,” Churchill, who favors repealing the tax, said at the June 30 committee meeting. “I don’t necessarily think that my perspective is going to win out here, but every so often you need to – I think, anyway – give a voice to these people who haven’t ever had a chance to vote on this.”
30 Years Ago
Local calls with cellular phones are now toll-free, a cost reduction of about 75 percent.
“Cool, huh,” said local GTE Alaska manager Greg Combs, who supervised the installation of new equipment for CellularOne. “You pay only for your air time.”
Until the switch was thrown about 4 p.m. Tuesday, local cellphone users were paying the Juneau-Haines long distance rate, about $1.50 for the first minute, on top of a 55 cents per minute air-time charge, Combs said.
Combs said he drove around last week trying out his small cellphone in various locations around town. Despite an occasional “dead zone” – for example, the hill down to Mud Bay – he found that it generally worked.
The toll-free area extends to Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan, and might be extended in another two to three years, Combs said. “For fishermen, this is going to be super.”
50 Years Ago
There was good news and bad news for travelers hoping to go south on the rain-plagued Alaska Highway and the Alaska Marine Highway.
The good news was that the 100 miles of the Alaska Highway affected by washouts had been taken care of and no one was stranded, and that two of the three bridges which had problems as a result of heavy rains would be in service Thursday night, according to Keith Byram of the Canada Department of Public Works.
The bad news was that the third bridge would be usable by Sunday at the earliest, and possibly Monday or Tuesday depending on how repairs go. One pier of the bridge had been ripped badly and had to be jacked up.
Sunday, June 21 A caller on Jones Point Trail reported a brown bear in the area. A Nixle alert was sent. A caller in Haines reported a lost driver’s license. Name and contact information were obtained. A caller at Ft. Seward reported ATVs speeding around on the roadway. A verbal warning was given. A caller on Mud Bay Road reported they were being followed and filmed. A caller on River Road reported unauthorized camping in the area.
Monday, June 22 A caller at Portage Cove reported a tent in the area for over two weeks. A caller at Letnikoff Cove reported pots missing from the water. The caller was given Alaska State Trooper contact information. A caller in the 50 block of Haines Highway reported a driver speeding out of a parking lot. A caller in Haines reported a missing cell phone. Contact information and an item description were obtained. A caller at the Fairgrounds reported a brown bear in the area.
Tuesday, June 23 An officer on Deishu Drive assisted another agency. A caller on Main Street reported a vehicle parked overnight in a no parking spot. The vehicle owner moved the vehicle. An officer in the 300 block of Haines Highway assisted another agency. A caller in the 300 block of Haines Highway requested to speak with an officer about an ongoing harassment issue. A caller in the 100 block of Sawmill Road reported an assault. A citizen in the 300 block of Haines Highway spoke with an officer about identity fraud. A report was taken. A caller in the 80 block of Deishu Drive requested a welfare check on a friend.
Wednesday, June 24 A caller in the 100 block of Haines Highway requested a welfare check on a friend.
Thursday, June 25 A citizen on Mt. Ripinski turned in a water bottle they found on the trail. The item description was logged.
A caller in the 400 block of Main Street requested a welfare check on a friend. An officer on River Road conducted a vehicle stop. The driver received a verbal warning for speeding. An officer in the 200 block of Second Avenue conducted a vehicle stop. The driver received a citation for driving without a valid license.
Friday, June 26 A caller on Jones Point Road turned in a debit card they found. The item was logged into lost and found. An officer in Port Chilkoot performed a vehicle stop. An officer in the 100 block of Third Avenue conducted a vehicle stop. The driver received a verbal warning for speeding. A caller in the 200 block of Sawmill Road reported a motorcycle driving without a license plate. A caller in the 300 block of Lynnview Drive requested a welfare check on a juvenile. A caller in the 300 block of Haines Highway requested to speak with an officer regarding an ongoing civil matter.
Saturday, June 27 An officer at Third Avenue and Lynnview Drive performed a vehicle stop for reckless driving. One subject was taken into custody. An officer on Lower Mud Bay Road conducted a vehicle stop. The driver received a verbal warning for speeding.
There were six 911 hang-up calls, four canine calls, eight EMS calls and 23 burn permits issued during this reporting period.
The lone stoplight in the Chilkat Valley sits on either end of the Wells Bridge and operates via timer, on June 30, 2026 outside of Haines, Alaska. (Lizzy Hahn/ Chilkat Valley News)
Far from cities with stoplights as far as the eye can see, the Chilkat Valley will temporarily know what it feels like to sit and patiently await the light turning green.
Since June 22, traffic on Wells Bridge over the Chilkat River has been restricted to one direction, with a stoplight outside of working hours.
Liz Segars, senior project engineer for Colaska, said that drivers should “treat it as a normal stoplight.”
If drivers approach the red light, they should wait for the light to turn green before moving through the signal. It can take up to 180 seconds because, she said, the light is operated via a timer cycle.
Segars said the company based the timing off the slowest vehicle, a bicyclist. If a car passes on a yellow light, it will have 90 seconds to clear the length of the bridge and make it to the other side before the light on the other side turns green, according to Segars.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, starting Friday, July 3 and ending Tuesday, July 7, the bridge will return to two lanes of traffic. On July 7, the bridge will go back to being a one-lane road and the stoplight will be reinstalled and remain up until Labor Day weekend.
Working hours on the highway are from 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., during which pilot cars shuttle traffic through the bridge’s one-way road.
“It can feel like a really long time, but they are computerized,” Segars said about the stoplights on either side of the bridge. If a fault is detected, then the lights will flash red.
Alaska’s Gov. Mike Dunleavy approved the $16.4 billion budget for 2027 on June 24, with $1.5 million appropriated for the Haines High School and $6 million allocated for airport improvements. The final budget includes $782,700 for the permanent fund.
The locker room project has long been discussed but construction has not started yet. But funds for the school’s roof replacement, $623,006, will reimburse the borough for some of the costs of the now-completed project.
The other $6 million is for the second stage of work at the Haines airport which is a project to repave the runway and taxiways and replace drainage culverts and lighting. The first stage of this project received state funding in 2025, with the same improvement goals.
Before passing the budget, Dunleavy vetoed $89 million in funding from both the House, Senate and mental health budgets.
Some of the education funding vetoed by Dunleavy include: $450,000 in funding for teacher-incentive payments and reimbursements, $3.75 million in HeadStart grants, $355,000 in funding for parents as teachers, $123,000 to fund the lead maintenance generalist position at Mt. Edgecumbe High School and $217,000 to fund the statewide library electronic doorway.
(Lizzy Hahn/ Chilkat Valley News) The Takshanuk Watershed Council building on April 7, 2026 in Haines, Alaska.
Takshanuk Watershed Council has withdrawn a permit application due to concern about proximity to a neighboring Native allotment.
The local nonprofit applied on June 2 to permit three tent platforms and an outhouse at its Jones Point property. The organization planned to use the site for an educational program it said would “consist primarily of environmental education, habitat restoration, watershed monitoring, volunteer projects, research activities, and related nonprofit mission activities.”
Deemed an “educational facility” by borough staff, the project was required to go through the borough’s more stringent conditional-use permitting process, including a public hearing in front of the planning commission. At that public hearing two weeks ago, the permit faced strong opposition from family members of the late Edward Warren, who died last year.
Warren owned a roughly 40-acre Native allotment, which is now in probate, and is in the process of being transferred to his children, family members say.
The allotment and the Takshanuk property are adjacent parcels at Jones Point, where Warren was born. Takshanuk purchased its roughly 50-acre parcel from Klukwan Inc. in 2015, three years after the village corporation filed for bankruptcy.
During the recent public hearing, the two parties presented differing views on the impact of the proposed project.
In Takshanuk’s eyes, the
proposal was for a limited amount of building near the center of their property, away from property lines.
But members of the Warren family who spoke at the meeting viewed the permit application as part of a long history of fighting for jurisdiction over the allotment land.
“This is more than just land to us,” said Amanda Warren, Ed Warren’s granddaughter. “This is a legacy that my grandfather and great-grandfather had to fight for… It’s been a fight that’s so emotional that my grandfather had a hard time even talking about it. I look at paperwork for decades, over two people’s lifetimes, of what they had to do to protect the integrity of the land they had secured. It’s heartwrenching.”
Warren, in a later interview, said her great-grandfather had originally applied for a 160-acre claim to the land he had lived on. Today, the allotment is roughly a quarter of that size.
She also outlined a number of recent events that have increased her distrust of the property neighbors’ intentions.
One of the biggest issues is a heavily-used trail between Jones Point and River Road that runs through the allotment. People have repeatedly trespassed on the family’s allotment while using that trail, Warren said. Now, signs put up by Takshanuk mark the trail as private property and state that people using the Jones Point trailhead must return to the Jones Point trailhead.
Warren also has pushed back against Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium development on another neighboring parcel and a proposed cell tower nearby and worries that the development will lead to encroachment or will otherwise restrict the family’s use of the allotment land in the future.
“They think the public, and specifically tourists, should have more right to that land than we do,” Warren said of proposed development in the general area — specifically of trail infrastructure.
Warren added that she “didn’t trust” that Takshanuk was building the tent project “for just the purpose they’re saying. In our opinion there’s likely a bigger picture for what they’re doing here.”
The conflict, she also said, is deeply personal: “My great-grandfather and grandfather didn’t get to live to see all the effort they went through… What they went through, I won’t let it be in vain. Because there’s no excuse. If my grandpa could get on a boat around the age of 10 and catch a ride with a fisherman to Juneau to do the application then I can do this in my 40s.”
Takshanuk staff and board members, on the other hand, said they were actively working to avoid encroaching on the Warren land, pointing to the fact that the tent-platform project was at the center of the organization’s parcel.
“The location of this camp, three tents and an outhouse, is more than 600 feet from the allotment boundary on the parcel viewer,” Takshanuk executive director Derek Poinsette told planning commissioners at the hearing. “It’s kind of dead smack in the center of Takshanuk’s property. We couldn’t put it any farther away from any of our neighbors. It’s almost right in the middle.”
Poinsette is a planning commissioner and recused himself from deliberation and voting on the permit outside of his testimony.
Poinsette also said he had met with Warren family members last summer and had offered to block the River Road pass through, and had put up signage marking the trail through the allotment as private property.
“I’m willing to do more with signs,” Poinsette said. “Whatever is necessary. When the survey is done we’ll block the trail — we’ll block it on our side, we don’t need to do it right on the boundary.”
The survey Poinsette referenced is being conducted by the Warren family, and may offer a route toward less contentious land-use management in the area.
At the moment, the boundaries of the allotment aren’t certain, with it last being surveyed in 1914. Borough lands department staff said on properties surveyed that long ago, survey markers were often lost or buried, or boundaries were determined by other less precise means than actual physical markers.
The borough’s online parcel viewer does show property boundaries, including those of the Warren allotment, but planning commissioners say they aren’t legally enforceable.
Commissioner Rachel Saitzyk said during the meeting that guidance from borough staff is that “the lines can be off on the parcel viewer by acres.”
“I want to say we can rely on them here but our [Geographic Information System] guy has told us not to rely on those,” Saitzyk said.
Amanda Warren said Wednesday she would like neighboring land owners to hold off on any development until after the survey is completed, expected to be this fall. In her eyes, that would offer more legal protection against any possible encroachment.
In a similar vein, at the public hearing, she asked the planning commission to hold any approval for Takshanuk’s project until after her family had time to consult with lawyers.
At one point, commission chair Patty Brown asked Edward Warren’s daughter, Cora Lee Cooper, if there were special conditions the commission could place on the permit, besides holding it for a legal review, to make the family “feel more secure.”
“I think that would be better suited for a lawyer to answer than myself,” Cooper responded.
That appeared to be a complicated procedural question for the commission: in borough code, the planning commission is required to weigh input from neighbors when hearing conditional use permits like Takshanuk’s, but is not required to give neighbors any other power over the process.
“The (conditional use permit) is a requirement from the borough,” Brown said to Cooper and Warren at one point in the hearing. “It’s really a relationship between Takshanuk and the borough… You’ve heard how supportive people are, but it feels a little circular that other people have to ask their lawyers what Takshanuk is allowed to do. Takshanuk is the proprietor of the property.”
Ultimately, the permit never came to a vote. Between the planning commission meetings on June 18 and 25, when the commission was set to decide on the permit, Takshanuk withdrew its permit application.
Poinsette this week did not respond to requests for comment, but borough lands staff said the organization would not be going forward with its plans for the educational program at the Jones Point property.
Rebecca Brewer fixes a fisherman’s net on the dock on June 26, 2026 in Haines, Alaska. (Lizzy Hahn/ Chilkat Valley News)
Commercial fishers from the Chilkat Valley are reporting success during their first two weeks. The fishery had its first opening on Father’s Day, with 90 boats fishing in District 15, or the Lynn Canal. The first opener lasted two days with an estimated total of 91,658 fish caught. Just over 88,000 of them were chum salmon, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Dawson Evenden, a gillnetter from Haines, said many were pleasantly surprised with the volume of fish. Evenden was fishing in Boat Harbor, located about 46 miles south of Haines. Evenden said he was mainly going after the chum salmon, which people were chasing in the southern end of the Lynn Canal, rather than the sockeyes in the northern end.
Greg Smith, communications director for Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, said that there is a “strong demand for seafood in Alaska,” as well as across the U.S. and around the world. ASMI’s outlook report for the 2026 chum run reports that over the past three years, Japan’s chum run has collapsed.
The chum price per pound last year in Southeast last year was 66 cents. As of June 30, the price per pound for chums sits at $1.35 — a number that many said they have not seen in years.
“It’s a good price for both (sockeyes and chum) but with a good price for chum, it doesn’t take very many to add up,” Evenden said. He is mainly going after chums because of their size and abundance in the canal.
Tenders from the Haines Packing Company and Silver Bay Seafoods in Sitka bought fish harvested during the first opener. Despite repeated phone calls and messages left with both processors, neither responded to questions about their plans for this year’s fishing season.
The Haines Harbor makes salt ice, using pool salt, for fishers to pick up before heading out. Harbormaster Henry Pollan said they typically make 16 to 26 tons of ice per opener, depending on the demand and how many boats are in the harbor before the opener starts.
Down on the dock on Friday afternoon, Rebecca Brewer was mending gillnets after various setbacks impacted fishers during the first opener. She named the highlights of the first opener as “big shreds,” including an Alaska Marine Lines tug and barge running through a net, a sport boat hitting another net, and someone else wrapping their net around an island.
“It’s been a heck of a week for repairs. We’ve been working nonstop all week,” Brewer said. She has been doing net repairs for 18 seasons.
Gillnetter Cynthia Adams left last weekend planning to be out on the ocean for most of the summer.
“We’re going to try and hit it hard,” Adams said, with Boat Harbor being a main anchorage location. She said this was at least her 27th year gillnetting and captaining. Adams and deckhand Lucia Chapell are likely the only all-woman crew in the local fleet. Adams said the highest price she has seen for chum was a dollar. Last year, the price was not very good, however there were a lot of fish, Adams said.
“It seems like if the price is good, there aren’t as many fish,” she said. “The price is bad, there’s a lot of fish.” This year however, the price is good and there are a lot of fish.
Adams brought flowers and a suitcase of food from Trader Joe’s to enjoy while out on the water. She said they will enjoy salads and roasted veggies, with the goal of nurturing “your physical being because it’s hard work out there.” Fishing is open from 4 a.m. to 10 p.m., due to a night closure enacted by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
“It’s just nice to be comfortable and have some fun things like flowers to cheer you up if it’s rainy, if you’re working hard,” Adams said.
The gillnet season lasts until late September or October, depending on weather conditions and fish abundance.
“July is our big month. We work really hard and the [Southeast State Fair] is kind of the light at the end of the tunnel,” Adams said. She is boycotting the fair this year because the date is a week early compared with previous years. “It’s right in the middle of some of the best fishing we have.”
Kyle Clayton went out during the first opener with veteran fisher J.R. Churchill, who showed him what hazards to keep an eye out for in the canal and around Mab Island. Clayton was a deckhand in Bristol Bay for eight seasons. This year is both his first season fishing in the Lynn Canal and his first time running his own boat. He said the Bristol Bay fishery was a much faster pace and had a shorter amount of fishing time compared with the Lynn Canal fishery that is “a little more sustained throughout the weeks.”
Editor’s note: Kyle Clayton is a former owner of the Chilkat Valley News.
(File photo/Chilkat Valley News) A family fishes on the Chilkoot River un 2021.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game last week increased the king salmon take allowed for non-resident anglers this summer, in response, department officials say, to lower-than-expected harvest.
Previously, non-residents across Southeast had been permitted to keep one king salmon from July 1 onward. With the new regulations, non-residents will be permitted two, with king salmon caught before July 1 counted toward that limit. The new regulations make no changes to other user groups; resident anglers may keep two king salmon per day with no annual limit.
The change comes with king salmon harvest in the region well below expected levels. Prior to the season, Fish and Game was targeting a total Southeast king salmon sport fish harvest of 43,600 fish. That number is just below the harvest allowed by the Pacific Salmon Treaty, which allocates specific portions of the king salmon take to geographic areas, gear groups and user groups in the United States and Canada.
In-season management to meet that target is partially the product of a relatively new regulatory regime, passed in early 2025 by the state’s Board of Fisheries.
In the past, the regional troll and sport fisheries had overlapping allocations — the number of king salmon that could be harvested by each group. With the sport fishery generally targeting king salmon earlier in the season, if sport fishermen caught more than they were allotted, there would be a corresponding decrease in the troll fishing harvest later in the season. When the sport fishery undershot its allotment, the troll fishery would be given extra opportunity.
That changed when the Board of Fisheries last year voted to separate the allotments. Instead of allowing the sport fish harvest to fluctuate above and below targets, compensated for by the troll fishery, Fish and Game is now directed to continuously adjust regulations in-season to meet allocation targets exactly.
The change had strong support from the troll fishery and was opposed by a large number of charter boat and lodge owners. Trollers cited the lack of a limited entry system for tourist-oriented sport fish operations and argued the industry had been taking an outsize share of the king salmon population at the expense of troll openings.
“There should be clear direction to ADF&G to implement inseason management as necessary to preserve both resident sport fishing opportunity and maintain the troll allocation,” wrote the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association in public comment on the management change. “Inseason management requires inseason harvest projections and responsive adjustments.”
On the other hand, the Craig Fish and Game Advisory Council called the change a “kiss of death” for the charter fleet due to potentially reduced harvest for non-residents early in the season.
“Our business is absolutely dependent on sufficient non-resident access to king salmon in the early season… there is not enough access to other species of fish during this time of year, and non-residents will simply not travel across the country and spend the incredible amount of money that they do in our communities if this limit is reduced in June and early July,” said one public comment from Thorne Bay lodge owner Luther Jenson.
This year, sportfish harvest has came in well below expectations. Based on data from before the regulation change, the fishery was expected to undershoot its 43,600 fish target by roughly 15-20%, said Fish and Game Haines area sportfish biologist John Whitinger. Now, state managers hope the new regulations will bring harvest closer to that target.
On a regionwide level, Fish and Game staff don’t have a clear explanation for why harvest has been down.
The total amount of fishing being done — known as effort — is roughly in line with last year, Fish and Game regional manager Troy Tydinco said this week. But the catch per unit, essentially the productivity of those anglers, is lower than expected.
That could be explained by at least two different factors, Tydinco said: one, that the fish aren’t where they usually are, so anglers are missing them. Or, there are fewer fish than expected. Likely, he said, it’s a combination of multiple factors.
There’s special concern about the king salmon population in the Lynn Canal: the king salmon sport fishery this year opened for the first time in nearly a decade, following years of low population numbers in the 2010s.
Fish and Game’s preseason projection was for a strong run of Chilkat River king salmon, but there’s limited data in-season to determine whether that forecast is coming to pass.
There’s king salmon abundance data from Fish and Game area researcher Brian Elliott, who runs a king salmon tagging project on the Chilkat river. The project consists of a tagging event and a recapture event, and there should be some preliminary data from that first tagging event in the next two weeks. But the data is only enough for a “ballpark” guess at run strength — enough to place abundance in categories of “good, average, or bad,” Elliot said — and not enough for a real estimate. That more accurate population estimate is only expected to come in early September.
Meanwhile, some say Fish and Game’s effort to increase harvest will threaten the recovery of the Chilkat run. One of those voicing that concern is Ken Gross, who operates one of Lynn Canal’s two charter boats targeting kings.
With bad fishing so far this season, Gross assumed new regulations would restrict harvest, and was surprised to find fisheries managers have done the opposite.
Theoretically, with his majority non-resident clientele, Gross is part of the group that stands to benefit from loosened regulations on non-resident anglersBut Gross says he’s more worried about the long-term health of the stock, especially given that he believes his business won’t even see a short-term boost.
While the new regulations allow more retention for non-residents, his charter operation is primarily catch and release, he said, almost by necessity: “I can’t take care of meat on my boat. You can’t bleed them or gut them, and I don’t even have ice on my boat. (Clients) can’t take it to a processor, they can’t take it on a cruise ship, and the restaurants aren’t allowed to cook it.”
One group that can benefit and take more meat home are Canadian anglers, he said. But he called that “absurd,” in light of the years of closures for locals.
Fish and Game staff have a different perspective, noting the unlimited annual limit for locals.
“It is in legislation that the fishery is managed so residents have priority, no matter what,” Whitinger said. “This measure does not impact that because residents have an unlimited annual limit. We’re providing opportunity for non-residents, but still not giving them more than residents.”
That’s another effect of the new system voted into place by the Board of Fish, which aims to hold resident limits steady and instead use non-resident limits as a primary in-season management tool.
Both Tydinco and Whitinger also pointed to restricted area on the Chilkat side this year as a special conservation measure meant to protect the local stock. The river is closed to anglers from around Kochu Island north — roughly even with the Chilkat State Park entrance — through July 15, at which point most of the run is expected to have migrated into the river, Whitinger said.
Whitinger also pointed to area-specific factors that he said will decrease the impact of the new regulations on the Chilkat run.
In Southeast broadly, non-residents represent about three-quarters of the king salmon sportfish harvest. The Lynn Canal, however, only has the two charter operations, which Whitinger believes will reduce the impact of the new non-resident regulations.
As new harvest projections come in, the regulations may yet again change.
“We project effort and harvest and inevitably, it’s not exactly what we anticipate,” Tydinco said. “As we go through the season we’ll have to keep fine tuning and making adjustments. Ideally we’d set the regulations perfectly and leave them in place. We’re trying to balance stability in the fishery and meeting the allocation; we may have to make adjustments again toward the end of the season, though it’s our hope we don’t have to.”
The state courthouse in Nome is seen on April 8, 2026. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
More Alaskans are set to have access to free legal aid as Alaska’s largest provider of legal assistance for civil cases gets a boost in short and longer term funding from the state and the Rasmuson Foundation.
The Alaska Legal Services Corporation is a nonprofit that helps Alaskans with civil legal issues such as housing, public assistance, family law like custody disputes and protective orders, wills and probate issues, Alaska Native law and other areas specific to veterans, seniors, and people with disabilities. It is also the largest provider of free legal services for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
State funding for the agency comes from legal civil punitive damages and filing fees in the Alaska Court system. This year, the Alaska Legislature approved an increase from 10% to 25% of fees, estimated at roughly $460,000 per year. Gov. Mike Dunleavy allowed the legislation, House Bill 48, to go into law without his signature on June 4. The bill is set to go into effect next July, in 2027.
Maggie Humm, executive director of the corporation, told lawmakers she estimates the organization turns away one person for every person they help due to limited resources. She said they provided legal assistance in over 5,400 cases, impacting nearly 15,000 Alaskans last year.
On Wednesday, Humm said in an interview that she and her colleagues are grateful for the state’s support and expect that sustained funding will help the agency assist an estimated 800 more households each year.
“So that’s very encouraging for us, particularly because when folks, if they do get turned away from our services, they often have nowhere else to go,” Humm said.
While every criminal defendant has the constitutional right to a lawyer, that’s not the case for civil cases. Nationally, only about 8% of legal problems are adequately addressed in low-income households, Humm said. “It can result in just a cascade of consequences for them, particularly low-income Alaskans, because their legal problems often impact their livelihood, their housing, their ability to put food on their table, the safety of themselves or their children,” she said.
Also on Wednesday, the Rasmuson Foundation, an Alaska-focused family foundation, announced an award to Alaska Legal Services Corp. of $1 million to go toward the agency’s Community Justice Worker program.
The program trains community members who are not lawyers to provide legal assistance on specific issues, under a rule approved by the Alaska Bar Association in 2022, Humm said. It’s a significant boost for the agency whose budget is roughly $9.5 million.
“We are creating an additional level of legal helpers for our communities, and with the hope that we will be able to help more people,” she said.
Humm said the model is inspired by the tribal Community Health Aide Program model, aimed at training local residents to serve as healthcare providers, particularly in rural and remote Alaska communities. The community justice workers are trained in providing legal assistance for debt collection defense, the enforcement of the Indian Child Welfare Act, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program advocacy, domestic violence protective orders and probate and wills, Humm said.
“We have trained our first class of CJWs to represent folks in court in domestic violence protective order hearings, so we have staff CJWs who are already practicing in court, which is very exciting,” she said.
Gretchen Guess, President and CEO of the Rasmuson Foundation, said in an emailed statement Wednesday that the organization supports ALSC’s work to expand access to legal assistance.
“Its Community Justice Worker Program is a proven, innovative approach to ensuring Alaskans can receive appropriate legal services, regardless of where they live. Rasmuson Foundation’s mission is to empower Alaskans to help each other, and we believe Alaska Legal Services is doing just that with this growing network of community justice workers,” she wrote.
Humm said the agency currently provides services in roughly 200 communities across Alaska, with the ultimate goal to expand to all communities.
“Our dream is to have a community justice worker, a legal helper in every community in Alaska, so that would be really wonderful,” she said. “But we’re going to set our sights high, and get as many community justice workers as we can across the state.”
A firefighter watches as the Gifford Fire burns on Aug. 6, 2025, in Los Padres National Forest in California. Across the country, state officials say they’ve lost access to Forest Service grants to protect communities from wildfire, following a federal update to terms and conditions seeking to force agency partners to pledge compliance with President Donald Trump’s views on immigration, gender and DEI programs. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)
Editor’s note: The California-specific wildfire betting market, Wyldfyre, took its website offline following the publication of this story.
Sylvie Andrews and her partner didn’t just lose the new house they’d helped build when the Eaton Fire ripped through Altadena, California, in January 2025. They lost an entire decade’s worth of sacrifices they’d made to put down roots in their hometown, and the community they’d created. “We put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into it,” Andrews said. “That’s what we lost in the fire.”
That fire, along with the Palisades Fire to the west, destroyed over 16,000 structures and killed 31 people. But while Andrews and thousands of Angelinos were racing to evacuate, other people saw a financial opportunity. Using Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market platform, they made bets on the fires — how they would grow, how long they would last and how much they would destroy.
Prediction markets are essentially gambling websites where people bet on the outcome of events, including elections, sports, the weather and more. Anything is fair game, from oil prices and the spread of infectious diseases to international incidents. Markets usually frame questions in a “yes” or “no” fashion, with the price of a “contract” fluctuating between $0 and $1. A price of 50 cents on a “yes” contract means that the people doing the betting collectively believe the event has a 50% chance of happening. Market hosts make money by charging a fee on wagers.
In January 2025, Polymarket listed almost 20 questions, created by the platform’s “markets team,” related to the wildfires burning up Southern California. How many acres will the Palisades Fire burn by Friday, three days after it ignited on a Tuesday? Will the Palisades Fire reach Santa Monica by Sunday? When will the Palisades fire be 50% contained? Will the Palisades and Eaton fires be contained before February?
People spent $1.2 million betting on these queries, according to Aeon Magazine. “Wow,” Andrews said repeatedly when she learned the figure. “My first take is that it’s morally reprehensible,” she said. “The fact that someone would feel OK doing that flabbergasts me.”
“The prediction markets are just the wild, wild West,” said Susan Sherman, who grew up in the Pacific Palisades. She lost her childhood home in the Palisades Fire; her late parents had owned it since 1963, and now, it was gone. She sold the empty lot a few months ago. “I look at (betting on the fires) as just being very crass and heartless.”
As prediction markets boom and a new wildfire season begins, fire survivors and ethicists say that the betting encourages and rewards callous thinking — and dangerous behavior, too.
ONE MAJOR CONCERN stemming from wildfire prediction markets is arson. “That’s what has me nervous,” Sherman said. Theoretically, making a bet could give someone the perverse incentive to start a fire, or help one grow. Unlike other disasters, such as hurricanes, flooding or extreme heat, a fire can be manipulated in minutes by just one person. “Systems that tie financial gain to wildfire outcomes risk encouraging misuse, including arson, and are not compatible with our mission,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service said.
“Imagine what a bad actor might do,” said Ann Skeet, the senior director of leadership ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. “A market that might support that kind of activity, I think, is a dangerous market.” Firefighters or land managers with exclusive information about a fire’s behavior or an agency’s firefighting plans could even be tempted to bet on a fire, which would be considered insider trading.
But the biggest dilemma is largely an ethical one. “When you start gambling on somebody’s potential death or harm, you’re really diminishing the value that you’re placing on human life,” Skeet said.
BETTING ON A WILDFIRE’S OUTCOME isn’t just limited to general prediction market platforms anymore. This year, ahead of what’s likely to be a busy fire season in the West, a new prediction market specifically focused on California fires was launched. Called “Wyldfyre,” it bears the tagline: “You can’t predict wildfire. But you can trade on it.” High Country News was unable to determine the platform’s owner or the owner of its website’s IP address; the website is opaque, with no contact information listed.
Currently, Wyldfyre users can only simulate trading, but according to the site, the ability to bet with real money is “coming soon.” The platform purports to be the first prediction market of its kind, pricing county and city wildfire risk in real time. “California burns. Every year. And it’s getting worse. The question isn’t if — it’s where and when,” the site reads. It includes hotspot data from NASA and National Interagency Fire Center fire perimeters to help gamblers make predictions.
Proponents of prediction markets say the platforms generate useful information through crowdsourcing. Wyldfyre frames its platform as providing a public good. “Wyldfyre turns collective intelligence into better wildfire forecasting — one trade at a time,” the site reads.
But entities with a real need for wildfire forecasting, including federal and state firefighting agencies, say they aren’t interested in prediction market data. “The Forest Service does not use information from prediction markets for wildfire forecasting, and we do not rely on any system that treats wildfire as an event for speculation,” an agency spokesperson told High Country News. “Our priority is protecting firefighters, communities, and public lands, and our fire analysts use validated science, proven predictive tools, and data from federal partners such as the National Weather Service, NOAA, and the National Interagency Fire Center.”
California’s state firefighting agency has a similar policy. “CAL FIRE does not use prediction‑market-derived data in wildfire forecasting or operational decision‑making, nor are we currently evaluating that type of system,” said Phillip SeLegue, staff chief of CAL FIRE’s intelligence program.
The agency uses a “scientifically based fire-behavior modeling” program to generate a fire-spread prediction when a 911 call for a wildfire is processed, SeLegue said. The automated program uses weather observations, forecast data, fuel and vegetation conditions, topography, location data and information on available resources. “Our modeling is deterministic and physics‑based; it is not informed by markets, wagering systems, crowd predictions or any other form of prediction‑market mechanism,” SeLegue said.
AS PREDICTION-MARKET BETTING soars in popularity, politicians are beginning to try to rein it in. Representatives from Utah and California introduced federal legislation in March that would prohibit betting “related to terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or illegal activity,” according to a press release. A California senator introduced companion legislation that would also prohibit contracts about “an individual’s death.”
Meanwhile, Minnesota just became the first state to outlaw hosting or advertising (though not betting on) prediction markets; the federal government promptly sued the state for over-stepping its authority. None of the proposed restrictions at a state or federal level explicitly include wildfire — at least not yet.
While state and federal governments struggle to control prediction market betting, Andrews has an idea. “If someone won money in gambling with our fate, I would hope that they might be ashamed of themselves,” she said, “and take that money and donate it directly to fire survivors.”
The Tustumena is seen docked in Kodiak in 2021. The 62-year-old ferry is referred to affectionately as the “Trusty Tusty.” State officials are moving toward replacing it with a modern ship, a plan that has been in the works for more than a decade. (Photo by Gabe Strong/Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities)
A Louisiana shipbuilder is proposing to build a replacement for one of the workhorse vessels in the Alaska state ferry fleet.
Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors LLC submitted a bid of about $350 million to build a replacement for the 62-year-old Tustumena, one of two ocean-going ships in the fleet, the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities said Tuesday.
Thoma-Sea’s bid was the only one submitted for the project, a department spokesperson said.
The company’s bid, which is still subject to more review, brings the state a step closer to replacing the iconic “Trusty Tusty,” a ship famous for plying often-rough Gulf of Alaska waters as far west as Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands.
“For the communities served by the Tustumena, this vessel represents far more than a new ferry. It is a lifeline that connects families, supports local economies, moves freight, and provides access to essential services,” Ryan Anderson, commissioner of the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, said in a statement.
Submission of the bid represents an important step toward what is planned as the first major Alaska Marine Highway System vessel procurement in more than a decade, the department said.
The effort to replace the Tustumena has been an on-and-off process stretching over more than a decade.
The Tustumena, named for the Tustumena Glacier on the Kenai Peninsula, is the smallest of the state’s four mainline ferries, but it is known for its toughness.
Decades of being battered in the Gulf of Alaska have taken a toll on the ship. Starting in late 2012, it spent several months in dry dock for a series of repairs, disrupting sailing schedules and leaving Gulf of Alaska communities like Kodiak without ferry service for an extended period. In 2016, it developed a hull crack severe enough to force some weather restrictions for the ship’s operations. Those problems inspired another nickname: “Rusty Tusty.”
The ship has withstood political and economic turbulence, as well.
A replacement plan triggered by the 2012 repair problems was later shelved for budgetary reasons, then revived and then shelved again, also for budgetary reasons. A 2022 state request for bids from shipbuilders drew no responses. Plans to solicit bids in 2024 and 2025 did not materialize.
This year’s bidding process resulted in an estimated cost about $100 million higher than what was estimated in 2021 by the Dunleavy administration. However, most of the money that would be needed to pay for the planned replacement has come to the state through federal legislation shepherded by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
The replacement ship is to be built by 2029, according to the state’s request for bids. Meanwhile, the Tustumena, which has gotten several upgrades, continues to operate on its route between Homer and Unalaska.
Despite its ups and downs, the Tustumena has a loyal and affectionate following from residents of western Gulf of Alaska communities and Alaska history buffs.
An oral history project compiled stories of people who worked or rode on the Tustumena in past decades.
In 2024, residents of Kodiak threw a 60th anniversary bash for the Tustumena that featured speeches by legislators and mayors from communities served by the ferry.
