Anchorage Daily News

Bear-spray bandit soaks bar patrons — twice. A Kodiak Daily Mirror story reports on a bar customer, apparently irate at getting the boot from the B&B Bar, who charged back in 15 minutes later and soaked the clientele with bear spray. Police detained a suspect out on the street a few minutes later and took his bear spray but let him go when they were distracted by another call, according to the story.

The next day, the bear-spray bandit hit B&B again. Police found the same suspect walking down the street, took another can of bear spray off him and put him in jail. “I’m not aware of any motive,” said police chief T.C. Kamai. “I think he was probably still pretty upset that he was ejected from the bar. Admittedly, that is not typical behavior. We don’t normally see something like that.”

***

Dentists drop in. Dentists from the New York University College of Dentistry landed in Kasigluk last week to lend a hand in overcoming a shortage of dental health care in Alaska, an APRN story reports. “Hallelujah, I was so happy,” one woman whose son had a painful tooth extracted told the station.

Dentists from the college usually visit Third World countries and made their trip to Alaska in the wake of the American Dental Association’s complaint against Alaska’s Dental Therapist Program, according to the story.

***

An oil crisis ahead? A Reuters story today reports a selection of views from energy company executives on whether “lackluster production and reserve replacement rates” reported by major oil companies signal an oil crisis ahead. The chief executive of Hess Corp., John Hess, for one predicts flatly that one is coming with the next 10 years.

“While recent discoveries ... are promising, we need to find a new production basin like the Alaska North Slope or Angola every year to ensure that we can grow our oil resource base to support increases in production for future generations. We stopped making such meaningful discoveries during the late 1990s,” Hess said.

***

Regulators look at pipeline problems. A Wall Street Journal story today reports that federal regulators are looking at an equipment malfunction involving the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. The malfunction apparently took some new pumps in Pump Station 3 offline in January and February, according to the story.

“Industry critics say the incident illustrates the problems Alyeska (Pipeline Service Co.) is facing as it seeks to improve on efficiency and cost by automating the pumping stations along the 800-mile pipeline,” the story says.

***

“No roads, no regrets.” The Washington Post has a story and slide show about a couple’s 10-day raft trip down the Kongakut River in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The story notes that only about 1,000 people visit the refuge each year, almost all of them in the summer.

***

Villages vulnerable to fire. British Columbia’s pine beetle outbreak has left 100 Native communities in danger of being destroyed by fire, a story in The Globe and Mail says. The beetles have left huge regions of dry, dead timber behind that hold the potential for wildfires rivaling those in Greece and California last year, according to the story.

“We’ve got a fire season approaching, and the potential for a disaster to be compounded with runaway wildfires is huge. It’s imminent. It’s very real, and people are very worried,” said Dave Porter of B.C.’s First Nations Summit, which represents a majority of aboriginal communities in the province.

***

Researchers agree: Sea lice killing salmon. Government-funded researchers have come around to the notion that mass extinctions of wild pink salmon are possible as a consequence of sea lice in fish farms, a story in The Vancouver Sun says. The conclusion is seen as a major blow to British Columbia’s salmon farming industry, which had argued that the sea lice threat was overstated, according to the story.

Researchers have found crashing pink salmon numbers in some areas of the B.C. coast and have warned that pink salmon could be extinct in the central coast within four years due to sea lice arising from fish farms.

***

Mouse troubles? From a classified ad at The Delta News Web: “Free kittens to good home. Approx 2 months old, litter trained and very friendly. Mom is an excellent mouser. Call 895-5434.”

***

Sled dog racing, New Hampshire style. Sled dog racing in the Northeast doesn’t reach the distances nor the popularity that it does in Alaska, but it has fervent fans, judging from a Boston Globe story about a race in Tamworth, N.H. Sixty-three teams gathered there for what the story calls the “oldest continuous sled dog race in the Northeast.”

The Tamworth race was founded in 1924, according to the story, after a local man traveled to the Yukon to search for gold, then “decided to introduce sled dog rides at his Wonalancet, N.H., inn. As popularity grew, point-to-point races between rural towns began to emerge.”

***

Bering Sea canyons may get protection. Massive canyons in the Bering Sea explored in a Greenpeace-sponsored expedition last summer could get the region a protected habitat designation under new federal provisions, according to a story in The Dutch Harbor Fisherman. Exploration of the canyon (reported here in an ADN story that includes a link to spectacular video of the area) found oases of coral and sponge sheltering fish and crabs.

Researchers found evidence of “fishing gear disturbance” in the canyons, according to The Dutch Harbor Fisherman story, and those “findings strengthen the case to make the areas protected from the impact of fishing.”

***

Fur Rondy promos. With this year’s Fur Rondy in Anchorage almost at hand (events start next Friday), the event’s web site has a collection of television ads pushing the festivities. Featuring the likes of Rosey Fletcher, Jackie Purcell and Dee Dee Jonrowe, the clips hold more than a little bit of humor.

***

Medical team targeting stomach cancer in the north. A story from The Globe and Mail calls stomach cancer “endemic in the north” and reports on a team of nurses and physicians who have descended on Aklavik, a village in the MacKenzie River delta, to try to figure out why. Research numbers have shown that stomach cancer among First Nations and Inuit people is double that of the rest of Canadians, and health officials in Alaska, Russia and Greenland are monitoring the Aklavik project.

“Nothing like this has been done anywhere in the world before. It’s very exciting,” said Bob Bailey, a gastroenterologist and medical officer for the Northern Health Services Network at Capital Health in Edmonton, Alberta. “This is world-class medical care being delivered in a remote community.”

***

Transportation system makes inroads in Girdwood. A Turnagain Times story reports that bus service in Girdwood, which hit the streets in November, is gaining a reputation as something of a success story. The two buses — both of them old vehicles bought for $5,000 each — are operating 21 hours a day at 27 pickup points around the valley, according to the story.

“And even though they don’t expect to make much money, Glacier Valley Transit is working toward paying its way through rider fees, grants and advertisements that are currently being sold inside the bus and soon will be offered on the outside of the bus,” the story says.

And then there’s this from the story: “This past New Year’s Eve there were no arrests for DUIs. Even Trooper Sgt. Bryan Barlow of the Girdwood post admitted that the new public transportation service was a factor in the absence of DUI arrests.”

ADVERTISEMENT