Anchorage Daily News

Wolves blamed in two Eagle River attacks. A KTVA Channel 11 story reports on a group of at least seven wolves that waylaid three women running with their dogs on Artillery Road in Eagle River. The pack, despite being pepper-sprayed by one of the women, circled the group for a time before attacking and injuring one of the dogs, according to the story.

The women were not hurt in the episode, but a bulldog, Buddy, underwent surgery to fix his wounds. “They were not afraid of us, and I’m afraid that if I was out here by myself, they would attack me,” Buddy’s owner, Camas Barkemeyer, says in the story.

The report says the episode came about an hour after a dog on a chain was attacked and killed in an Eagle River backyard. State Department of Fish and Game officials believe both attacks may have involved the same wolves, according to the story.

Meanwhile, a Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story today says that Fish and Game officials in that community have set up a hot line and an Internet site to handle reports of wolf sightings. A pack of wolves is believed to be responsible for at least three dog deaths in the region in recent months.

Click here for more stories that have run in the ADN this winter about wolves attacking dogs in the Anchorage and Fairbanks areas.

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Bluff erosion may imperil homes. A new study detailed in a Peninsula Clarion story finds that homes on the bluff between Homer and the Kenai Forelands could be in jeopardy within a few years as erosion eats away the land. Researchers concluded that “some areas are losing as much as 2.3 feet of land per year, putting property and portions of the Sterling Highway and Kalifornsky Beach Road at risk of washing away,” according to the story.

The Kenai Peninsula Borough is still in the early stages of gathering information on the situation and will eventually use the data to develop guidelines for property owners along the bluff, the story says.

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Alaskans in running for “muckiness” acclaim. Talking Points Memo web site, which hasn’t missed a step by Alaska’s congressional delegation in months, has named all three — Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young — as nominees in one category or another for its Golden Duke Awards. The awards are given “to recognize great accomplishments in muckiness including acts of venal corruption, outstanding self-inflicted losses of dignity, crimes against the republic, bribery, exposed hypocrisy and generally malevolent governance.”

Stevens and Young are competing against each other for Best Scandal-General Interest: Stevens “for multiple counts of backroom wheeling and dealing for personal gain,” and Young for “for using the U.S. Treasury to pay off a campaign contributor.” Murkowski was nominated in Outstanding Achievement in Corruption-based Chutzpah “for her undisclosed purchase of some prime real estate at half the market price from friend and campaign contributor Bob Penney.”

The web site includes a long string of commentary and videos from which the nominees were selected. Winners will be announced Dec. 31.

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Dear Santa. One line from an addictive list of kindergartners’ letters to Santa Claus printed in the Homer Tribune this week: “Haow cold is the North Pole? I wish for Barbies, one hors, and for my mom not to get sick.”

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Petition seeks protection for ribbon seals. The Associated Press reports that a conservation group is trying to get ribbon seals listed as a threatened or endangered species. The Center for Biological Diversity is calling for the action because the seals’ sea ice habitat is being lost to climate change, according to the story.

“The Arctic is in crisis state from global warming,” says biologist Shaye Wolf. “An entire ecosystem is rapidly melting away, and the ribbon seal is poised to become the first victim of our failure to address global warming.”

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“Winged” vessels gain ground. A Juneau Empire story today reports on the Juneau Assembly’s decision to add “wing in ground effect” vessels to a list of exemptions from the 5-knot speed limit in Gastineau Channel. The decision means the sea craft, which travel on a cushion of air and don’t make wakes, are more likely to become a component of transportation methods in Southeast waters.

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NFL legend favors Alaska over Dolphin country. Former Miami Dolphins great Larry Csonka, who owns a home here, hosts a cable TV outdoors show and appears regularly in an Alaska TV commercial for a spinal health center, told The Eagle-Tribune in Massachusetts his heart was never in the sunshine state. It was always in Alaska.

“It was in 1962 (when I was 5) that I remember walking out of the grocery store, holding an Outdoor Life magazine,” Csonka told the paper in a brief feature story. “There was a Kodiak bear on the cover. I was mesmerized. From that point forward, I promised myself I would go there someday.”

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“Stuffed with earmarks.” A front-page Washington Post story today, which documents the continued proliferation of earmarks despite criticism of the process, singles out Alaska’s Ted Stevens and Don Young as finding ways to bring money to their state. In particular, the story says, the two lost money to build two “bridges to nowhere” but gained money for a “ferry to nowhere.”

The story says spending bills approved by Congress this week and last month contain more than 11,000 earmarks, “despite Democrats’ vow to use their first year in the majority to slash the number of such pet projects.” Alaska’s ferry project, which would link Anchorage and Mat-Su, is one of the more expensive.

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“Year of the big.” The Alaska Journal of Commerce looks back over 2007 and finds it to be a year of “big dreams, big budgets and big oil (revenue, that is). It was also the year of big scandal, big corruption and big prison sentences.”

And then there’s the big money that is coming Alaska’s way. “As the year closes, (Gov. Sarah) Palin's administration is rolling in money — thanks to oil revenues that came from sky-high oil prices through much of the year. She’s looking for ways to dole some of it out while putting big chunks into savings,” the newspaper says.

The publication also has collected a few photographs from events of the year.

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Alaska leads nation in dog bites. A new study shows that serious dogs bites per capita in Alaska run far ahead of the rest of the nation, according to an APRN story. A state Division of Epidemiology survey on the number of dogs bites between 1991 and 2002 found 283 bite injuries, including nine deaths, according to the story. Half of the deaths involved young Alaska Native kids.

And that’s probably not all the bites, according to the state. “There’s a whole spectrum of dog bites,” a state epidemiologist says in the story, including bites that are fatal, bites that send victims to the emergency room, and “then bites that nobody ever knows about because they just happen and there’s no medical care that’s sought.”

The Anchorage/Mat-Su area had the most bites in the study: 115. Interior was next with 53. Southwest and northern Alaska had the highest rate, according to the story.

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“Along came a spider.” A Fairbanks Daily News-Miner story documents the accomplishments of a University of Alaska Fairbanks student who, once terrified of spiders, has come to keep a tarantula as a pet and who has gained national recognition identifying and cataloging the different species of spiders in Alaska.

Brandi Fleshman is putting together what is believed to be the first list of Alaska spiders in 60 years, according to the story. She has identified 464 species so far; scientists didn’t know 14 of them lived here.

“They tend to be smaller here,” Fleshman said. “But we do still have some larger-bodied ones. We have one fishing spider. They can eat tadpoles and stuff.”

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