Anchorage Daily News

Anchorage Assemblyman Bill Starr is sounding the alarm on the way the city handles -- or doesn't handle -- interactions with bears.

No one is in charge, he says.

And in some ways, he's right. The state is in charge of managing wildlife. But who in the city is in charge of making other decisions that affect the "wild" part of Anchorage's "Big Wild Life"?

No one, apparently.

The city does need to pay more attention to bear safety. Two maulings in the Anchorage Bowl this summer and a third near Eagle River made that clear.

But Starr's proposal, to hire a seasonal wildlife manager who would haze or even kill troublesome bears is off the mark. We don't need a summer worker to compete with the state's career biologists in making decisions about the behavior of individual bears.

We do need someone in the city who's in charge of how the city deals with bears and other wildlife problems, whether it's an emergency threatening human safety or a long-term policy question.

The city bear person should talk to the state biologists. He or she should decide if and when particular trails are temporarily unsafe, and close them -- before anyone gets charged or mauled -- and make sure those closures are enforced.

He should help city policy-makers figure out how to rehabilitate Anchorage creeks without causing them to fill up with salmon that will attract more bears.

He should enforce policies that eliminate bear-accessible garbage, dog food and bird feeders in neighborhoods that bears frequent.

Starr, who is introducing a resolution about bears at next Tuesday's Anchorage Assembly meeting, not only wants a city wildlife officer with a gun, he also proposes the city push the state to authorize hunts of moose and brown bears in the upper Hillside and parts of Eagle River.

Starr wants to decrease the number of moose on the theory that will lead to fewer grizzlies, since bears eat moose.

But biologists at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game have not determined why Anchorage had so many problems with bears this summer. Was it that salmon runs were late and the bears were hungry and ranging more broadly? Was it late berries? Are there just more bears?

It's too soon to conclude that we're simply being overrun with bears.

Assemblyman Starr's frustration with city policies towards bears is justified. But hiring a city official to shoot bears isn't the best solution.

BOTTOM LINE: The city should more actively protect residents from bears, but hazing or shooting problem bears is a job best left to state wildlife managers.

No care

Rural National Guard members still can't get help at home

When Alaska National Guard soldiers return from war zone deployments, many of them go home to remote communities, far from health care and other services they need. To get medical care, counseling or other help adjusting to civilian life, they have to leave their community and fly to a Veterans Administration facility somewhere on Alaska's road system. Many returning Guard soldiers do without the help they need and deserve.

Congress passed a bill that tried to deal with the problem. It allows pilot programs where rural National Guard soldiers can get health care from the Indian Health Service or other community-based health care facilities.

But due to restrictions in the bill, it's not clear if it can be used in Alaska, says the Alaska VA.

Alaska's congressional delegation should make fixing this problem a priority when Congress returns to Washington.

As a veterans advocacy group, Veterans for America, noted in a report issued last week, health care services for Alaska Guard members who have served in combat are inadequate. We must do better for these dedicated citizen-soldiers who risk their lives serving our country.

Even a pilot program isn't enough. The Indian Health Service has a comprehensive network of clinics and hospitals throughout rural parts of the state. Those Native health care facilities should be widely available to Guard members in rural Alaska. They've served our country, and now we need to take care of them.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski has led efforts to make this happen. Alaska's delegation should jump on the issue quickly.

BOTTOM LINE: The Veterans Administration may not be able to arrange care through the Indian Health Service? That needs to change.

ADVERTISEMENT