Food Security

On today's Hometown Alaska, we'll introduce you to a free garden mentoring service with high ambitions.

For more than 60 years, the Eklutna River north of Anchorage had been dammed up, stifling the salmon runs that fed generations of Dena'ina people in the area. The lower dam on the river was removed in 2018, and earlier this month, tribal and environmental advocates witnessed the first water to flow down the river in decades.

It's called Tamamta, a Yup'ik and Sugpiaq word that means "all of us" or "we", and it's part of UAF's College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences.

In 55 years, there have been just two other closures: once in the 1980s and again in the 1990s.

Chignik residents are questioning how long their community can survive if low salmon runs persist. "How can the state let this happen?" said 80-year-old Elder Vivian Brandal. "I have grandchildren that thought this was their legacy."

One minute, there were zero rainbow trout in John Hedberg Lake. Fewer than 30 seconds later, there were 700.

In the last four years, the state’s Department of Fish and Game has learned more about the biological value of detached kelp populations in Cook Inlet. And it wants to make sure the kelp isn’t overharvested.

Some possible causes for late budding in berries include more precipitation when flowers bloom, which reduces pollination, an overall lack of pollinators, or sometimes animals and birds eat the berries during the winter.

Why are the chum numbers so low? The short answer is that no one really knows for sure. But there are a lot of theories.

A pocket of Beaver Creek, just a short and muddy tromp away from a gravel parking lot between Kenai and Soldotna, is home to several cold water inputs that could be crucially important for young salmon as they swim from the Kenai River to Cook Inlet.