Hare today — Snowshoe hares on the rise, predators not far behind

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Liz Jozwiak, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge biologist, displays a snowshoe hare pellet during a grid count Aug. 17 off Funny River Road.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Heather Sinclair and Lily Lewis crouched on the ground in the woods off Funny River Road on Aug. 17, meticulously hunting through a square meter of grass, leaf debris, twigs and other forest detritus for their quarry — brown, dry, round, about the size of a pencil eraser and a bellwether of the Kenai Peninsula boreal forest ecosystem:

Bunny poop.

More officially, snowshoe hare pellets.

Sinclair and Lewis were volunteering in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge’s annual snowshoe hare pellet count, a somewhat ignoble task, yet one that yields important results. Measuring pellet density produces an estimate of the refuge’s snowshoe hare population. Hares are a lynchpin of the forest, affecting and being affected by several aspects of the Kenai Peninsula’s ecosystem — amount of browse, maturation of the forest and abundance of predators.

“They’re a prey species for a lot of predators in the area, including avian predators. If snowshoe hares are doing well, the predators that prey on them are probably doing well, also,” said Liz Jozwiak, a wildlife biologist with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

And so, they count, combing the forest floor for small, brown hare remnants. Sinclair is a University of Alaska Fairbanks student from the central peninsula. She spent the summer working with visitors as a ranger on the refuge and volunteered for the hare pellet count as a way to be involved in the biology side of the organization.

“I just wanted to get experience with another part of refuge,” she said.

Lewis came down from Fairbanks to visit Sinclair, so she volunteered, as well. As a botanist, she usually focuses on plants — and not what eats them — when she’s in the woods.

“I never work with animals in the field, so I wanted to get some experience,” she said. “I’m just here to help, and count poo.”

Wicked burn — Car theft, arson leaves owner feeling singed

Photos courtesy of Paul Wright. Paul Wright, of Soldotna, was informed by Alaska State Troopers that his car was on fire in Nikiski on Aug. 14. The vehicle was destroyed and all his belongings stolen.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Paul Wright was getting ready to leave for work Aug. 14 at his home on Ruby Circle, off Gaswell Road, when he got a confusing phone call from Alaska State Troopers.

“They said, ‘There’s a vehicle registered in your name that is currently on fire in Nikiski,’” Wright said.

Wright thought it must be a vehicle he had owned years before, had sold and the new owners never transferred it to their name. He asked what kind of vehicle it was, wondering which of his old cars had met its unfortunate demise in a Nikiski inferno.

“They said, “a green, Isuzu Rodeo.”

Wright had parked his 1996 green, Isuzu Rodeo in his driveway when he got home the previous evening.

“I opened my front door, and oh … . My car is gone. That’s how I found out,” he said.

Wright plays bass in The Mabrey Brothers band and got home about 4 a.m. Friday morning after a gig the night before. He parked in the driveway, went to bed, got up later that morning and was getting ready to go to work at noon for his job as a theater technician with the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District when he got the call from troopers at about 10:30 a.m. It had rained that night, and Wright hadn’t heard anything amiss over the rain. When he asked his neighbors about it later, they hadn’t seen or heard anything unusual, either. Wright had left his keys in the car, dropped on the floorboard as he usually did when he got home.

“So that was my precautionary measure,” he said, with a verbal eye roll.

“I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like me that much. I know that kids will walk through neighborhoods at night, open cars up and steal what’s in them, but these guys just happened to be a little more entrepreneurial, I guess,” he said.

Weighty words — Weight Watchers coordinator retires, leaves healthy example as legacy

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Sharon Radtke expresses thanks and support at a Weight Watchers open house held in honor of her retirement Saturday in Soldotna.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

To look at Sharon Radtke, of Soldotna, tall, thin and healthy, one wouldn’t expect she has been a devotee of Weight Watchers for more than 30 years.

That’s the whole point.

“People say, ‘Look at you, you don’t need to be on Weight Watchers.’ My response is, ‘I don’t need to be on the program because I am on the program.’ If I wasn’t on the program, I wouldn’t be at my weight range,” she said.

Radtke is in large part responsible for hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of weight loss on the Kenai Peninsula since she started a Weight Watchers program in Soldotna in 1999.

As she retired Saturday from being the Weight Watchers location coordinator on the peninsula, it wasn’t how much that’s been lost that impacted her the most, it was how much has been gained — better health, an understanding of nutrition, good eating and exercise habits, and a circle of good friends and support.

“Coming in and realizing that you’re not alone. The people sitting next to you and around you are going to support you because they’ve gone through the same thing,” Radtke said.

Mary Armstrong, a Weight Watchers group leader in Soldotna, said Radtke has been particularly effective in helping people find success in the program in part because she’s been so successful herself — losing a significant amount of weight and keeping it off for more than 30 years.

“She’s a mentor, she’s a model, she challenges us, she cajoles us, she supports us. It’s a multifaceted leadership post that she is just excellent at accomplishing,” Armstrong said. “She has touched, I don’t know how many hundreds and hundreds of people’s lives just in Weight Watchers. She lives it and she never gives up, which is, of course, a good model and good mentor because there’s no finish line in being healthy.”

Pretty paddle — Kayaking brings flora, fauna into close-up view

Photos by Patrice Kohl, Redoubt Reporter. Sea stars cling to the rocks during low tide in the intertidal zone in Tutka Bay.

Patrice Kohl

Redoubt Reporter

With so much to do during summer in Alaska, it can be hard to settle on any one activity when the weekend arrives. But with a nine-mile water taxi ride across Kachemak Bay and a kayak, an outdoors enthusiast can easily roll many activities into one weekend.

Tutka Bay, a long side pocket off of Kachemak Bay, reaches seven miles into Kachemak Bay State Park with a rugged coastline ideal for kayak exploring. The bay’s waters and surrounding mountain ridges offer serene kayaking, scenic hiking and wildlife viewing opportunities so bold, you’d have to wear blinders not to spot at least a handful of charismatic wildlife specimens. Tutka Bay is a narrow bay with well-protected waters. Generally, only winds out of the northeast can whip up the bay’s waters and these tend to be uncommon.

Common Ground: Gulls test patience for good, clean outdoor fun

By Christine Cunningham, for the Redoubt Reporter

I was standing at the ruins of a duck blind that had been abandoned for the past few seasons. It would take some work, but the frame was there, and it could be made workable in a few afternoons. The thing about blinds is they’re much like backyard tree forts — a place that is both an escape and a refuge. Coming into a blind after a haul through the marsh muck with a sled of decoys is as much a part of waterfowling as taking ducks.

Add a retriever, a lanyard of duck calls, a bag of carefully groomed decoys, a thermos of coffee and your best friend, and it’s easy to see why the Kenai River flats are loved by so many hunters, despite the fact that the birds aren’t exactly flooding the area. It’s one of those niche places, a wetland between two cities at the mouth of a world-famous river that manages to sustain the smallest amount of its original capacity.

There are still many species of ducks that stop over on the flats. Teal, mallards, widgeon, pintails, shovelers, Canadas, snows, cranes and snipe can all be found in small numbers. The largest number of birds, however, is the only species that cannot be legally hunted: seagulls.

I was reluctant to touch the grass my hunting partner cut for the blind. I’d gotten over my initial squeamishness at crawling through marsh muck in pursuit of ducks, and I’d gotten over field dressing birds. But this was the last straw, literally, a pile of last straws, covered in white seagull poo.

Hundreds of thousands of gulls swarmed overhead and in the distance, flying in every direction and into each other. There were still many gulls that couldn’t fly and the ones in the air were frantic squawking and screaming over their young. The near-grown seagulls on the ground reached their necks out of the grass — creepy, alien-looking birds. They stared blankly with prehistoric eyes and poo-covered bills. One of them vomited nearby.

This is hell, I thought. Poo splattered down from the sky intermittently. Some hit my back. I can handle the rain, but when the weather forecast calls for scattered showers of seagull excrement, I’d rather stay under a roof.

Science of the Seasons: Suffering survival — Fish ‘ick’ part of the salmon life cycle

Photo courtesy of David Wartinbee. A sockeye salmon shows the start of a fungal infection on top of its body, on its fins and tail in a stream near Portage on Monday.

By David Wartinbee, for the Redoubt Reporter

Salmon spawning is going on everywhere you look in the Kenai River these days. Along with the spawners can be seen those that have already completed their reproductive duties and are awaiting the next phase of the salmon life cycle — death.

When salmon begin their spawning activities, they are already starting the dying process. Almost immediately they lose their ability to digest food. An obvious question arises here — if a salmon can’t use the food, why can we catch them with food lures? Two reasons are usually put forth as a response. First, we need to remember that salmon are very aggressive fish in the ocean. When they see a bait fish, like a sandlance or herring, they chase it down and eat it. Their high speed and active feeding enables them to grow very rapidly.

While they can no longer digest the prey item, their sensory detectors for taste and movement are still intact. When presented with motion vibrations or food-triggering stimuli, they probably react reflexively and take the “bait.” The most aggressive and fastest swimming of the salmon is the silver, and they just happen to grow the most rapidly when in the ocean. As fishermen, we target silvers because of their feeding aggression and speed in the water. Sockeye salmon, on the other hand, seem to lose that feeding reflex in fresh water and we almost have to snag them in the mouth in order to get them on the line.

Solo harmony — Evans takes collaborative style off on her own path

Katie Evans’ debut CD, “A Passing Afternoon,” is available at Veronica’s.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Plucking Katie Evans out of the crescendoing peal of central Kenai Peninsula musicians is a difficult task. Even at 23, she carries a strong tune in her own right, with how much she’s performed, composed and contributed to the local music scene since moving back here in 2006. But it’s nearly impossible to isolate just her melody, since her roots, evolution and blossoming talent are so intertwined with the musicians with which she harmonizes.

“Playing with so many people really seems to be what made me the musician I am now. All the different people I’ve got to play with and sing with and all that,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Hey, let’s get together and play.’ That’s how I get to know people. I like new projects, because the more you play with people, the more you learn,” Evans said.

Ask her about her music and she answers in terms of the musical family tree she’s cultivated. It’s in part The Goodkind, a collaboration with four other local acoustic songstresses. A big chunk of it is playing with Soldotna musician Vickie Tinker, which has led them to write “a ton” of songs, Evans said, and open for The Duhks when they performed in Homer last year. It’s influence from her mom, who inspired her to start playing guitar when she was about 13. Beyond that, it’s a mash-up of the countless musical collaborations in which she’s participated, whether they were formal enough to warrant a band name or, more often then not, just spontaneous jam sessions.

“There is so much talent in this town. I didn’t even know it when I started doing music here. Little subgroups form from bands. Then you can be like, ‘Hey, come up and play bass with me,’ and they just do,” she said.

Evans loves that about music on the peninsula, she said; how she’s been able to form bonds with so many people in the course of playing, performing and just life, and how that all comes back to influence her music.

“There are these moments and experiences, and I’m like, ‘Alright, there’s a song in that.’ It just happens,” she said.

Those experiences shape her music, and her music shapes her life, which led her to decide to move to Austin, Texas, in early August to spend the winter pursuing a music career.

“It’s something I know I have to do, in a way. I love it here. It’s safe here and I want to end up here again. But I’m 23 and I’ll probably never get to do it again, so I’ll go out into the world,” she said.

Art Seen: Learned response — KPC faculty bring individual approaches to art exhibition

"Advection," by Jeff Seimers.

By Zirrus VanDevere, for the Redoubt Reporter

Kenai Peninsula College has a few new teachers included in this year’s faculty exhibit, running now at the Gary L. Freeburg Gallery at KPC’s Kenai River Campus. Overall, it is a conservative exhibit, but certainly proficient and discipline-based.

The first images that grab my attention are two large works by Jeff Siemers, positioned directly across from each other on the facing sidewalls of the gallery. He has been working with layering materials, usually involving photography and, in this case, markers applied directly to slick, abstract photos that float off of the wall and are reminiscent of outer space travel. The very purposeful feeling of movement created by the flowing lines of marker seem to depict an experience much more elaborate than a single event captured on film.

Stamped in honor — Soldotna library bears name of slain resident

Photo courtesy of KPC Anthropology Lab. Soldotna’s first librarian, Joyce Carver, seen here using a hand-viewer to examine some color slides, was honored posthumously in 1972 when the city’s current library was named in her memory.

Editor’s note: Following is part two of the histories behind some common central peninsula sites, this week covering the area from Soldotna and Sterling to Nikiski. Part three will focus mainly on the area east of Sterling to Cooper Landing.

By Clark Fair

Redoubt Reporter

When the news reached Soldotna, the shock reverberated throughout the small community. One of the city’s most beloved residents had been murdered, and initially no one had any idea who had committed the crime, or why.

On July 29, 1966, the body of Joyce Carver, a 42-year-old teacher at Soldotna Elementary School and a founder of the city’s first library, had been found lying at the edge of a road between Alaska Methodist University and Providence Hospital in Anchorage.

According to police reports, Carver, mother of two children and the wife of former Soldotna mayor and entrepreneur Burton Carver, had been shot in the back. Large scrapes and bruises were found on her legs, as if she had been thrown from a moving vehicle.

Her body bore no identifying documents when it was discovered, and it took police some time to figure out who she was.

After a lengthy investigation, the death of Carver, who had been attending classes at AMU as part of her continuing education for her teaching certificate, was tied tentatively to the suicide of an Anchorage lawyer named George Yates.

According to her daughter, Dawn Carver Powers, Carver’s purse, term paper and books were found in Yates’ car, and the same gun killed them both. The coroner’s inquest, Powers said, revealed alcohol in Yates’ system at the time of his death.

In a memorial piece entitled “A Mother’s Story by her Loving Daughter,” Powers wrote, “Someone who knew Yates said that my mother looked a great deal like his ex-wife. A mystery surrounds her death.”

Plugged In: Personal perspectives — Make use of photography’s unique strengths to capture true art of medium

By Joseph Kashi, for the Redoubt Reporter

I seem to recall promising not to write anything about art and aesthetics when I first started this series of photo articles. That was a rash promise and, therefore, subject to renegotiation.

Fear not, though, hardcore hardware fans. At the end of this week’s article, I’ll discuss some of this week’s best buys in digital cameras.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll start looking at this year’s crop of new cameras, more than 60 of which have already been announced. Although most are simply more of the same, there are many new cameras that seem to be significantly improved. Digital photography is still a new technology that, while mature and reliable, regularly introduces cool new hardware that sometimes lives up to the hype.

This week, you have a reprieve from the technical haze of megapixels, electronic sensors and Zone System calibrations, because all of the hot new camera equipment in the world won’t make you a better photographer if you don’t develop some artistic sensibility. At a minimum, that means thinking through your approach to photography and why fine-art photography’s inherently technical basis may make it unique among the visual arts.

I hope to encourage your own thinking about what you might want to accomplish when you push the shutter button or print an image. What’s set out below is strictly my own general approach. There are many other equally valid, or perhaps more valid, approaches.

Kasilof conundrum — Beach suffers from lack of resources, regulatory confusion

Photo by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. A truck carrying dipnetters drives over fragile beach grass covering ecologically important dunes at the Kasilof River mouth Aug. 6. The fragile grass suffers abuse each summer, despite signs asking people to stay off it.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

At the mouth of the Kasilof River during the summer personal-use setnet and dipnet salmon fisheries, finding something to complain about is easy enough — garbage strewn across the beach; people pitching tents, parking and lighting campfires on private property; and trucks and four-wheelers tearing up the fragile beach grass that holds the ecologically important sand dunes in place.

“I hate to be a complainer,” said Patti Curry, who lives on the north side of the Kasilof River mouth with her husband, Mike. They say they are tired of the trespassing, trash, sanitation, parking and other issues that come with the hordes of fishermen each summer.

“On one side I’m really pissed, we both are, but I don’t want the fishery to close,” Patti Curry said. “I can’t complain about the fishery. We go out and put our 60-foot net in front of the property. I love it. … I think it’s wonderful that the state would give an individual that many fish, or the right to come down and fish. But you know something, there’s got to be some kind of …”

“Regulation?” Mike Curry finished for her. “I mean, unfortunately. We’re regulated out of our pantyhose, but when they push this many people down to a small area, it’s total mayhem.”

Weaving traditions — Net menders use old skill to meet new demands

Photo by Patrice Kohl, Redoubt Reporter. Lisa Blackburn and her husband, Brian Mahan, mend a setnet behind their home in Clam Gulch earlier this summer.

Patrice Kohl

Redoubt Reporter

Brian Mahan understands the many menaces that can undermine the integrity of a fish net. He has seen a setnet shredded by coal deposits and rocks, or weakened with holes from hurried deckhands ripping holes to free fish. And he has seen the delicate webbing of a driftnet rendered useless after an encounter with a shark or bad trip through a Cook Inlet rip, notorious for collecting net-destroying junk.

“They’re full of logs, fish, beer cans—whatever is out there, it’ll get sucked into it,” Mahan said, referring to the rips.

Up until six years ago, mending nets was an important part of his career. Now it is his career. Six years ago, Mahan quit his career of more than 25 years of driftnet fishing to fix and hang nets full time. As a fishermen, when Mahan had a deckhand who didn’t know how to mend nets he made sure they learned how. But as the years went by, he found more and more of his deckhands arrived not knowing how to mend nets.

At the same time, Mahan’s wife, Lisa Blackburn, recognized that the ability to mend nets wasn’t just disappearing among Mahan’s deckhands, but among fishermen as a whole. She also recognized Mahan’s talent in mending nets and a business opportunity. She recommended he start fixing and hanging nets for other fishermen and learned how to do so herself so that she could help. She says the need for net-mending and net-hanging seems to have only grown in recent years with fishermen either not knowing how to mend themselves or not having the time or labor to do it.

“Used to be captains expected deckhands to know how to mend nets,” she said. “Heck, now half the captains don’t know how.”