SEAWEAD - Applying Wildlife Habitat Studies in Southeast Alaska

Catch a huge, barn door-sized halibut in the Gustavus area—and release it—and you could win a fishing trip package worth over $2,500.  June 1, 2008, marks the first day of the inaugural year of the Halibut Breeders Cup, an event put on by local charter fisherman, innkeepers, and other businesses to support folks that decide to throw back the big ones.  The biggest fish are females full of eggs, and are important to the long term health of the fishery.  SEAWEAD is providing management and technical support to the derby.  It runs through September 31, 2008.

Visit the Gustavus Halibut Breeders Cup blogspot to learn more.

The purpose of the Hoonah Community Forest project is to provide tools and recommendations for management of the landscape that is immediately accessible to the community of Hoonah, Alaska i.e. “The Hoonah Community Forest”. The emphasis in this project has been on assessment and site selection for restoration and maintenance of salmon and deer habitat because of their central role in Cultural and Traditional Uses and local economics. The community has also expressed an interest in the continued existence of value-added wood product mills (and the jobs that come with them). For that reason consideration was also given to the location and scale of old-growth harvest that could coincide along with high standards for fish and wildlife productivity.

Existing data, experiences from ground-truthing visits and interviews with locals were synthesized in the production of a management guide map that includes three general land use designations: Wilderness Opportunity, Fish and Wildlife Priority and Timber Opportunity. Check out the report.

The Tongass Land Management Plan (TLMP) is the primary document used to manage public lands in Southeast Alaska. A draft for the 2008 version of TLMP was recently released and is currently out for comment. 

A coalition of conservation groups (Southeast Alaska Conservation Society, Sitka Conservation Society, The Nature Conservancy, Audubon Alaska, Trout Unlimited, The Wilderness Society, Alaska Conservation Foundation, Alaska Wilderness League) is in the process of developing an alternate conservation strategy.

SEAWEAD naturalists Richard Carstensen and Bob Christensen recently wrote an independent opinion piece that compares and critiques these conservation strategies. The document covers a wide array of issues important to understanding the delicate balance between economic development and ecological integrity in Southeast Alaska. Although this document is not an official SEAWEAD report, we provide a link here for interested parties and encourage all who are up for digging a little deeper into Tongass conservation to check it out. The cover letter for this report follows...

Ground-truthing is a term used by foresters and geologists referring to field-verification of maps and aerial imagery. In 2005, SEAWEAD naturalists Bob Christensen and Richard Carstensen partnered with the Sitka Conservation Society to develop and support the Tongass Ground-truthing project . The purpose of this effort is to investigate past and proposed timber projects throughout Southeast Alaska and pass on our observations of the condition of the landscape, and what might be done to improve it, to the public at large.

“Ground-truthers” travel to remote watersheds where past and present timber activities are rarely observed by the public. We compile retrospective analyses of the character of logged forests and streams, and of existing old-growth stands inside future cutting units.

Ground-truthers are “eyes and ears in the woods” for Southeast’s conservation-minded community members. But we also take field documentation to the next level, analyzing patterns of logging in GIS (Geographic Information Systems), evaluating landscape connectivity for wildlife, assessing the opportunity for salmon and deer habitat restoration work, and critiquing Land Use Designations.

SEAWEAD is providing GIS and data collection support for an ambitious "mega-transect" project schedule for June 2007 to March 2008: Journey on the Wild Coast . Erin McKittrick and her husband Bretwood "Hig" Higman are walking, rafting and skiing 4,000 miles from Seattle to the Aleutian Islands!

SEAWEAD naturalist Bob Christensen assembled a GIS to aid in route planning, collaborated with Erin on a simple but informative habitat description protocol and help secure GPS technologies to assist in georeferencing field notes and images collected while en route.

Bob also joined Erin and Hig for a few days of the Ketchikan to Wrangell leg of this expedition. Click here to have a closer look at this leg.

In the Spring of 2007 we helped US Fish and Wildlife Service ornithologist Brad Andres conduct a survey of Sitka Sound for Oyster Catcher nest sites. Brad's interest was in revisiting islets and rocks that had been documented as active nest sites back in the 1940s. Anecdotal observations suggest there has been a decline in nest activity in Sitka Sound and Brad wanted to verify this possibility and investigate potential causes with a field visit.

On June 9th and 10th we skiffed the entire coastline of Sitka Sound scanning for oyster catcher's exhibiting breeding behavior and searched upwards of 30 exposed rocks, islets and rocky outcrops for nest sites. Brad is preparing a field trip report that we will make available as soon as it is ready.