Alaska News Brief December 2024. Keep bringing the light.
in 50th anniversary, Litigation, News, Newsletters, People & Places, Wild Lands & Wildlife
Winter just started, according to the astronomical calendar, but most Alaskans have their own measure for when winter begins.
Does it start the first day you have to brush the snow off your windshield or sweep it off the doorstep? Or during that big windstorm when the plastic planters you meant to secure under a tarp fly across the yard? Is it the morning you slide rather than walk?
Selfie of Vicki with her light goggles.
Here in Alaska, when the earth tilts us away from the sun, you can feel it in your bones, and your moods.
I guess, for me, winter begins when my energy ebbs in proportion to the increasing darkness, and my happy light goggles come out. Maybe this year, for some of us, the first day of winter began on Nov. 5.
Certainly, many months—49, but who’s counting—and years stretch out ahead of us as we go into a political landscape where Alaska is a sacrificial pawn for those seeking to exploit it to amass more power, wealth, influence, even retribution.
It feels bleak, for sure, yet having just celebrated our 50th year on Dec. 16, we know that the work we do together matters—that even when it feels exhausting, relentless, and/or impossible, the effort and focus and grit we bring to it can accomplish remarkable things.
Photo by Dawnell Smith
There are still no drilling rigs on lands sacred to the Gwich’in Nation in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. There is no Pebble mine, and we plan to keep it that way, even if it means going to court another twenty years. The proposed Ambler road has no permits. Brown bear baiting is prohibited on federal lands. There is still no road in Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.
Yes, Alaska’s governor just released a hit list for the Trump transition team, and it calls for the undoing of protections across the state from the Tongass to the Arctic. Yes, the policy inroads we’ve all made the last four years toward acting on climate and protecting Alaska lands and communities will slip. Yes, we will have to go to court again and again.
And still here we are, with winter solstice upon us (technically the first day of winter), and yet it feels less like the first day than the settled center of it. It feels, for me, like I’ve got my “walking on ice legs” on—for the most part—and that 25 degrees feels warm. And having dwelled on the meaning of the election outcome, my heart feels determination as our way forward.
Dogs playing under moonlight. Photo by Dawnell Smith
Winter solstice means that from now until summer solstice we get a few more seconds and then minutes of sunlight every day. Nature always reminds us of the cycles of life and energy, and the things we can and cannot change. But hope, well that’s a human thing, and I’d say even a living being thing. It lives inside us for the work we do together; it comes from us, not to us, and is meant to hold us to our commitments to each other and Earth.
That’s the way I see it, anyway.
So, with hope in my heart, I offer you some easy ways to act today to help us all tomorrow.
Speak out to protect Izembek National Wildlife Refuge by stopping the proposed land swap and road.
Speak out to stop the needless aerial gunning down of bears and wolves by state employees on the west side of Cook Inlet from Denali National Park to Lake Clark National Park.
Support Trustees in any way you can because we’re going to need it!
And, most of all, bring light and hope wherever you go, for that’s how we will find our way together.
PS. Thanks to supporters like you, we can continue fighting to protect Alaska’s land, water, air, wildlife and people.
Izembek black brant geese. Photo courtesy of USFWS.
What’s the Izembek Refuge land swap and road proposal really about?
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. USFWS photo.
