By Allison Sayer

TNews Staffwriter

 On February 26, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) announced the noncommercial (sport + subsistence)spot shrimp fishery would be open from May 1 through June 8, and fishers would be limited to two pots. This is over six weeks less than last year, and almost four months shorter than the 2024 season.

 The guideline harvest limit (GHL) in the 2026 noncommercial fishery is 29,782 pounds. Managers determine the GHL as a proportion of the estimated population, which has declined each year since 2021. Pot and season limits are then implemented based on the limit.

 The 2025 GHL was 54,311 pounds of shrimp, and the season was open May 1 though July 31 with two pots. During 2025, fishers exceeded the GHL, catching 60,234 pounds. The noncommercial fishery catch has exceeded the GHL for seven of the past seventeen seasons, despite managers implementing pot and season limits.

 ADF&G commercial and sport fishery staff hosted an online meeting February 12 to discuss shrimp research and take public questions and comments. According to Area Management Biologist Brittany Blain-Roth, about 130 people tuned into the meeting. 

 One bright spot presented by Fisheries Biologist Alissa Cole was the 2025 shift in commercial and noncommercial season opening days from April 15 to May 1 reduced the percentage of egg-bearing females taken in the harvest- from 36% of the fishery to just 5%. Presumably, the later date gave most females time to release their eggs before being harvested. 

 Cole shared population estimates come from an annual survey that has been performed in October throughout Prince William Sound since 1992.

Read the entire story at the link below

https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/noncommercial-shrimp-season-reduced-commercial-season-closed-for-2026

By Allison Sayer

TNews Staffwriter

On February 19, Girdwood, Inc announced local artists Tommy O’Malley and Thalia Wilkinson will create a donor wall mosaic for the new Little Bears Playhouse lobby. The facility is scheduled to open this fall. Locals have seen Wilkinson and O’Malley’s mosaic work in Girdwood’s public spaces including on concrete culvert planters and Town Square Park.

According to a press release issued by Girdwood, Inc, “The design will feature a large tree made of stained glass with branches reaching out eight feet on either side of the trunk. Connected to the tree will be over a hundred leaves in dozens of shades of green glass. Names of donors will be etched into the trunk, branches, and leaves.”

Girdwood, Inc also shared much of the glass used in the project was donated by the late Jim Kaiser’s estate and thanked Kali Bennett for the gift. Kaiser created countlesscommunity stained-glass projects throughout Alaska, including making art with past Little Bears students. He also donated financially towards the new building before he passed away.

The artists have given a deadline of February 28 for a finalized donor list so they can go forward with crafting the tree’s components.

Read the entire story at the link below:

https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/a-community-collaboration-gratitude-tree-donation-wall-mosaic-for-new-little-bears-playhouse

By Chase Berenson

TNews. Staffwriter

Dive Alaska coordinated with multiple organizations to plan the 2026 Whittier Harbor Cleanup Day on Saturday, February 7th.  This was the fourth annual event, and it brought out SCUBA divers and freedivers to scour the seabed of the Whittier Harbor and remove trash and marine debris.

This year was the largest event yet, with 158 volunteers participating.  The weather was cooperative by Whittier standards, as the temperature was in upper 30s with rain.  This was an improvement over previous years, where once the temperatures dropped below zero degrees and in another year the wind was whipping so strongly that it impeded cleanup efforts.  At the event’s introduction, JD Stimson of Dive Alaska summed it by saying, “The wind isn’t blistering and the temperature isn’t frigid.  If you did this before, you know this is a blessing.”

During a three-hour window, SCUBA divers and freedivers took to the water of Whittier Harbor to recover whatever they could find.  Divers collected marine debris from the harbor floor and brought it up the boat ramp or the harbor docks, where volunteers above the water picked it up and hauled the waste to a sorting area near the boat ramp.

Read the entire story at the link below:

https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/seven-thousand-pounds-of-marine-debris-removed-from-whittier-harbor

By Brice Wilbanks

Commentary Contributor

Forty miles from City Hall, Girdwood property owners opened their 2026 assessments to find increases nearly double to those of their Anchorage neighbors. Assessed annually by the Municipality of Anchorage, the green-colored postcard describes what the Municipality assesses property owners’ land and building value to determine the basis of their annual tax bill.

 This year, similar to last, property owners were shocked and dismayed. The median Girdwood property owner saw an increase of 8.2%, more than double the increase for Anchorage-bowl property owners, according to data from the municipality’s property appraisal division. While slightly smaller than 2024-2025, the increases continue to compound, squeezing property owners across the valley and inflating rents

 Driving this variation is a major rework of the assessment methodology utilized by the municipality’s property appraisal division. Key changes included: removing the multiplier of building construction quality, utilizing publicly available sales data, and reducing the number of “market areas” from 400 to fewer than 20. Municipal Assessor Jack Gadamus, with the assistance of outside consultants, describes these reforms as “corrective in nature.”

Market Areas are abstractly defined by the Anchorage appraisal office as:

Not “Neighborhoods” in the traditional sense, but geographic areas where Cost-to-Comparable Sales “AV Ratios” are statistically aligned

 This significant methodology shift, triggered a reduction from 400+ market areas to fewer than 20, forced evaluations to compete against each other based on sales data and proximity. This led to varying evaluations between properties within geographically constrained and isolated communities.

 To understand how this major rework of assessment methodology affected Girdwoodians, let’s take a closer look at the data.

Read the entire commentary at the link below:

https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/commentary-how-did-property-assessments-affect-girdwoodians

By Soren Wuerth

TNews Editor

Many Girdwood residents are fuming over a sharp rise in property values set by the Municipality of Anchorage that show up annually on light green postcards in mailboxes.

Homes in the Girdwood valley saw hikes in tax assessments that, on average, are nearly double those of the Anchorage bowl. 

Amanda Tuttle, owner of Coast Pizza, said her tax evaluation went up "136 percent in two years" on her home in Old Girdwood.

"This is why you have killed our local economy," Tuttle said during a Girdwood Board of Supervisors meeting last Monday.

Zac Johnson, who represents Girdwood and South Anchorage on the Anchorage Assembly, said the Municipality receives no benefit from tax rate assessments that have climbed as high as 30% in his district. 

Johnson said changes in property appraisals were made to conform to state standards, and, actually, the Municipality loses money for its budget due to the way funding for the Anchorage School District is calculated.

"There's no political motivation to all this. Increasing valuations don't actually increase the amount of revenue the Municipality gets. That's determined by the tax cap, so it doesn't do anything to bolster the Municipal budget," Johnson said at the GBOS meeting. "If anything it actually harms us a little bit because it increases our required contribution to the state for [Anchorage School District] funding."

Municipal officials have justified increases based on changes in methods for evaluating property values, such as evaluating values based on a "market area" approach and consolidating market zones from about 400 zones to less than 20.

"The grand result of all of this is that the average increase in valuation for the entire Municipality is around 4 percent," Johnson said, "which seems to roughly track with what we'd expect given the state of the housing market."

"But there were some exceptional cases where people saw their valuations increase by 20-30 percent, which is certainly understandable why people would be concerned about that," he said. He added that assessing home values is an "imperfect process" given, particularly, that Alaska is a "nondisclosure" state and can only acquire limited data.

Nevertheless, land being prepared for home building in a new, highly-contested development called "Holtan Hills" did not see a similar increase, according to an analysis by Brice Wilbanks, who serves as co-chair of Girdwood's Land Use Committee and is running for a GBOS seat.

Read the entire story at the link below:

https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/girdwood-property-taxes-soar-under-recent-muni-assessment

By Chase Berenson

TNews Staffwriter

Chugach State Park is looking to invest in improvements to the Bird Creek Campground, the only campground located on the waterfront of the north shore of Turnagain Arm.  Chugach State Park is one of the four largest state parks in the United States, and it stretches from the Anchorage Bowl on the west side deep into the Chugach Mountains on the east side.  Much of the park’s southern border is the Turnagain Arm.  The park has multiple campgrounds, including the Bird Creek Campground.  Bird Creek Campground is known for its views of Turnagain Arm with its bore tides and beluga whales.  It is primarily located on the south side of the Seward Highway, but it also includes an overflow camping area on the north side of the Highway.

The campground improvements project has two key focus points, one which will be more visible to campground users and one which will improve campground operations.  Campers will see new signage throughout the campground which will update aging and outdating signage in the park.  However, the larger project work will be happening in a less visible context.

Campground users are typically familiar with the concept of a campground host who helps operate and manage the campground.  In Alaska State Park campgrounds, the campground host is a volunteer role for someone who will typically stay the entire summer season at the campground.  At Bird Creek, the campground host’s job duties include tasks such as interacting with campers, ensuring campers are following campground rules, performing janitorial services, and performing minor maintenance such as grass mowing.  Campground hosts are important volunteer roles to ensure that campgrounds are functioning correctly.

Chugach State Park has struggled in the past to fill Bird Creek Campground’s campground host role, and one cause is that there are no sites in the campground that feature the full combination of water, sewer, and power hook-ups for the volunteer’s RV.  The campground host role is particularly important for Bird Creek Campground, due to its proximity to the population center of the Anchorage Bowl and the campground’s high usage on holiday weekends and at prime fishing times on Bird Creek.  The current campground host location is in the campground’s overflow area on the north side of the highway because that is the only part of the campground with any utility service.

Read the entire story at the link below:

https://www.turnagainnews.org/articles/improvements-planned-for-bird-creek-campground