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Obama’s Arctic Adventure Ends With Sinking Village, Fish Spawn

Obama’s Arctic Adventure Ends With Sinking Village, Fish Spawn

By Roberta Rampton

KOTZEBUE, Alaska (Reuters) — President Barack Obama got a taste of the U.S. Arctic on Wednesday, dropping in to two remote fly-in native villages in a journey the White House hopes will show how climate change is affecting Americans.

Crossing the Arctic Circle, Air Force One flew over Kivalina, pop. 400, a whaling village on a barrier island debating whether to move as melting sea ice raises sea levels.

Obama said Kivalina is a harbinger of hardships other parts of the country could face if global warming goes unchecked.

“I’ve been trying to make the rest of the country more aware of the changing climate — but you’re already living it,” Obama told a crowd jammed into a school gym.

It was the culmination of a three-day adventure in which Obama hiked to a glacier and toured majestic fjords by boat, delighting residents in a vast and sparsely populated state often left off presidential itineraries.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen before: the president, in Kotzebue, my hometown!” said Betty Kingeak, 26, who is a cashier and delivery driver at Little Louie’s restaurant.

Kingeak said she worries climate change could mean her children will not be able to camp, hunt, and fish like she does.

Obama, the first sitting president to cross the Arctic Circle, is pushing to marshal support for an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions.

He also wants to convince Congress to back at least one new heavy ice breaker for the U.S. Coast Guard, a national security priority underscored by a report on Wednesday that Chinese navy ships were in the Bering Sea near Alaska.

‘Uh-Oh’

Earlier on Wednesday, Obama visited Dillingham, a town on Bristol Bay, home to one of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fisheries, where two women gave him a crash course in catching salmon in traditional nets.

“I’ve got to get some gloves so I can handle my fish,” Obama said, donning an orange pair and hoisting a still-flopping silver salmon.

The fish promptly relieved itself on his shoes.

“Uh-oh. What happened there?” he said, laughing as the women explained the fish was spawning.

He tried his hand at Yup’ik native dancing with grade school students before taking his motorcade down the main drag, passing a fishing boat with the hulking head of a recently killed moose.

At the N + N Market, where a large bag of Doritos cost $9.39, Obama talked about the high costs of food in places where almost everything has to be shipped in.

The community was plastered with signs like “Mines and fish don’t co-exist” protesting against the Pebble Mine copper and gold project proposed by Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.

The Environmental Protection Agency has placed restrictions on the proposed mine, which the company is fighting in court.

“Our view is that if the president is interested in the issue he should try to hear from all perspectives about it, including those closest to Pebble who would like the jobs Pebble may provide,” said Mike Heatwole, a spokesman for Pebble Limited Partnership.

Obama did not address the mine directly, but noted he had taken steps this year to shut off Bristol Bay from oil and gas exploration to protect the fishing industry.

“There are other threats to this environment that we’ve always got to be alert to,” Obama said.

(Additional reporting by Steve Quinn in Juneau, Alaska; Editing by Louise Ireland, Toni Reinhold)

Photo: U.S. President Barack Obama (C) observes traditional salmon preserving with fishermen on the shore of the Nushagak River in Dillingham, Alaska, September 2, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

China Fishing Plan In Antarctica Alarms Scientists

China Fishing Plan In Antarctica Alarms Scientists

By Stuart Leavenworth, McClatchy Foreign Staff (TNS)

BEIJING — Scientists studying the Antarctic’s marine life received some unexpected news this month: China plans to vastly increase fishing for Antarctic krill — small crustaceans that are a critical food for the continent’s penguins and other creatures.

China currently harvests about 32,000 metric tons of krill annually from Antarctica’s waters, topped by only Norway and South Korea. Under China’s plans, detailed in a March fourth story in the state-run China Daily, the world’s most populous country would increase those catches 30 to 60 times, harvesting up to two million metric tons yearly.

Rodolfo Werner, a marine scientist and adviser to Antarctic conservation groups, said he doubts China can ramp up its catches to that level. But the fact that China has announced such ambitious plans worries him, partly because other countries might follow suit.

“I’m concerned — very concerned,” said Werner in a telephone interview from his home in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. “If they invest big money in their fishing fleets, it will push the system to relax the current (Antarctic) catch limits.”

Beijing’s fishing plans are part of its larger strategic interests in the frozen continent. Over the last three decades, China has built four research stations in Antarctica and is preparing to build a fifth. While an international treaty protects Antarctica from militarization and mining, the Chinese research stations have fueled speculation that China has long-term plans to exploit the continent’s vast energy and mineral resources.

With a population of nearly 1.4 billion, China is highly concerned about food security, and, like other countries, it harvests krill for a variety of products. These include livestock and aquaculture feed, fish bait, and omega-3 dietary supplements. Norway is the world’s largest harvester of Antarctic krill, largely to supply the supplements industry with omega-3 fatty acids.

Worldwide, huge swarms of krill help feed whales, penguins, and other marine animals. Antarctic krill are small creatures — about 2.5 inches long — but incredibly abundant. Scientists believe that the total weight of Antarctic krill is greater than the cumulative weight of any other animal species.

Despite that abundance, many conservationists are concerned that the Antarctic’s food chain is already being harmed by industrial krill fishing. Populations of Adelie and chinstrap penguins have declined more than 50 percent in the West Antarctic Peninsula in the last 30 years, and at least one study has linked the decline to a reduction in krill.

Complicating the debate is global climate change. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, which operates a program to protect penguins, temperatures around the Antarctic Peninsula — the area closest to South America’s southern tip — are rising faster than anywhere on Earth. The decline of ice sheets may be reducing krill abundance, since krill get much of their winter food from the under the ice.

“The area is changing. Something is happening,” said Werner, who serves as senior adviser to the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition, a group of conservation organizations. “That’s why, whatever we do with krill fishing, we need to be very careful.”

China’s fishing plans were announced in Beijing by Liu Shenli, chairman of a state-owned Chinese industry, the National Agricultural Development Group. The group has been described as China’s largest agricultural development enterprise. So far, it has processed 20,000 metric tons of krill products, according to official figures.

McClatchy was unsuccessful in getting comment from Liu, but in the March fourth China Daily story, he said the National Agricultural Development Group was investing heavily in krill fishing and processing, with his largest fishing boat costing more than $100 million.

“Krill provides very good quality protein that can be processed into food and medicine,” China Daily quoted Liu as saying. “The Antarctic is a treasure house for all human beings, and China should go there and share.”

For China to ramp up its krill harvests, it would have to get approval from the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. The commission was formed in 1982 following two decades of unregulated krill fishing in the Antarctic, mainly by the former Soviet Union. The commission remains controversial, partly because its voting membership is made up of countries with a financial interest in commercializing krill.

Conservationists have been pushing the commission to require more observers on krill fishing vessels and to restrict fishing near penguin foraging areas, such as the Antarctic Peninsula. But China and some other countries with krill fleets have balked at such proposals, Werner said.

Andrea Kavanagh, director of the global penguin conservation campaign for the Pew Charitable Trusts, said the commission too often acts as a fisheries management agency, instead of one under a mandate to conserve marine life. The commission, she said, has yet to confront and address the causes of declining penguin populations in the Antarctic Peninsula.

“Scientists are the first to say they have no idea what is causing the decline of these penguin species,” she said in an email exchange. “So a question that needs to be asked is…why does CCAMLR still allow the fishery to operate so close to the peninsula?”

Krill fishing fleets range from traditional trawlers to more modern vessels that literally vacuum krill from the ocean and process the catch on board. China currently has eight boats in use; it would have to greatly increase its fleet to increase its catches to two million metric tons yearly.

That’s about seven times the Antarctic krill currently harvested by all nations annually.

China krill hunts do not come without risks. In 2013, a Chinese krill fishing vessel — the “Kai Xin” — caught fire and sank off the coast of Antarctica. A Norwegian vessel in the area rescued its crew of 97.

Photo: Norkrill via Flickr

North Dakota To Decide Whether To Put Oil Revenue Into Conservation

North Dakota To Decide Whether To Put Oil Revenue Into Conservation

By Ralph Vartabedian, Los Angeles Times

North Dakota has a $450 million budget surplus and the nation’s lowest unemployment rate, but only about 725,000 people to enjoy it.

The state — a long neglected backwater — is becoming the Saudi Arabia of North America, growing into one of the nation’s most affluent societies.

Like anybody with newfound wealth, however, it isn’t easy to decide how to use it.

A contentious ballot measure this year is asking voters to approve a plan to divert 5 percent of future oil revenue to fund clean-water projects, wildlife preservation and parks.

The Nature Conservancy, the Virginia-based environmental organization, is backing Measure 5 with $600,000 so far.

The conservancy, which already owns and manages 16,000 acres in the state, says the ballot measure will help protect North Dakota’s distinct landscape, waterways and outdoor recreation.

It doesn’t mention hunting and fishing in its promotions, but at least some hunting groups are supporting the measure. Minnesota-based Pheasants Forever and Tennessee-based Ducks Unlimited, among others, are backing the proposal.

The disappearance of wetlands, contamination of waterways and loss of honeybees are a threat to the state’s very heritage, says Howard Vincent, chief executive of Pheasants Forever.

Both groups promote habitat for the birds, though hunters figure prominently in their mission.

North Dakota produced 314 million barrels of oil last year, making it the second-largest crude producer in the nation after Texas.

The state captures huge revenue through an excise tax, and the proposed park fund and trust would get about $150 million annually, based on current output and prices.

But the proposal has encountered stiff resistance from the agriculture industry, oil producers, education groups, builders and business organizations.

North Dakota is the nation’s largest producer of wheat, dry beans, and canola oil, the traditional products of the German and Norwegian immigrants who settled the state in the 19th and 20th centuries.

North Dakotans for Common Sense Conservation, an opponent of the ballot measure, asserts the effort is being funded primarily by out-of-state special interest groups and the large amounts of money diverted to the effort could result in “wasteful and irresponsible spending.”

The group says there is no spending plan for what could be a flow of $4 million a week.

As of early October, the campaign for passage had raised $798,375, the vast majority from the Nature Conservancy, and opponents had raised $577,950.

Photo via Elizabeth Flores/Minneapolis Star Tribune/MCT

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Obama To Enlarge U.S. Marine Sanctuary

Obama To Enlarge U.S. Marine Sanctuary

Washington (AFP) – President Barack Obama will on Tuesday announce plans to significantly expand a U.S. sanctuary in the central Pacific Ocean in a move that could create the world’s largest such protected area, the Washington Post reported.

Obama will announce his intent to enlarge the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument from almost 87,000 square miles to nearly 782,000 square miles, the Post said.

The order, which would come into force later this year after a comment period, would make fishing, energy exploration and other activities off limits in the area, which includes uninhabited islands in a remote region.

The new area is adjacent to islands and atolls controlled by the United States and would include waters up to 200 nautical miles offshore from these territories.

The move is likely to trigger a political battle with Republicans over the scope of President Barack Obama’s executive powers, the paper said.

Photo: Jim Watson via AFP