Alaska Digest
24 wolf protests planned for after Christmas
ANCHORAGE - About two dozen demonstrations are planned for the weekend after Christmas to urge people to boycott Alaska's $2 billion tourism industry.
The animal rights group Friends of Animals is organizing the demonstrations to protest Alaska's predator-control program, which allows pilots and hunters to shoot wolves from airplanes. The state contends the program is necessary to increase the harvest of moose near a town in Alaska's Interior.
The demonstrations will span the country, from Rockefeller Center in New York City to Union Square in San Francisco, according to the Darien, Conn.-based group. One of the protests will be held in Ontario, Canada. The demonstrations are planned for Dec. 27-28.
"We deplore the killing of wolves to suit the convenience of moose hunters and to provide a thrill for pilots. Modern society should not tolerate this," Priscilla Feral, Friends of Animals president, said in a news release Friday.
The animal rights group, which touts 200,000 members, was behind a successful campaign a decade ago that resulted in then-Gov. Walter J. Hickel imposing a moratorium on wolf control.
Feral said protesters will be given postcards to send to Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski, saying they won't choose Alaska as a tourist destination as long as the state insists on going forward with its wolf-killing program.
Feral has promised more protests in 2004. The group held similar "howl-ins" in 51 cities around the country last time.
The state plans to kill about 40 wolves in a 1,700-square-mile area near the Interior town of McGrath, where residents have long complained that bears and wolves are eating too many moose.
The Board of Game also recently approved plans to kill about 100 wolves in the Nelchina basin early next year.
Ketchikan approves cruise passenger tax
KETCHIKAN - The Ketchikan City Council has approved a cruise ship passenger fee.
The fee initiative will charge $4 for each passenger on cruise ships that tie up at city docks. The city will charge a $2-per-person fee for ships that use small crafts to carry passengers to the city docks from anchored ships.
The Council adopted the passenger fee 5-1 Thursday with Council member Chuck Freeman voting no.
Freeman said the ordinance does not clearly spell out how money collected from the fee would be spent. He made three motions that would have stopped or delayed passage of the ordinance. All died for lack of a second.
The vote came over the objections earlier this month of cruise ship industry representatives.
Don Habeger of Royal Caribbean/Celebrity said more information was needed, especially regarding the cost of improving the downtown cruise dock. Those costs then could be directly tied to the passenger fee, he said.
Cees Deelstra of Holland America, who also represented the North West CruiseShip Association, said the cruise lines wanted to know how a fee would benefit them and their passengers.
Institute faults state's high minimum wage
WASHINGTON - State unemployment figures released Friday show that Alaska's less-skilled workers are failing to reap the benefits of the nation's job creation, according to the Employment Policies Institute.
In the same month that the nation saw unemployment drop to 5.9 percent, the Alaska rate increased from 7.3 to 7.5 percent. Alaska's minimum wage is 39 percent higher than the federal standard.
Alaska's unemployment rate is now 27 percent higher than the national rate, the institute said. More than 160,000 Alaska residents live in depressed areas where the rate of unemployment stood between 9 percent and 14 percent in 2002.
Those areas of high local area unemployment include the Matanuska-Susitna Borough with an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, the Kenai Peninsula Borough with a rate of 12 percent, and the Bethel area with a rate of 13.9 percent.
Craig Garthwaite, chief economist at EPI, said: "As the nation's job creation machine powers up, it is perhaps no coincidence that the three states with the highest minimum wages in the nation - Oregon, Washington and Alaska - are among the five states with the highest unemployment rates in the nation.