- Title: The tiny Alaskan island fighting for fur seals, and a new future
- Date: 12th July 2021
- Summary: ALEUTIAN ISLANDS, ALASKA, UNITED STATES (MAY 2021) (REUTERS) (MUTE) TIME-LAPSE VIEW FROM SEA-PLANE OVER ALEUTIAN ISLAND CHAIN EN ROUTE TO ST. GEORGE ISLAND ST. GEORGE, ALASKA, UNITED STATES (MAY 2021) (REUTERS) SEABIRDS FLYING OVER SEA OFF ST. GEORGE ISLAND CLIFF-FACE OF ISLAND WITH SEABIRDS FLYING DRONE VIEW OF ISLAND COMMUNITY / BUILDINGS ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, UNITED STATES (FILE - MARCH 12, 2021) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) PATRICK PLETNIKOFF, MAYOR OF ST. GEORGE ISLAND, ALASKA, SAYING: "St. George is a small island, it's 11 miles long and at its wide point on the island, it's three miles. So we have thirty three miles of territory out in the middle of the Bering Sea. And so, with that small (an) island there's not a lot of opportunity for people to engage in any kind of economic development projects or any kind of endeavours that would allow them to make a decent living to cover their own expenses." ST. GEORGE, ALASKA, UNITED STATES (MAY 2021) (REUTERS) (MUTE) DRONE VIEW OF SEALS IN THE SEA VARIOUS DRONE VIEWS OF SEALS ON LAND NEAR SEA ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, UNITED STATES (FILE - MARCH 12, 2021) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) PATRICK PLETNIKOFF, MAYOR OF ST. GEORGE ISLAND, ALASKA, SAYING: "The only thing that we came up with was, well, maybe we can expand tourism. I mean, it's a beautiful place for people to see and it's got thousands of seals and millions of seabirds. And for bird watchers it's a beautiful location simply because you could see probably 100 different species of seabirds. And so, tourism was a likely endeavour." ST. GEORGE, ALASKA, UNITED STATES (MAY 2021) (REUTERS) VARIOUS DRONE VIEWS OF CLIFF-FACE ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, UNITED STATES (FILE - MARCH 12, 2021) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) PATRICK PLETNIKOFF, MAYOR OF ST. GEORGE ISLAND, ALASKA, SAYING: "Marine sanctuaries are very significant, and we believe in order to preserve the value of what people refer to as the 'Galapagos of the North', we need to have a designation, something that will allow protection and something that will allow us to preserve and have a voice in that decision making process."
- Embargoed: 26th July 2021 10:45
- Keywords: 30x30 Alaska's first marine sanctuary Galapagos of the north NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Patrick Pletnikoff St. George Island climate change environmental protections
- Location: ST GEORGE ISLAND & ALEUTIAN ISLANDS & ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, UNITED STATES
- City: ST GEORGE ISLAND & ALEUTIAN ISLANDS & ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Environment,United States,Editors' Choice
- Reuters ID: LVA002ELKESLJ
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: If Patrick Pletnikoff had been the kind of mayor to follow his head rather than his heart, then he might have long since abandoned his dwindling community on St George Island, a fog-shrouded spec hundreds of miles off the coast of Alaska.
But lately, Pletnikoff has dared to hope that his long-cherished vision for reviving St. George's moribund economy, and the fortunes of its globally significant colonies of northern fur seals, might now have a fighting chance of success.
With President Joe Biden pledging to protect 30% of U.S. land and sea by 2030, Pletnikoff is lobbying the federal government to designate Alaska's first marine sanctuary around St. George, which would place the island on a par with celebrated reserves in the Florida Keys or California's Monterey Bay.
Acknowledging St. George's importance in this way could unlock a new "conservation economy" based on eco-tourism, sustainable fishing, and field trips by scientists studying the stark impacts of climate change in the Bering Sea, the mayor argues.
"Marine sanctuaries are very significant," Pletnikoff, 73, said of his plan for St. George, which along with its northerly neighbour St Paul is known as the "Galapagos of the north" for its abundance of seals, seabirds and stellar sea lions.
"And we believe in order to preserve the value of what people refer to as the 'Galapagos of the north', we need to have a designation, something that will allow protection and something that will allow us to preserve and have a voice in that decision-making process."
A sanctuary could also help right historic wrongs, advocates say. For the first time since a Russian sloop, St. George made landfall in 1786 by following seals swimming to their breeding grounds through the fog, control of the waters around the island would move into indigenous Unangan hands.
But for all the enthusiasm, the hurdles Pletnikoff faces underscore the kinds of challenges small communities the world over can face in turning headline-grabbing conservation targets into meaningful protections.
With St. George's population down to about 50 people, few of whom have jobs, some doubt that tourism will be enough to defibrillate the economy - particularly given the risks visitors run of being stranded when mist grounds flights.
And the fishing industry is also wary. Sceptics fear that creating a sanctuary would complicate the management of the Bering Sea, which boasts some of the richest and most rigorously monitored industrial trawling grounds in the world.
Beset by violent storms and a constant, corrosive sea breeze, St. George's steady decline is etched into the dilapidated state of its houses, their forlorn timber facades a contrast to the immaculate green onion dome of the Russian Orthodox church, a legacy of early Russian settlers.
Nearby, sheer thousand-foot cliffs provide nesting sites for the bulk of the world's population of Red-Legged Kittiwakes. Auklets, Puffins and Guillemots also call St. George home, indifferent to the island's lack of a single tree.
But it is the northern fur seals performing lazy barrel rolls in the bracing surf, or playfully grappling each other with their flippers, that have shaped the three-by-twelve-mile island's destiny like no other species.
Dominated by the sealing industry for almost two centuries, run first by Russian traders and later the U.S. federal government, St George has struggled to find a new path since the commercial harvest was banned on its rookeries in the 1970s.
These days, islanders look back with a mix of nostalgia for the much larger and more youthful community sealing once supported, and anger at the industry's systematic exploitation of generations of Unangan workers, who toiled in conditions akin to indentured labour until the 1960s.
A popular folk song evokes memories of their tribulations in its title: "Slaves of the Harvest."
In direct counterpoint to St. George's oppressive past, the marine sanctuary programme, run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), aims to give local communities a much bigger say over activities such as fishing, tourism or cargo traffic in designated waters.
On St. George, supporters believe a sanctuary would enable them to limit the numbers of industrial boats sailing up from Seattle and other northwestern ports to trawl for walleye pollack within its planned 40-mile diameter.
Although scientists are still trying to establish the main factors driving declines in northern fur seals on St. George and S.t Paul since the 1970s, many islanders are convinced that vessels trawling within clear sight of the shore are placing pressure on the animals.
"You can watch these guys going back and forth out there scooping everything up," said Laurance Prokopiof, who said he gave up running his small fishing boat when the catch began to dwindle a decade ago, and now works for the town council.
"The sanctuary would be the big bonus because we'd have this 40-mile buffer around us," he said.
After years of watching former U.S. President Donald Trump roll back environmental protections, Pletnikoff found renewed hope in January when Biden issued an executive order to increase the proportion of protected U.S. land and sea to 30% by 2030 - a target known internationally as "30x30."
That should have been the reason for Pletnikoff to celebrate. But with NOAA's resources limited, it is unclear whether his plan - which lacks a champion in Congress or Alaska's state government - will be treated as a priority relative to other proposed sanctuaries in places such as Santa Barbara in California and the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench.
Nevertheless, environmental justice advocates say that Biden's emphasis on the value of indigenous stewardship in protecting wildlife could weigh in Pletnikoff's favour.
Despite the change in tone at the federal level, others in Washington DC are wary of new marine protections.
Fishing industry lobbyists would prefer the waters off St. George to remain under the jurisdiction of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, a federal body that sets quotas in discussion with scientists, fishermen, Alaskan communities and state officials.
And far greater disruption may be in store from a source that no sanctuary can prevent: climate change.
With Bering Sea winter sea ice shrinking to its lowest level in millennia and marine heatwaves coinciding with mysterious die-offs of puffins and other seabirds, rising temperatures are playing havoc with ecosystems.
Pletnikoff, who partly paid his way through college by spending summers stripping blubber off seal carcasses, believes that combining indigenous knowledge with modern science could be the best hope of protecting St. George's furred, feathered and flippered inhabitants from the challenges ahead.
"Generations of Unangan people, including my younger brothers and sisters, grew up knowing nothing more than fur seals and seabirds - and knowing our environment," he said. "We don't want to see that destroyed."
(Production: Nathan Howard/Matthew Green/Matt Stock) - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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