environment

The onsite joint command says it’s gone several days without seeing any sheen in the area.

State officials say they still cannot trace the sheen to the nearby oil platform.

The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation says the sheen was not visible during flyovers around noon Tuesday or from an oil cleanup ship sent to the site.

The couple participated in the Kenai Peninsula Habitat Rehabilitation & Protection Cost-Share Program, which offers federal matching grants for private projects that rehabilitate and sustain certain salmon habitats.

The Alaska Division of Forestry says the exact cause of the fire is still under investigation, but has ruled out lightning, suggesting the blaze was human-caused.

The Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection says the so-called Grandview Fire was sparked by an escaped campfire and slowed when it hit a stand of hardwood.

“We have tons of pictures of loons with fishing line wrapped around their beaks, their legs and their feet and their wings, and then they can't dive, and they can't feed themselves or preen or even take flight when it's time to migrate,” said Outreach Biologist Tamara Zeller.

Stream Watch was started in the mid-1990s by a group of fishermen intent on protecting the Kenai Peninsula’s salmon habitats. The program is jointly run by the Kenai Watershed Forum and the U.S. Forest Service and has an overarching goal of promoting watershed stewardship.

The department says it already has good data from prior experimental beach seines, and that issuing new permits won’t fill remaining data gaps, like how many king salmon die after being released back into Cook Inlet.

The changes do not impact the basic management plan for Cook Inlet’s east side setnet fishery and came over the objections of local fishermen.