March 2025 – Friends of Alaska National Wildlife Refuges

Volunteer, Volunteer, Volunteer

By Poppy Benson, Vice President

Want to do hands on field work? Share your enthusiasm for refuges with visitors? Be a campground host at a very lovely spot? Eight refuges have submitted their wish lists for volunteers and they are now posted on our Current Volunteer Opportunities webpage. Add some wildlife to your summer. Check them out, check your calendar and apply!

There are some intriguing multi week field projects including hare monitoring on Yukon Flats Refuge and biological monitoring and maintenance at Kanuti’s remote cabin. Both these will require some training so talk to them right away to arrange this. Izembek is looking for black brant survey team members but this year they want two. Friends will pay airfare Anchorage to Cold Bay. And that always fun project of banding ducks at Tetlin Refuge for a week is back for a 5th year. Alaska Peninsula Refuge wants help with their visitor center and summer events for the whole summer but two people could split the summer. Airfare, food allowance and refuge housing are provided. Izembek also wants visitor services help but we don’t have money to cover airfare although lodging would be provided. Kenai Refuge needs a campground host at Hidden Lake.

One day or afternoon projects include three big outreach events – the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival, Seabird Fest and the Kenai Sports and Recreation Show; help with fencing the banks of the Kenai to prevent erosion during the salmon runs; and cleanups on the Alaska Maritime (April 19) and Kenai (date TBD). Friends cosponsors the Shorebird Festival, May 7 – 11 in Homer and volunteers are needed for staffing the Friends Outreach Table and the Birder’s Coffee and for helping the refuge with Festival events. You can sign up for either or both Friends and refuge work. The Festival is our biggest project and traditionally our best source of new members and, it’s really fun! Come on down to Homer and help out. May 3 and 4 is the Kenai Sports and Recreation Show in Soldotna and May 30 – 31 is Seabird Fest in Seward. Friends are needed to help the refuges with activities and education at these events.

You can find all projects listed here including who to talk to for more information. Applications are needed for most projects and you must be a member for most projects. You can join or renew here. In addition, refuges with visitor centers – Kodiak, Kenai, Yukon Delta in Bethel, Alaska Peninsula in King Salmon and the Alaska Maritime in Homer can always use help. Contact those refuges if you live in the area.

Volunteering at the Friends Outreach Booth at the 2023 Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival. We need at least 25 volunteers to cover all 5 days of Festival events and outreach.

I was surprised we got as many projects as we did given the DOGE induced chaos at the refuges – uncertain job futures, stripped staff, credit card use suspended making acquiring field supplies impossible and no budget yet for this fiscal year. Should government uncertainties resolve, I think we would get some more projects so stay tuned to our volunteer current opportunities page.

Finding Refuge: Alaska Refuges’ Gifts Recording on line here

Presented by Matt Conner, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Services Supervisor

This meeting was held on Tuesday, March 18, 5 pm Alaska Daylight Time

Soldotna – Matt Conner in person at Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center, Ski Hill Road. Reception follows talk.
Homer – Watch Party at the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center, 95 Sterliing Hwy.
Anchorage – Watch Party at REI Community Room, 500 E. Northern Lights Blvd.
And Around the Country on Zoom

Matt Conner crossing Skilak Lake on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in his drift boat.

It is a stressful time. Many of us struggle with less than optimum health. Join Ranger Matt Conner of the Kenai Refuge as he describes how refuges can improve our mind, body, and spirit. Matt went through a personal transformation as the result of a health crisis and is now a certified personal trainer eager to incorporate health benefits in management activities. He was instrumental in adding outdoor exercise equipment to the Kenai Refuge Multi Use Trail with the exercises tied to animal adaptations so that wildlife appreciation and exercise can go hand in hand. Interpretive panels pair the unique abilities of Alaskan wildlife, like balance and core strength, with the same physiological traits in humans. Combining his passion for nature and wildlife and a new found love of fitness training, Matt brings these two themes together in his talk.

He will also discuss the importance of nature and refuges for both physical and mental health. He is knowledgeable in the research on the effects of nature on mental health. Learn about how refuges are a source for whole foods as well as a source for mental and spiritual connection.

Skilak Lookout Trail on the Kenai Refuge provides an aerobic workout as well as stunning views and wildlife watching opportunities.

Biography

It was all because his mom would not let him have a BB gun. That is why Matt said he got into the outdoor field. He was only allowed to have a bow and arrow. By age 13 he was competing on the national level in archery. A family friend took notice of his proficiency and invited him bow hunting starting a lifelong interest in hunting and the outdoors. Matt has a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in the human dimensions of forestry from the School of Forestry at Southern Illinois University. He worked at several national parks, the White River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas and the Fish and Wildlife Service Prairie Wetlands Learning Center before coming to the Kenai Refuge in 2014.

Three years ago a medical crisis changed his life. Matt utilized his scientific background to investigate the ideal lifestyle of exercise and diet to turn his health around. Along his journey he earned certifications as Personal Trainer, Nutritional Counselor and Correctional Exercise Therapy from the National Association of Sports Medicine. In addition to managing the large recreational program at the Kenai Refuge, Matt also works in his spare time as a personal trainer and volunteers at Central Peninsula Hospital in the Behavioral Health Division teaching group classes in fitness and nutrition. His life style changes have reversed his medical problems leaving him symptom free. He is a strong proponent of a healthy life style of which exercise and immersion in nature are key components.

Matt is an avid fly fisherman and hiker and loves to spend his falls harvesting free range protein by stick and string!!! (bow and arrow and fly rod). He lives in Soldotna with his wife and has two grown children.

Winter recreation offers serenity plus a good workout. Skiing across Dolly Varden Lake to the Dolly Varden public use cabin on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. pc. Lisa Hupp/USFWS

PC for lead photo: Joseph Robertia courtesy of the Redoubt Reporter

March Advocacy Report

By Caroline Brouwer, Advocacy Chair

Friends, this is a call to action. Our elected leaders are in the process of dismantling large swaths of the federal government, and public lands are high on their target list.

National wildlife refuges are YOUR lands. National parks are YOUR lands. National forests are YOUR lands. You should be able to visit, hunt on, birdwatch on, and hike on these lands. You should be able to expect these beautiful landscapes, rich wildlife habitat and the wildlife species that call them home to be well managed for the purposes laid out by Congress in their establishment.

In the past eight weeks, many thousands of federal employees have been illegally fired. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to these firings, and they are cutting deeply into the services that you, an American taxpayer, should be receiving. At least 12 Fish and Wildlife Service staff in Alaska were fired, four of them from refuges. In addition, about 14 have taken the “Fork in the Road” (resignation with several months of pay) buyout offers. Others have had positions that were offered and accepted rescinded, some as they were packing to move to Alaska and important positions like refuge managers are not being filled! It is a chaotic situation and difficult to determine just how many employees we have lost. Fish and Wildlife Service leaders are required to submit plans March 13 about how to further downsize. We expect many more people to be terminated in reduction in force actions or early retirements.

We expect these reductions in the workforce will lead to minimal to no management on Alaska’s 76 million acres of refuges. The Fish and Wildlife Service goes into this in a weakened position as refuge staff had already been reduced 30% over the last 15 years. An important refuge like the two million acre Kodiak Refuge home to the largest brown bears now has only 7 staff where five years ago it had 14. Only one staffer (they used to have 4) covers visitor services managing their visitor center (30 cruise ship visits per year), outreach to eight villages on the refuge, public use cabins, bear viewing sites, and over 100 special use permits to be evaluated and administered annually (bear viewing, float plane transporters, set net sites, research projects, hunting guides), and a formerly-active environmental education program. Because of these ongoing cuts, the Kodiak visitor center has been closed all winter for the first time and Salmon Camp, one of the oldest and best children’s refuge education programs, has been reduced from five week long sessions in Kodiak city and the villages to three short visits to villages. The enthusiastic young woman Kodiak had just hired to manage the visitor center and start supplying services to the public again was fired one month into her job by DOGE in the Valentine’s Day Massacre.

It takes staff to manage a refuge and help the public responsibly enjoy and learn about the wonders of the refuge. Salmon Camp on the Kodiak Refuge was one of the most successful programs serving more than a hundred families a year, many of them from the Coast Guard Base Kodiak. With the public use staff cut from four to one, Salmon Camp in Kodiak is no more.

These cuts will affect all public land users, and biological work that keeps our wildlife safe. Next, Congress and the Administration may question why we are holding on to these lands that are “unproductive” and unmanaged. And after that, Friends fear they may add oil and gas as a purpose for all refuges as they did during the first Trump term for the Arctic Refuge, sell off some refuges for development, permit mining, and allow “intensive management” (such as predator control) which is contrary to the refuges’ purpose of maintaining natural biodiversity. Even if refuge lands are not sold, there will be few refuge staff left to protect the original purposes of refuges. These are OUR refuge lands, park lands, and forests. The Administration has already announced plans to heavily log national forests and suspend provisions of the Endangered Species and Migratory Bird acts.

We need you to call your Congressional representatives. Every day. Ask that the staff fired under DOGE be rehired, the vacated positions be refilled, the refuge manager positions filled (only 7 managers for 16 refuges) and credit card use restored so they can buy supplies for the rapidly approaching field season (DOGE put a $1 limit on credit cards). Remind them that you value refuge employees and the work they do to protect wildlife and refuges. Refuges are not for sale! Many members of Congress are starting to complain that they are getting too many phone calls. Good. These elected officials work for US, and they should respond to us, their constituents, not the President. We cannot allow them to dismantle public lands.

Alaska’s two senators are Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Dan Sullivan. Our House member is Rep. Nick Begich. You can also reach them or any state’s delegation at the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.

If we do nothing, and do not use our voices to speak up in protest, we predict that we will lose many of the public lands and the values they protect that make Alaska great.