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THE ASTORIAN • TuESdAy, JANuARy 21, 2020
2020 census begins in a tiny Alaska town
By MARK THIESSEN
Associated Press
TOKSOOK BAY, Alaska — There are
no restaurants in Toksook Bay, Alaska. No
motels or movie theater, either. There also
aren’t any factories. Or roads.
But the first Americans to be counted
in the 2020 census live in this tiny com-
munity of 661 on the edge of the American
expanse. Their homes are huddled together
in a windswept Bering Sea village, painted
vivid lime green, purple or neon blue to
help distinguish the signs of life from a
frigid white winterscape that makes it hard
to tell where the frozen sea ends and the
village begins.
Fish drying racks hang outside some
front doors, and you’re more likely to find
a snowmobile or four-wheeler in the drive-
way than a truck or SUV.
In this isolated outpost that looks lit-
tle like other towns in the rest of the
United States, the official attempt to count
everyone living in the country will begin
Tuesday.
The decennial U.S. census has started in
rural Alaska, out of tradition and necessity,
ever since the U.S. purchased the territory
from Russia in 1867.
Once the spring thaw hits, the town
empties as many residents scatter for tradi-
tional hunting and fishing grounds, and the
frozen ground that in January makes it eas-
ier to get around by March turns to marsh
that’s difficult to traverse. The mail service
is spotty and the internet connectivity unre-
liable, which makes door-to-door survey-
ing important.
For those reasons, they have to start
early here.
The rest of the country, plus urban areas
of Alaska such as Anchorage, will begin
the census in mid-March.
Some of the biggest challenges to the
count are especially difficult in Toksook
Bay, one of a handful of villages on Nel-
son Island, which is about 500 miles west
of Anchorage and only accessible by boat
or plane.
Some people speak only Alaska Native
languages such as Yup’ik, or speak one lan-
guage but don’t read it.
The U.S. census provides questionnaires
in 13 languages, and other guides, glossa-
ries and materials in many more. But none is
one of 20 official Alaska Native languages.
So local groups are bringing together trans-
lators and language experts to translate the
census wording and intent so local com-
munity leaders could trust, understand and
relay the importance of the census.
It wasn’t an easy task. Language can be
very specific to a culture.
For example, there’s no equivalent for
“apportionment” — the system used to
determine representation in Congress —
in the language Denaakk’e, also known as
Koyukon Athabascan. So translators used
terms for divvying up moose meat in a vil-
lage as an example for finding cultural rele-
vancy, said Veri di Suvero, executive direc-
Gregory Bull/AP Photo
George Chakuchin, left, and Mick Chakuchin look out over the Bering Sea near Toksook Bay, Alaska. The first Americans to be counted in the
2020 census starting Tuesday live in this Bering Sea coastal village.
tor of the agency partner Alaska Public
Interest Research Group.
When the official count begins this
week, the Census Bureau has hired four
people to go door-to-door. At least two of
them will be fluent in English and Yup’ik.
Places such as Toksook Bay that run this
risk of being under-counted also desper-
ately need the federal funds assigned based
on population for health care, education
and general infrastructure.
Yet mistrust of the federal government is
high. That’s true in many parts of the U.S.,
but especially in Alaska, where many have
strong libertarian views, and even more in
a rural community where everyone knows
everyone, and someone asking for personal
information is seen with suspicion.
“The No. 1 barrier to getting an accurate
count throughout Alaska is concern about
privacy and confidentiality and an inherent
distrust of the federal government,” said
Gabriel Layman, chairman of the Alaska
Census Working Group. “And that atti-
tude is fairly pervasive in some of our more
rural and remote communities.”
The census is entirely confidential, Lay-
man reassures people, and the Census
Bureau can’t give information to any law
enforcement, immigration official to even
to a landlord if you report if you have 14
people living in your rental. Violating that
privacy could land a Census worker behind
bars with a hefty fine.
When the count begins on Tuesday, a
Yup’ik elder who is part of a well-known
Eskimo dancing group will be the first one
counted.
Lizzie Chimiugak, whose age isn’t
known because records weren’t kept but is
anywhere from 89 to 93, is “the grandma
for the whole community,” said Robert
Pitka, the tribal administrator of the Nun-
akauyak Traditional Council in Toksook
Bay.
Steven Dillingham, the director of the
U.S. Census Bureau, will be on hand for
Tuesday’s start.
Village officials will greet him at the
town’s airstrip and bring him to the school,
where community members will bring tra-
ditional food, which could include seal,
walrus, moose or musk ox. They’ll have
a ceremony with the dance group that
includes Chimiugak, who will come to the
school and dance in her wheelchair if the
weather allows.
Mary Kailukiak, a town councilwoman,
said she’s one of the cooks.
“I’m thinking of maybe cooking up dried
fish eggs, herring fish eggs,” she said, paus-
ing to speak to a reporter while ice fishing
for tomcod and smolt on the Bering Sea,
dressed in a black parka and snow pants
and sporting a hat made by her daughter
from sealskin and beaver. The eggs will be
soaked overnight and served with seal oil.
Then Dillingham will conduct the first
official census count, or enumeration as it
known, with Chimiugak, out of earshot of
others to satisfy federal privacy laws.
Pitka is hoping for nice weather — it’s
been as cold as -20 Fahrenheit lately — as
the nation’s eyes turn west for the event:
“It’s going to be a very special moment.”
Simeon John, who leads a youth suicide
prevention group, stood before about 120
people at the end of the Sunday service at
St. Peter the Fisherman Catholic Church.
In Yup’ik, he told parishioners to expect
strangers in town this week and why.
Beyond helping prepare for Tuesday’s
kickoff, he also encouraged them to take
part in the census when a worker knocks
on their door.
“That was one of the reasons why we
encourage people to participate in as much
as we can because of the benefits that we
will be getting,” said John, a community
census helper.
Responses in the 2020 census could help
residents in the future get improvements to
the water facility, airport, port and even
roads.
Besides announcements at church ser-
vices, community leaders will repeat the
same message this week to townspeople
over marine VHF radio and through more
modern means, including texting.
Fires set stage for irreversible losses in Australia
By MATTHEW BROWN and
CHRISTINA LARSON
Associated Press
Australia’s forests are burning at a rate
unmatched in modern times and scientists say
the landscape is being permanently altered as
a warming climate brings profound changes
to the island continent.
Heat waves and drought have fueled big-
ger and more frequent fires in parts of Austra-
lia, so far this season torching some 40,000
square miles, an area about as big as Ohio.
With blazes still raging in the country’s
southeast, government officials are draw-
ing up plans to reseed burned areas to speed
up forest recovery that could otherwise take
decades or even centuries.
But some scientists and forestry experts
doubt that reseeding and other intervention
efforts can match the scope of the destruc-
tion. The fires since September have killed 28
people and burned more than 2,600 houses.
Before the recent wildfires, ecologists
divided up Australia’s native vegetation into
two categories: fire-adapted landscapes that
burn periodically, and those that don’t burn.
In the recent fires, that distinction lost mean-
ing — even rainforests and peat swamps
caught fire, likely changing them forever.
Flames have blazed through jungles dried
out by drought, such as Eungella National
Park, where shrouds of mist have been
replaced by smoke.
“Anybody would have said these forests
don’t burn, that there’s not enough material
and they are wet. Well they did,” said for-
est restoration expert Sebastian Pfautsch, a
research fellow at Western Sydney University.
“Climate change is happening now, and
we are seeing the effects of it,” he said.
High temperatures, drought and more
frequent wildfires — all linked to climate
change — may make it impossible for even
fire-adapted forests to be fully restored, sci-
entists say.
“The normal processes of recovery are
going to be less effective, going to take lon-
ger,” said Roger Kitching, an ecologist at
Griffith University in Queensland. “Instead
of an ecosystem taking a decade, it may take
a century or more to recover, all assuming we
don’t get another fire season of this magni-
tude soon.”
Rick Rycroft/AP Photo
Sheep graze in a field shrouded with smoke haze near Burragate, Australia.
Young stands of mountain ash trees —
which are not expected to burn because they
have minimal foliage — have burned in the
Australian Alps, the highest mountain range
on the continent. Fire this year wiped out
stands reseeded following fires in 2013.
Mountain ash, the world’s tallest flower-
ing trees, reach heights of almost 300 feet
and live hundreds of years. They’re an iconic
presence in southeast Australia, comparable
to the redwoods of Northern California, and
are highly valued by the timber industry.
“I’m expecting major areas of (tree) loss
this year, mainly because we will not have
sufficient seed to sow them,” said Owen
Bassett of Forest Solutions, a private com-
pany that works with government agencies to
reseed forests by helicopter following fires.
Bassett plans to send out teams to climb
trees in parts of Victoria that did not burn to
harvest seed pods. But he expects to get at
most a ton of seeds this year, about one-tenth
of what he said is needed.
Fire is a normal part of an ash forest life
cycle, clearing out older stands to make way
for new growth. But the extent and intensity
of this year’s fires left few surviving trees in
many areas.
Already ash forests in parts of Victoria had
been hit by wildfire every four to five years,
allowing less marketable tree species to take
over or meadows to form.
“If a young ash forest is burned and killed
and we can’t resow it, then it is lost,” Bas-
sett said.
The changing landscape has major impli-
cations for Australia’s diverse wildlife. The
fires in Eungella National Park, for exam-
ple, threaten “frogs and reptiles that don’t
live anywhere else,” said University of
Queensland ecologist Diana Fisher.
Fires typically burn through the forest in
a patchwork pattern, leaving unburned ref-
uges from which plant and animal species
can spread. However, megafires are consum-
ing everything in their path and leaving little
room for that kind of recovery, said Griffith
University’s Kitching.
In both Australia and western North Amer-
ica, climate experts say, fires will continue
burning with increased frequency as warm-
ing temperatures and drier weather transform
ecosystems.
The catastrophic scale of blazes in so
many places offers the “clearest signal yet”
that climate change is driving fire activity,
said Leroy Westerling, a fire science profes-
sor at the University of Alberta.
“It’s in Canada, California, Greece, Por-
tugal, Australia,” Westerling said. “This por-
tends what we can expect — a new reality.
I prefer not to use the term ‘new normal’...
This is more like a downward spiral.”
Forests can shift locations over time.
However, that typically unfolds over thou-
sands of years, not the decades over which
the climate has been warming.
Most of the nearly 25,000 square miles
that have burned in Victoria and New South
Wales has been forest, according to scien-
tists in New South Wales and the Victorian
government.
By comparison, an average of about 1,600
square miles of forest burned annually in
Australia dating to 2002, according to data
compiled by NASA research scientist Niels
Andela and University of Maryland research
professor Louis Giglio.
Unlike grasslands, which see the vast
majority of Australia’s huge annual wildfire
damage, forests are unable to regenerate in a
couple of years. “For forests, we’re talking
about decades, particularly in more arid cli-
mates,” Andela said.
Most forested areas can be expected to
eventually regenerate, said Owen Price, a
senior research fellow at the University of
Wollongong specializing in bushfire risk
management. But he said repeated fires will
make it more likely that some will become
grasslands or open woodlands.
Price and others have started thinking up
creative ways to combat the changes, such
as installing sprinkler systems in rainforests
to help protect them against drought and fire,
or shutting down forested areas to all visitors
during times of high fire danger to prevent
accidental ignitions.
Officials may also need to radically
rethink accepted forest management prac-
tices,. said Pfautsch, the researcher from
Western Sydney.
That could involve planting trees in
areas where they might not be suitable now
but would be in 50 years as climate change
progresses.
“We cannot expect species will move 125
miles to reach a cooler climate,” said Pfautsch.
“It’s not looking like there’s a reversal trend
in any of this. It’s only accelerating.”