By Yonah Lempert Luecken

For the Homer Independent Press

Kachemak Bay State Park has gained some  ground, thanks to help from The Conservation Fund, a national nonprofit group that partners with local organizations on land acquisition and protection, the fund announced in a press release on Wednesday.

 

The expansion adds 24 acres at Herring Cove on Nuka Island on the Gulf of Alaska side of the state park. This new addition joins two other properties added  to the park over the last three years. In 2023, the park grew to include property at the Saddle Trail access area in Halibut Cove purchased from a private land owner. In April 2024, the park added 23 acres around Mike’s Bay at Nuka Island. With the addition of the Herring Cove area, all of Nuka Island is now included in the state park’s land.

According to Chris Little, Alaska Field Representative for The Conservation Fund, the western side of Nuka Island has several protected areas for boats to anchor, and boats traveling between Homer and Seward will now have access to the entire island’s coves when they travel through Nuka Passage.

The Nuka Island properties had both belonged to the University of Alaska. The state university owns about 138,000 acres of investment property, which is used to help fund the UA Scholars Program, as well as other initiatives in education and public service. The land sale to the state park will help fund those efforts. 

Nuka Island is 23 square miles, accessible only by boat or float plane. A large part of it was transferred to the state park in the late 1980s by the state legislature, which noted at the time that the island had been recommended for inclusion in the park since 1982 by the Kachemak Bay State Park Citizen’s Advisory Board. The University of Alaska’s land trust fund had retained Herring Cove and Mike’s Bay areas, making them available for commercial lodge development under the Nuka Island Management Plan.

Retired Alaska State Park Chief Ranger Roger McCampbell explored Nuka Island around 1987, when the Division of Lands and Water Management was developing the management plan. In the early 1920s, Josephine and Edward Tueck had built a fox farm at Herring Cove, becoming the first non-indigenous people to live there.


McCampbell remembers that the fox farm’s buildings were still standing in the 1980s, with some commercial fishermen living in them at the time, possibly using the island as a base for commercial fishing. He states that while several companies had considered building lodges on the island, the expense was more than they cared to pay, leaving the island in its wild and undeveloped state today.

According to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey of the area in the 1980s, Nuka Island is an important seabird rookery for cormorants, murres, horned puffins, kittiwakes and other birds. The fox farm operators took advantage of the abundant wildlife when it was in operation, harvesting sea lions to feed the foxes.


The Conservation Fund’s Chris Little, who was involved in the prior two state park land acquisitions and is on the board of Friends of Kachemak Bay State Park, said, “The area is a hub of wildlife activity… teeming with fish, black bears, otters and lynx.”

Captain “Herring Pete” Sather, namesake of Herring Cove, was a Norwegian-American fisherman from Seward who married Josephine Tueck in 1924, after her first spouse lost a long battle with a wasting disease and died in a Seward hospital. Shortly after Herring Pete was lost at sea in 1961, Josephine Sather moved off the island permanently.

Regarding land acquisition projects, Little said, “Every project is different. … It can take anywhere from five years to quicker than that.” 

Herring Pete’s Cove took approximately three years to finalize. For Little, who lives in Homer, this land acquisition has a special significance. 

“I’m happy to be working on a property in my backyard,” he said. “My girls will be able to go out and recreate in such a beautiful place.”