When Ishŭng arrived at Eureka’s Sequoia Park Zoo five months ago, she weighed in somewhere between 475 and 500 pounds — more than double the average weight for a healthy adult female black bear. After acclimating to her spacious new home and adopting a more nutritious diet, our extra fluffy girl has dropped an estimated 100 pounds. Give it up for Ishŭng, y’all!

Before she was placed at the Sequoia Park Zoo by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) in late March, three-year-old Ishŭng lived in subpar conditions — a sparse 16’ by 16’ exhibit with a water tub and few enrichment items — at an unnamed animal sanctuary in another part of the state. The facility’s permits were revoked by the CDFW earlier this year due to animal welfare concerns, and their animals were relocated.

“There were also concerns about animal husbandry, and they weren’t meeting the necessary standards,” Sequoia Park Zookeeper Erin Corrigan told the Outpost. “They were offered opportunities to rectify those problems, and they either weren’t able to or chose not to. Eventually, their permits were not renewed.”

Not surprisingly, the sanctuary wasn’t good at keeping records, Corrigan said, which made it impossible for the CDFW to determine how Ishŭng ended up at the facility in the first place. Knowing next to nothing about her medical background, zoo staff had to draw their own conclusions as to how Ishŭng reached nearly 500 pounds. 

“We don’t know for a fact that her whole world revolved around feeding times — which is something that can happen in zoos when your animals are just kind of sitting there waiting to be fed — but we can make assumptions,” Corrigan said. “We don’t know exactly what they were feeding her, but we can assume that it wasn’t nutritionally complete. She just didn’t have a whole lot of space to move around, and didn’t have much stimulation that encouraged her to be active.”

A bear’s weight can vary wildly depending on the time of year. Female American black bears tend to weigh between 100 and 300 pounds, according to the CDFW. At 384 pounds, our Ishŭng still has a ways to go before she hits her target weight.

“She is overweight, but, as far as her frame goes, she is petite. If you look at her in comparison to our big male, Tule, who actually isn’t that big for a male, you can see that her frame, the length of her legs, the size of her feet and her face are actually petite,” Corrigan said. “We don’t really have a goal number for her; it’s more of a range. She’s the one leading us, and we’re thinking she should be in the higher 180- to 250-pound range — maybe 300 at the highest.”

As it turns out, Ishŭng is a very picky eater. She isn’t too keen on vegetables — bless her heart — but she’s starting to come around a bit, Corrigan said. When she first arrived at the zoo, staff quickly learned Ishŭng “really, really loves” romaine lettuce, and she’s grown to like green bell peppers as well.

“We’ve offered her zucchini in the past, but she’s mostly rejected it,” Corrigan said. “I just tried to feed her a zucchini again, and she’s like, ‘Nope, still garbage.’ She likes carrots and sweet potatoes, but beets are also absolutely garbage. If beet juice gets on any of the other food, that food is also garbage. … She does like citrus, grapes and blueberries, and she’s started eating apples as well.”

The bears are also given two different kibbles that are formulated specifically for bears and omnivores, Corrigan added. Every other day, the bears are given a “direct protein item” that staff hide around the exhibit to encourage foraging. 

“She really likes ground beef, steelhead trout, smelt fish, and we’ve recently given her small prey items that we have in-house for some of our other animals, like small mice,” she continued. “She really liked those.”

All told, Ishŭng has adapted quite well to her new home. She’s still getting used to living in a wide open space — a world much different from where she was before. “We don’t know if she’d ever seen trees before,” Corrigan said. “We don’t know what she was exposed to.” Now, she’s getting exercise, playing with sticks and hanging out in the little river that runs through her habitat. She’s also become a bit of a soccer star.

“She really likes soccer,” she said. “We have these small, hard plastic balls that we use as enrichment items for the bears, and most of the time we put food inside of them and they have to move the item around to get the food to fall out. Ishŭng hasn’t really been able to figure that out, but she loves to just play with the ball and push it around.”

Ishŭng is currently separated from the zoo’s male bears, Tule and Kunabulilh. Tule, who is roughly the same age, was placed at the Sequoia Park Zoo with another bear cub, Noni, in 2023. (Unfortunately, Noni died last year after an emergency surgery.) Kunabulilh, known as “Nabu” among zoo staff, was relocated to the zoo two months ago and is still “behind the scenes.” 

Zoo staff are working to integrate Ishŭng and Tule, but it’s a slow process to ensure both bears’ safety. “They are the ones who are leading us,” Corrigan said, “and we don’t want to push them too hard or cross any boundaries that they have kind of established.”

“They have two sections of habitat — the backyard and the front yard — and we can easily move the animals between the two spaces, sometimes multiple times a day,” she continued. “They do sleep in the same night house. There is a chain link fence in between them, but they do sleep in there together.

It’s worth noting that all three bears — and Noni, too — were considered “non-releasable” by the CDFW due to physical impairments that would make it difficult, if not impossible, to survive in the wild. While zoo staff have little information about Ishŭng’s medical history, they know Tule and Nabu were both sick when they were found by CDFW. 

“Most, if not all of our native animals are non-releasable,” Corrigan added. “We have our bald eagles, our ravens and our spotted owl in the raptor aviary, and all of those animals were born wild and were injured and are not releasable due to their injuries. We have the ability to offer these animals homes so that they can survive and live a healthy life. They can also be ambassadors for their species.”

Asked about other exciting zoo happenings, Corrigan said the new Red Panda Exhibit is coming along, but it doesn’t have an estimated opening date just yet. There’s also a new troop of spider monkeys at the zoo. One of the monkeys, Sprite, is now reunited with her mama, long-time zoo resident Candy.

PREVIOUSLY

• (PHOTOS) Half of Cal Poly Humboldt’s Behemoth Student Housing Project is Set to Open This Fall

The official grand opening of the $226 million Hinarr Hu Moulik dorms (“our home” in Soulatluk), the seven-story, 964-bed, two-building complex a mile north of Cal Poly Humboldt’s campus, was marked today by speeches from university officials and politicians, including Assemblyman Chris Rogers and Senator Mike McGuire.

Students started moving in last week, and out of the 608 beds currently available, 513 are being used (just one out of the two buildings will be open until the spring semester, which will add another 356 beds). Student enrollment at CPH is up 4.1% this year, a large increase over several years of consistent 1% growth. The new dorms have increased university housing by over 50%.

Composed of apartments ranging from two to four bedrooms, student and RA Cedrik Von Breil said in an interview with the Outpost that he liked his forest view from the sixth floor and really enjoyed having a gym downstairs. The noise from adjacent Highway 101 was almost nonexistent, he said, and although some of the rooms were “small,” he said the other residents were coping with it just fine. (Von Breil later specified that “cozy” would be a more exact term.)

Speakers praised the investment Cal Poly Humboldt put into its students and the power of a college degree.

“The almost half-billion-dollar investment in Cal Poly Humboldt is the single largest non-prison investment in a rural California county in 50 years,” McGuire said. “This seven-story state-of-the-art housing complex — it is transformational… . We know this isn’t just a dorm, this isn’t just a place to sleep, but a place to establish lifelong friendships, lifelong memories, and candidly, this is a place to call home… . There is nothing like a college degree to change one’s life, and there’s nothing like a college degree from the best university system in the United States of America.”

“We know that the cost of living in California is a challenge, and we know that particularly students who are living on thin margins often have to choose between their priorities, whether or not they’re going to meet their day to day needs, or if they’re going to invest in their future,” said Rogers. “It’s a challenge that none of them should [deal with]. We are working on it, but this project represents the best of what our state can do.”

He also lauded the speed the dorms were built with.

“A year ago, my wife and I were living a couple of blocks from here, watching the construction happen — and holy crap. This went up fast.”

Because we get bored with doing the same thing over and over — and because we assume you get bored too — it’s been a while since we’ve done one of our “Humboldt’s Best”-themed polls. For whatever reason, we were looking through our old winners’ list (see below) and were shocked — gobsmacked, even — when we noticed we never did “Best Mexican Food.” We did “Best Burrito.” We did “Best Torta.” But we never did maybe the most broad and obvious Humboldt category there is. Ay, Dios mio.

Well, today we atone. But in order to make our polling a bit more fair and maybe helpful to readers, we’re breaking up our local Mexican food offerings by geography. Your mission below, should you choose to accept, is to select the finest purveyors of Mexican cuisine in Fortuna, Eureka, Arcata, McKinleyville and the rest of Humboldt. (You can answer “I don’t know,” if you, ya know, don’t know.)

Because this is a topic dear to many, we are going to have these polls run for a week. Rally your troops. Let us know who we forgot.

OK. Enough words. VOTE.

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Joel Kawahara sailed out of a harbor in the Puget Sound one August morning, and no one ever saw him again. 

His boat, the fishing vessel the Karolee, sailed south at four knots for days after he was last heard from on Aug. 8, eventually winding up 100 miles off of the California Coast. The Coast Guard, after calling off a search that covered over 2,000 square miles and hundreds of miles of coastline, towed it into the Eureka marina last week, where it’s still moored. 

But it’s not doomed to sit there until the harsh, unrelenting sea air and salt turn it into a rusted hulk, a ravaged memorial to a man well-known and well-liked to the fishing community on the West Coast. Kawahara had friends up and down the Western Seaboard, and one of them lives in Eureka. 

Dave Bitts, a 77-year-old fisherman who’s been trawling the sea for salmon and crab for five decades, is planning to sail the Karolee up to Seattle when the weather gets nicer and the wind stops blowing south. Bitts and Kawahara met some 25 years ago or so, and Bitts once crewed on the Karolee up near Sitka, Alaska on a fishing voyage. They didn’t catch all that much except for an incredible photo of a lingcod gnawing on a Chinook salmon Kawahara had pulled out of the depths, sea spray floating around the frame and Kawahara holding the whole debacle. Kawahara got a print of the shot; Bitts later dropped his phone in the bay and hasn’t seen the photo since.

When Kawahara stopped answering phone calls and text messages, Bitts learned from a mutual acquaintance that he’d gone silent and was believed to be missing. Bitts decided that he’d call and text him too. No response. 

A few days later, Bitts went to the marina and to his boat, the Elmarue, tied up on A dock — and there was the Karolee, on the same dock. He didn’t know the Coast Guard would be towing it in and storing it at the marina. 

“I thought, okay, I was a friend of Joel’s,” Bitts said in an interview with the Outpost. “I fished a couple trips with him on the boat, and I’m right here handy with not that much on my plate right now with no salmon season. So I volunteered to take the boat home.”

It’ll take around 75 hours to sail it all the way up to Seattle, where Bitts will fly down to Redding and then drive back. Another one of Kawahara’s old fisherman friends will join him for the trip up. There’s some mechanical work to be done on the Karolee before they depart: deck water must be drained, the autopilot isn’t receiving power. 

It’s uncommon to have a boat to return at all. When most people go missing at sea, the boats usually go with them. There’s not much of a precedent for what Bitts is doing, but he feels it’s the best way he has to show his respect for a man he knew for so long.

“Every time I look around on the boat, it makes me think of Joel and remember something about him, you know?” Bitts said. “So there’s definitely an element of sadness to it.”

Press release from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office:

On Aug. 21 at about 6:47 p.m. Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the 3800  block of China Creek Rd. in Briceland  for the report of deceased individual.

 

Sheriff deputies arrived on scene and met with the Briceland Volunteer Fire Battalion Chief who reported an 82-year-old male appeared to have fallen off a ladder while he was working on his house and was located deceased approximately 50 feet below near a creek bed.  

 

Deputies spoke with a witness who told them he had been working on the victim’s water lines and had not heard from the victim for approximately three days, so he stopped by the victim’s residence to check on him and was unable to contact him.  The witness then contacted the Briceland Volunteer Fire Department and explained the circumstances to them. The fire department responded to the residence and a search of the exterior property revealed a ladder laying up against the house, and the victim was located approximately 50 feet down the embankment near a creek bed.

 

The Southern Humboldt Technical Rescue team responded and assisted the Briceland Volunteer Fire Department in recovering the deceased victim.  The victim was released to the Humboldt County Coroner’s Office. 

 

This case is still under investigation.

 

Anyone with information about this case or related criminal activity is encouraged to call the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251 or the Sheriff’s Office Crime Tip line at (707) 268-2539.

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This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

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As a partisan redistricting war ramps up across the country, Gov. Gavin Newsom has made himself the general of the Democratic insurgency.

The plan to redraw California’s congressional districts to favor Democrats originated as a farfetched retaliatory taunt to Texas on Newsom’s extracurricular podcast. By last week, the governor was headlining a campaign launch rally for the proposal.

Through flashy photo ops, social media trolling and an increasingly pugnacious posture against President Donald Trump, Newsom tied himself to the California redistricting so intrinsically that some are calling it the “Gavinmander.” He’s enjoying a newfound folk hero status among loyal Democrats that could boost a widely expected bid for the presidency in 2028.

“It’s the fearlessness, the fight. I can’t underscore that enough,” said Christale Spain, chair of the Democratic Party in South Carolina, a longtime early primary state. “In this time of Trump 2.0, folks are just looking for a fighter.”

Now, with the outcome of Newsom’s redistricting plan in the hands of the voters in a November special election, his fortunes could rise and fall with his ballot measure.

For Newsom, the goodwill would be punctured by a belly flop on the ballot. For the redistricting proposal, public sentiment about the governor may ultimately be more determinative than lofty arguments about fair elections or protecting democracy.

Opponents are already framing the plan as a power grab by Newsom that undermines the will of the voters — playing on a long-simmering suspicion among Californians that the governor has his eye on the national prize more than solving the state’s problems.

“He’s clearly decided to do this to further his presidential ambitions. He wants to be seen as the person fighting Trump and to galvanize the Democratic base behind him,” Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher of Chico said. “It’s not about some greater cause. It’s about him and his image and his ambitions.”

Newsom defends the California redistricting as an emergency measure to neutralize Trump’s attempts to rig the outcome of the 2026 midterms.

Earlier this summer, Trump pressured Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s congressional lines to shore up the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Their map, which is on track for final approval this week, creates five new Republican-leaning seats — an advantage that could be offset, if the voters approve, by five more Democratic-leaning districts in California.

“It’s not the rule of law, it’s the rule of Don. And we’re standing up to that,” Newsom said Thursday at a press conference where he signed the proclamation declaring the Nov. 4 special election.

“I’m concerned about what Donald Trump is doing,” he told reporters later, “and to the extent that we can provide a pathway to get support for this initiative, I’m going to continue doing everything in my power.”

Newsom’s redistricting risk

Critics, and even some supporters, warn that redistricting is a high-stakes gamble for Newsom. Independent redistricting is popular with California voters.

Newsom, meanwhile, has faced sluggish approval ratings throughout his governorship — though he often gets a lift when in direct confrontation with Trump.

If the ballot measure becomes another referendum on Newsom and then fails in November, it would be a black eye for the governor. Gallagher said it would be “the death knell for his political career.”

But for now Newsom is reaping the rewards of jumping into the fray.

While national Democrats and other liberal states wavered about how to counter Trump, Newsom propelled California into an unprecedented special election in a matter of weeks. It once again made him the national face of the anti-Trump resistance, a position that Newsom has cultivated throughout his governorship but which he set aside earlier this year as he sought the president’s help responding to devastating wildfires in Los Angeles County.

Michael Kolenc, a Democratic political consultant based in Houston, said California’s response is now part of nearly every local story he reads about the Texas redistricting.

“People are appreciative that someone is out there having their back,” he said. “We want someone or something to fight, not fold, in the face of authoritarianism. And I think California and Newsom are filling that void.”

In South Carolina, which Newsom visited last month, Spain said the governor’s response is providing an education for Democrats, who worry Trump will also pressure their overwhelmingly Republican state into redrawing congressional lines.

“This is exactly what Democrats in South Carolina have been waiting for, someone to punch back,” Spain said. “They are inspired by it.”

Kolenc said the breakthrough beyond the state’s borders raises Newsom’s reputation not just with Democratic voters he would need in a presidential primary but also with the insider crowd — advisers, staff, donors, endorsers — who may want to be on his campaign team.

And even if voters ultimately reject the gambit, Kolence said he doesn’t see a downside for Newsom, who can still say he was on the frontlines defending the country against Trump.

“At the end of the day, he’s getting attention, which is what he needs and wants,” Kolenc said.

Trolling in President Trump’s style

In recent weeks, Newsom has taken the battle to the digital sphere in a new way. His social media accounts, and those of his press office, post a relentless stream of fiery rejoinders to the president: aping Trump’s quirky, all-caps style, mocking his looks and his masculinity, and accusing him of cheating to win.

The frankly ridiculous posts — have you seen the AI-generated painting of Kid Rock, Tucker Carlson and the late Hulk Hogan praying over Newsom? — are bringing even more focus to the governor. Fox News commentators have spent considerable time lately wringing their hands over the heavy-handed parody of Trump.

Image via Gov. Gavin Newsom’s X account

But delighted Democrats argue that it’s effectively making the case for redistricting by reminding voters of the stakes for California, which is frequently in Trump’s crosshairs, if Republicans retain unified control of the federal government.

“A lot of voters also think both parties are the same. And they’re not. The reality is we’re trying to stop what is happening,” state Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Fremont Democrat, said. “Honestly, this is probably what a lot of people think but don’t necessarily say.”

Wahab said the viral trolling is cutting through the apathy that typically surrounds special elections and allowing Newsom to connect with younger voters, as well as Democrats who have felt powerless as Trump swiftly reshaped the country during his first months back in the White House.

“We’ve taken a high road for many, many years as Democrats and as a party. And I think we’re watching that high road actively crumble in front of us and we’ve got to chart a better pathway,” Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, a Culver City Democrat, said. “Where I’m from, when somebody steps up, you step up.”

The question remains: what is Newsom stepping up to?

One way or another, the redistricting campaign ends in less than three months. Newsom will still be the governor of California for another year after that, until the beginning of 2027. It’s a long time to sustain this momentum, especially in an era where the political news cycle moves at lighting speed.

Gallagher, the Assembly Republican leader, predicted that “trying to out-Trump Trump” would not work out for Newsom in the long run.

“He’s obviously not talking about the real issues and the real policies and the things that affect everyday people’s life,” Gallagher said. “That’s been the problem with Gavin since day one. It’s been more about his next big shiny object instead of actually getting shit done.”

Robert Anderson, a familiar and respected face in Ferndale, passed away peacefully on August 13, 2025, after a brave fight with pancreatic cancer. He was 54.

Born in Novato on September 3, 1970, Robert found his home and purpose in Humboldt County. After graduating from Hoopa High School, he earned his EMT certification from College of the Redwoods, beginning a career in emergency medical care that spanned more than a decade.

For over 10 years, Robert served as an Emergency Department Technician at Jerold Phelps Community Hospital, where his compassion and calm demeanor were a source of comfort to countless patients and their families. He was also a dedicated member of the Ferndale Fire Department, rising to the ranks of Lieutenant and Captain in Company 1. Robert’s commitment to his community ran deep, and his leadership made a lasting impact on those he worked with and served.

Outside of his work, Robert was a man of diverse passions. He could often be found on the golf course or practicing martial arts, finding joy and relaxation in his hobbies.

Robert was preceded in death by his parents, Robert Eugene Anderson Sr. and Glenda Joanne Hendricks-Anderson.

He is survived by his loving life partner, Jacqueline Faye Colegrove; his sister, Bambi Lynn Anderson; and his brother, Timothy John Anderson. He also leaves behind his aunt, Dani Hendricks; nephews, Scott and Travis Shields, and Joe and Jack Worthen; and many cousins, including Lori Ann Hendricks, Christopher Hendricks, Shelley Susavilla, Craig Watkins, Kelly Barsanti, Trent Hauger, Rebecca Olson, Eric Olson, Nikole Albin, and Bryan Anderson.

A celebration of Robert’s life will be held at noon on Saturday, August 30, at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church on Shaw Avenue in Ferndale. A reception will follow at 1 p.m. at the Portuguese Hall on Ocean Avenue in Ferndale. The family welcomes guests to bring a dessert or side dish to share.