(Rashha McChesney/Chilkat Valley News) A fox looks up toward the sky in an enclosure at the Kroschel Films Wildlife Center on Tuesday, August 6, 2024, in Mosquito Lake, Alaska.

Kroschel Films Wildlife Center owner Steve Kroschel appeared by phone in Haines for his first court hearing Wednesday. 

Kroschel faces multiple  felony and misdemeanor animal crueltycharges from what the state says were preventable deaths of animals in 2023 and 2024, and another charge centering on…

Rashah McChesney is a multimedia journalist and editor who has reported and edited newsrooms from the Deep South to the Midwest to Alaska. For the past decade, she has worked in collaborative news as the...