Battle lines drawn for shares of Yukon king salmon fishery
FAIRBANKS -- The Yukon River might be frozen, but the fight for the shrinking number of salmon that will be swimming up the river in five months is already heating up
The Federal Subsistence Board will begin a four-day meeting in Anchorage on Tuesday to debate several proposals that could drastically limit and change subsistence fishing on the Yukon River, the state's largest subsistence fishery.
Among them:
• Prohibiting the use of subsistence-caught salmon for dog food in the middle and upper Yukon.
• Prohibiting the use of fish wheels in the middle and upper Yukon.
• A fishing moratorium of 12 years on the first pulse of king salmon that come into the river, from the mouth all the way to the Canadian
• Outlawing the sale of subsistence-caught fish for customary trade in the middle and upper Yukon.
• Limiting the sale of subsistence-caught kings to non-rural residents to no more than $750 per household.
While most of the proposals likely will be rejected by the board -- they are opposed by regional advisory councils, the federal Office of Subsistence Management and the state Department of Fish and Game -- they illustrate the tension and frustration fishermen are feeling after several years of poor runs and restrictions on commercial and subsistence fishing in an effort to get more fish on the spawning grounds.
"Folks are looking for someone to blame," said Department of Fish and Game deputy commissioner Craig Fleener, who grew up in Fort Yukon. "I don't think there is anyone to blame. If you talk to the fisheries biologists, they say the same thing -- we're in a downturn of production. Whatever is causing that downturn in production is causing a lot of pain, and that gets translated into trying to find a scapegoat."
State and federal managers are formulating management strategies for this year's chinook run, but they have already said that, barring an unexpected turnaround, there will almost certainly be restrictions in place on this year's king salmon run. The chances for any commercial king fishery are slim.
"There's frustration and people are getting more aggravated," said Fred Bue, Yukon area fisheries biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Fairbanks. "People have been conserving and it's not seeming to help a lot."
The loss of commercial fishing for king salmon on the lower Yukon, once a lucrative business for fishermen in that region, has left residents struggling to rebuild the fishery, said state fisheries biologist Steve Hayes, the Yukon area manager for the Department of Fish and Game.
Some of the proposals targeting fishermen on the middle and upper Yukon River were submitted by a group of fishermen from the lower Yukon village of Mountain Village, apparently in retaliation for a proposal adopted by the state Board of Fisheries last year that will reduce the size of mesh allowed in fishing nets this season to 7 1/2 inches. The smaller mesh is aimed at reducing the harvest of the oldest and largest kings.
Though the new net size regulation pertains to the entire river, fishermen on the lower river feel it is aimed at them because it was proposed by upriver users.
"People are still upset from the last Board of Fisheries meeting, and that's why certain proposals were put in," said Jill Klein, executive director for the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association. "I think some of the proposals were definitely put in as a result of frustration. People in the lower river felt targeted."
Now, it's fishermen on the middle and upper river who feel they are in the sights of proposals from downriver fishermen. The Lower Yukon fishermen are accusing those upriver of catching king salmon to feed sled dogs and selling large amounts of fish illegally under federal customary trade regulations.
A proposal that would prohibit fish wheels in the middle and upper Yukon while allowing them elsewhere on the river is "totally uncalled for," according to James Kelly of the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments in Fort Yukon.
"This sounds like Mountain Village working group has something against the Upper Yukon Region," he wrote in response to the proposal to ban fish wheels in his region. "What will come next? Totally restrict these two districts so Mountain Village can enjoy fishing at the expense of others?"
Likewise, a proposal to ban the use of subsistence-caught salmon for dog food is a blatant attack on the subsistence lifestyle of fishermen on the middle and upper Yukon, where the majority of dog teams are located, said Richard Burnham of Kaltag.
"The use of dog teams is woven into the very fabric and history of this state," Burnham wrote in response to the proposal. "Fishing for, drying and feeding salmon to sled dogs was and is as important to the subsistence lifestyle of people along the Yukon and its tributaries as any other activity."
One issue that likely will be addressed at the Federal Subsistence Board meeting is customary trade, the sale of subsistence-caught fish, a practice which some fishermen say is growing in light of commercial fishing closures. Customary trade is allowed under federal regulations as long as it does not constitute a "significant commercial enterprise," a term that is not defined.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently conducted an undercover investigation into the illegal sale of salmon on the Yukon River that revealed some subsistence fishermen are selling hundreds of pounds of smoked salmon strips for as much as $35 per pound, generating thousands of dollars in profit.
A proposal submitted by the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Regional Advisory Council would limit customary trade to no more than $750 per household and require a permit and sales records. That proposal has the support of the Department of Fish and Game but not the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
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