First Nations want to pull nets
Ian Stewart/Yukon News
Cora Lee Johns, left, and Pearl Keenan voiced First Nations' demands for a moratorium on chinook fishing at this week's Yukon River Panel meeting.
Yukon First Nations want to shut down chinook fishing on the Yukon River.
“We want to stop fishing, period,” said Cora Lee Johns from the Ta’an Kwach’an Council. “We are hoping that everybody along the Yukon River can agree to this.
“Teslin has done it for two years now, why can’t everyone else?”
This appeal was made at a four-day meeting in Whitehorse this week between Alaskan and Yukon delegates of the Yukon River Panel.
The unified First Nations made other demands as well - like compensation.
Roberta Joseph was the first one to mention money.
“We cut back every year only to see a more devastating run the next year,” said the Tr’ondek Hwech’in member, mentioning that last year their First Fish Camp only took one, single salmon. The program takes the community’s youth out on the river to catch their first fish, then brings them to a traditional fish camp to teach them how to harvest the salmon.
The money would be used to purchase salmon so the traditional teachings could continue, said Joseph.
She also mentioned the $5-million relief fund the US government gave to Alaskan fisherman on the river at the end of last summer.
The money was compensation for years of low runs and helped fisherman buy equipment that meets new conservation regulations, like nets with smaller mesh.
“People should be compensated to cut back, not to get smaller nets to keep fishing,” Joseph said. “If we keep fishing, there’s not going to be anymore fish to fish.”
The idea is to give the salmon a year or two to replenish its stock, said Johns. Human involvement, including invasive research - like clipping fins - puts stress on the fish and the more stress, the less likely the chinook numbers will go up, she said.
There is no way fishing will stop completely all along the river, said Andy Bassich, a subsistence fisherman from Alaska.
“It’s been brought up by a few elders on the Alaskan side, but quite frankly, it will never happen,” he said. “There’s a tremendous dependence on the fisheries in Alaska for subsistence needs. Many of the people in the villages have no other source of food. And there’s no other way for them to be funded.”
We need to get people to shift to other resources, like other salmon species, that are not in critical condition, he said.
But for some areas along the river, that’s just not an option.
Bassich, and others, are trying to educate users on the ground about the state of the chinook run, the need to conserve and other options they have. He filmed the entire meeting so he could bring it back to the communities.
“The Canadians are ten years ahead in conservation and stewardship,” he said. “It’s a great model for us, but it’s a slow process. It’s adapting. Evolution takes time.”
But for people like Teslin Tlingit elder Pearl Keenan, cutting back on fishing hasn’t necessarily been a choice, in recent years.
Teslin is the end of the road for the chinook migration and the decline in stocks has been noticeable there.
“When we see those salmon, we are so excited to see them come home again,” said Keenan. “But we have watched in the last 10, 15 years, the salmon going down and down and down. And it’s been a hard fight for us as Tlingit people along the river. It really is a hard thing to look at and see that happen.
“Aren’t we educated enough to see that we can help it?”
Not a sound was made in the entire conference room at the Westmark Hotel.
No one moved.
Keenan, standing at a microphone, looked at everyone sitting around the large U-shaped tables.
She said one last thing before thanking them for listening and wishing them a safe journey home.
“Cut the commercial fishing out. Let them bypass. Give the salmon three or four days run. There has to be a limit.
“You can push for that limit,” she said. “Your life doesn’t depend on it.”
As she started her slow, fragile walk back to her table, the entire room stood up and clapped.
Allowing the first pulse of salmon through, without opening any fisheries, is a highly likely scenario, said John Linderman, the Alaskan Chair of the panel.
But just because we get more fish to the spawning grounds in Canada, doesn’t guarantee we will see more fish the next year, he said.
There have been years in the past when higher numbers of adult fish have made it through and the following year’s return was lower than ever, he said.
The projections for this year’s chinook run will mark the fifth year of record-lows.
The total run count is estimated between 130,000 to 180,000, said Linderman. That means the number of chinook that managers hope to let through to Canada is between 42,500 to 55,000, the same as last year.
“The salmon are a natural resource that we all want to see grow,” said Johns. “We’re all involved. We’re all in it.”
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2 Comments
No fisheries resources have survived rampant and widespread illegal fishing. This illegal fishing is a cancer that has plagued the Fairbanks area for decades. Often right under the noses of the bureaucrats who are supposed to be protecting the resource. Starting in the 1980’s roe stripping was rampant, and hundreds of thousands of fish were illegally caught in the Fairbanks area, because illegal fishing is so easy around a road system and urban customers.
The Canadian Chinooks salmon have been sold openly on the streets of Fairbanks for years, while authorities claim ignorance.
The illegal fishermen around Fairbanks have political power, and they continually point to the poor villages downstream as the culprits, but this is untrue, as it is difficult or near impossible to take fish illegally downriver and get their products out to a market the size of Fairbanks.
Now the US government has bought the illegal fishermen new nets that catch smaller Chinook salmon. What were the authorities thinking? Most of the large Chinook are gone, so they buy them new nets to slaughter the few smaller fish left!
Most of these new nets are particularly wasteful method of catching fish. Twice now the missing salmon on the Fraser have been directly linked to these anchored gillnets. Anchored gillnets in the swift currents of rivers have a strong tendency to lose the fish caught after they have died. The fish just fall out while the fisherman is sleeping. During the previous Fraser inquiry there was testimony that were direct observations where 80% of all fish caught in these anchored gillnets simply fell out, after they died.
If all the subsistence harvest were taken with fish wheels and the Chinooks were thrown back over the last 20 years, the Yukon would be full of Chinooks today.
That is what good management would look like.
Fish wheels are the environmentally friendly method of harvesting salmon once the salmon have gotten far enough upstream swim exclusively along the banks of the river.
The Alaskan authorities have lost all credibility, when their own fisheries officers investigations show that illegal fishing among the subsistence fishermen is widespread and rampant.
Fishing quotas are not worth the paper they are written on, unless the regulations are enforced.
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