Alaska has a governor who habitually makes appointments to governing boards of individuals who have what should be disqualifying conflicts of interest. For fisheries, this creates a management culture which is management-for-industry, emphatically putting management for the species and the environment in deep background.
Pathetically, the technique of management-for-industry is in keeping with fisheries management since statehood. Without a radical philosophical change of management at every level, Alaska will soon be presiding over empty oceans and empty rivers.
Because of the size of the river, the Yukon Chinook situation is the big indicator, with Canadian management voices declaring that Yukon River Chinook are functionally extinct in Canada. When past, existing, research tells you that more than 50% of all Yukon River salmon had Canadian origins, this should be a red flag for management, a statistic that foretells the immediate future. And it is a red flag, a bellwether, that the governor, the commissioner and the boards apparently feel free to ignore.
The governor has $20 million for Chinook research in his proposed budget. This is a pathetic, transparent multi-year stalling action to be paid for with scant oil dollars that the state manages to scrape up from its own oil resource. Maybe the governor should read the 30-odd books and countless technical journals on Chinook biology and history that currently sit on the shelf. The knowledge in this body of research, which covers the West Coast from the Sacramento to Kotzebue Sound over some 200 years, is sufficient to guide management, beginning today. If the goals and principles of management are not changed today, then $20 million of research from now, salmon will be a memory.
The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council does not manage salmon. It does however manage the ocean environment in which salmon spend most of their lives and which is failing its role of support for multiple species. Alaska faces an existential crisis here. Find some desperately needed courage. Tell the industry and the lobbyists to sit down, and you all step up to the plate.
• Eric Forrer is a retired carpenter/contractor living in Juneau who claims no political affiliation.
