Sportfishermen Howl Over Subsistence Changes
By Brandon Loomis, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
May 10–Federal officials Wednesday approved rules for a new subsistence fishery in the Kenai River drainage amid howls that they did so without regard for how the catch will affect sportfishing on Alaska’s most popular waters.
“I’m a little outraged about this whole process,” Kenai Peninsula sportfisherman Les Palmer told the Federal Subsistence Board as it drafted salmon and trout rules on the second day of meetings in Anchorage. “I haven’t heard a word of concern from the board on the impact on the current users of the Kenai and Kasilof rivers. There just seems to be no reluctance on your part to do this.”
The rules could allow residents of Ninilchik, Hope and Cooper Landing to dipnet or hook thousands of salmon from the Kenai drainage. They also let Cooper Landing and Hope residents take rainbow trout and Dolly Varden from the river. A move to give Ninilchik residents those species on the Kenai River split the board 3-3 and thus failed.
The board approved similar rules for subsistence on the Kasilof.
Sportsmen protested the board’s actions as likely to take fish from urban anglers.
“It’s clear that I’m wasting my time before the Federal Subsistence Board, but I’m used to it,” Alaska Outdoors Council executive director Rod Arno said while testifying against the move during the meeting’s second day. “I’ve been doing it for a decade.”
Likewise, the board pressed on despite objections raised by Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials at each proposed rule. After Monday’s session, when the board rejected a final effort to bar any subsistence fishing on the Kenai, Fish and Game Commissioner Denby Lloyd said the state continues to ponder a lawsuit to block the action.
“It’s certainly something that we can consider,” he said.
Board chairman Mike Fleagle dismissed the allegation that the board had ignored sportsmen. He said he doubts that the fisheries will take fish from the sportsmen who flood out of Anchorage into the Kenai every July.
“Ninilchik’s intent is to spread the use around the Peninsula so it’s not real in-your-face in any given place,” Fleagle said during a break from the rule-making hearing.
SPORT GROUPS SAY NO
Sporting groups have blasted the plan, though, saying Ninilchik residents haven’t used the river historically and never should have earned a federal priority for subsistence rights where tens of thousands of urban Alaskans fish with rods.
Federal law gives a priority to rural Alaskans who the board determines have made “customary and traditional use” of a given fish stock. In granting that priority to Ninilchik, Fleagle has said coastal Ninilchik traditionally fished the Kenai’s salmon stocks, even if only while at sea, rather than the upstream areas they cross on their way to spawning beds. He and two other board members did not accept that Ninilchik had customary rights to fish that never leave the river, though, like trout and Dolly Varden.
The federal board’s action, meant to enable fishing this summer, allows subsistence fishermen on the Kenai River to use dipnets and rods to take a collective 1,000 late-run king salmon, 4,000 sockeye, 3,000 cohos and 2,000 pinks. Federal subsistence priorities apply only on federal waters, which is why Ninilchik asked to fish far from home, on the upper Kenai where it crosses the Chugach National Forest and Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.
Darrel Williams, an environmental scientist for the Ninilchik Traditional Council, said some public comments opposing the fishery inappropriately criticize the village’s Alaska Natives as unworthy of subsistence rights because they have modern conveniences. The council has argued that federal law protects rural ways regardless of income or infrastructure.
“There’s a lot of prejudice in there,” Ward said of the collected written comments.
Barring a successful legal challenge, subsistence fishing begins June 11.
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Daily News reporter Brandon Loomis can be reached in the newspaper’s Soldotna bureau at bloomis@adn.com or 1-907-260-5215, ext. 24.
Under the new subsistence fishing rules …
Subsistence fishers will be allowed to use dipnets or rod and reel to fish at the Russian River falls, which was formerly closed to all anglers; just below Skilak Lake, where only a limited number of anglers now fish; and at a place called Moose Range Meadows on the Kenai River, another location only lightly used by anglers.
The fisheries are well away from popular areas such as the confluence of the Russian and Kenai rivers, where anglers annually stand shoulder to shoulder to fish for red salmon.
At Russian River falls, which is about a three-mile hike up the Russian Lakes Trail from the Russian River campground, subsistence fishermen will be permitted to take 25 reds per household with an extra five for each additional household member, and 20 silver salmon with an extra five for each additional family member. They will not be allowed to catch kings.
The limit for reds and silvers in the other two fisheries will be the same, but subsistence fishermen there will also be allowed to keep 10 kings per household plus an extra two for each additional family member.
Ninilchik residents will not be allowed to subsistence fish for rainbow, lake trout or Dolly Varden in the Kenai, but Cooper Landing and Hope residents will be permitted. They were given bag limits for those species that ranged from 1 1/2 to two times the state bag limits for all other anglers.
— Craig Medred
Daily News Outdoors editor
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Copyright (c) 2007, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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