An open letter to our Valley legislative delegation

You all are very deeply involved in dealing with the state’s budget shortfall. I’m sure you are faced with serious, soul-searching decisions on how to turn around this financial crisis. I hope you do.

While this is the single biggest political problem you all have faced during your terms, I would like to mention another equally critical situation having direct bearing on the quality of life many of us Alaskans enjoy. This situation also impacts our state’s natural resources and how they are to be managed as specified in our state’s constitution.

Forty-some years ago, the state legislature created a Board of Fish and Game, later divided into two separate boards, to deal with the management of Alaska’s fish and game resources. This freed up the legislature to deal with all the other aspects of state government requiring attention.

These two boards are usually composed of individuals with a background in some aspect of the natural resource under consideration, i.e., commercial fishers or sportsfishing guides on the Board of Fisheries and hunters, trappers, or commercial guides on the Board of Game. An occasional retired state research or management biologist has also served on one or the other board, lending a professional management perspective to decisions made. This approach to making board decisions by people with an understanding of what needed to be done to best manage the respective natural resource was significant.

The understood perspective of each board member, regardless of their background, was to put the conservation and protection, where needed, of the respective natural resource first. If a harvestable surplus of the resource was available, it was the respective board’s job to, as equitably as possible, distribute that harvestable surplus amongst the various user groups who relied on that resource.

In theory, for those individuals who truly put the resource first, this structure was to reduce the effect of “politics” as much as possible in the operation of the boards.

You are currently reviewing the nominations of several candidates for membership on both boards and you will either confirm or deny those choices when you have your combined chambers vote toward the end of the session. I want to comment on the candidates under consideration for two Board of Fisheries seats.

During the recently completed BOF Upper Cook Inlet Finfish meeting, Northern District representatives presented solid facts, ADF&G reports, and scientific data supporting the reality that salmon stocks are depressed in the Mat-Su. Scientific data was also presented showing that the conservation corridor/harvest zone management approach currently being used in the Central District was moving more salmon north.

The commercial drift fleet had complained during public testimony and committee work that they were forced to inefficiently harvest salmon by being restricted to the expanded harvest zones first created by the board in 2011. These zones were created to concentrate commercial harvest on the Kenai and Kasilof sockeye stocks closer to the river mouths while significantly reducing the interception of northern stocks passing through the middle of the inlet.

John Jensen, board chair from Petersburg, and others, revised a proposal which would give the drift fleet an additional 12-hour opening area wide during the peak of the mixed stock salmon movement through the Central District. On the surface, a single 12-hour opening doesn't sound like a big deal. However, when asked, the department managers stated that approximately 50,000 sockeye and 9,000 to 11,000 coho could be harvested during that single 12-hour period. The commercial fisheries manager told me personally that about 95% of those additional coho would be northern bound salmon.

During board deliberations, Chairman Jensen was on record stating, "It appears the conservation corridor is working to move more fish north, so we're saving fish, but are we saving too many fish?" Jensen further stated that, "If I had my way, I'd give the drifters two extra periods!"

Reed Morisky from Fairbanks and two others argued strongly to retain the conservation corridor/extended harvest zone management plan with no changes. Information was presented that the drifters were making as much or more money over the five years the conservation corridor approach has been in place as they were prior to the conservation corridor/harvest zone plan adoption. This five-year average income was significantly higher than the previous 20-year average.

I would ask you to consider which nominee truly puts the fish first when you vote for confirmation. I ask you to support Reed Morisky and reject John Jensen. Thank you.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. This column is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman or its parent company, Wick Communications. You can leave Delo a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.