Candidates talk salmon: Five participate in Alaska Center’s first Mat-Su forum

WASILLA — With no borough-wide measures on this Tuesday’s ballot, The Alaska Center decided the opportunity was right to host a salmon-specific candidate forum Thursday night at the Wasilla Public Library.

It was the first time the Center, whose stated goal is to ‘... engage, empower and elect Alaskans to stand up for our clean air and water, healthy communities, and a strong democracy,’ hosted such an event in the Mat-Su.

“We wanted to give the candidates and residents an opportunity to talk about Salmon because it’s not something that comes up a lot in a lot of politics on a really strong level,” said Amy O’Connor, the Alaska Center’s Mat-Su Manager. “But it’s important to so many people in the borough, it crosses all political boundaries, and everyone has salmon stories.”

Five candidates on Tuesday’s ballot participated with District 4 Borough Assembly Candidates Ted Leonard and Patty Hogan, as well as District 5 incumbent Dan Mayfield.

Two candidates up for Palmer City Council also participated, first-time runners Sabrena Combs and Kenni Linden.

Combs and Linden conceded that there’s not a whole lot the Palmer City Council can do, vis a vis policies relating to salmon, but acknowledged it is an issue that affects everyone in the Valley.

“We all realize everybody benefits (when the salmon do well),” Linden said. “So to get all the stakeholders to the table is really important.”

At the borough level, however, stakes are high, with salmon escapements diminishing year after year.

“We need to support our wildlife and fish commission and make sure they have the funds and the means to communicate (with state officials),” Hogan said. “The Mat-Su needs to be at the table not being told who we are; we can tell them who we are.”

Leonard, Hogan’s opponent on Tuesday, pointed to the importance of salmon in the longview for the Mat-Su Valley.

“We need to support our commission and ensure they have the tools to provide the science to Fish and Game and to the board so they understand where our escapement levels need to be,” Leonard said. “It all comes down to communication and science — we can make headway. If we can do that, in 50 years we aren’t talking about escapements anymore because there’s enough salmon for everyone.”

Mayfield, himself a sports fisherman, said one of the biggest problems for the Mat-Su is preferences given on a statewide level to commercial fishers.

“It’s painfully evident that even the sportsfishing commission was lopsided in support of the commercial fishing industry,” Mayfield said. “It’s so obvious. We’re at that point in time where we really need to swing the pendulum here and we need to motivate the public, also.”

On some of the questions randomly drawn, somewhat arcane fishing issues came up — such as: does hooking a salmon by the mouth prevent its ability to reproduce? Candidates readily admitted they had insufficient knowledge about the particulars to answer confidently, but O’Connor said the candidates did just fine talking nothing but salmon for an hour.

“I don’t think salmon is specialized; I think salmon are just special,” O’Connor said. “You don’t have to be a biologist to care and talk about salmon because it affects all of us on so many different levels.”