Court, and justice, is blind

I commented back in March that the Alaska Board of Fisheries (BOF) made some significant changes to the Central District Drift Gillnet Management Plan to try to move more of our Northern District stock of concern sockeye salmon through the commercial drift gillnet fishery and into their natal streams here in the Valley.

The management plan changes were intended to address the conservation problem that previous Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) action plans designed to improve the health and wellbeing of this stock of fish had failed to do.

The reason the BOF decided to make changes to the drifters’ plan and not the setnetters was that the drifters are the major harvesters of our northern bound salmon runs in the Cook Inlet mixed stock fishery. The greatest conservation gains would be made by restricting the drifters’ fishing power for a couple of periods verses trying to restrict the setnetters who, comparatively speaking, usually don’t catch that many northern-bound reds. Of course, the drifters felt singled out and picked on by this action. We heard how these changes would cause their kids to go hungry at night and how they would go out of business for lack of ability to catch fish.

Trust me, after seeing some of the Exxon Valdez settlement payments to these guys (some as large as $200,000-plus), their kids will not go hungry. Putting the dollar amounts in perspective, my in-laws were setnetters and their payment was $14,000. I think the “going out of business” prediction was a bit overstated as well. The drifters were not happy about having to make a contribution toward repairing a stock of fish they had a major hand in damaging to begin with. The United Cook Inlet Drifters’ Association (UCIDA) threatened to file a lawsuit over these changes, but never did, until …

ADF&G is tasked with taking BOF intent on proposals and turning it into regulations that reflect what the board wanted done. In this case, the department either didn’t grasp what the BOF intent was or didn’t like the intent and decided to write into regulation what they thought should be done — take your choice. ADF&G screwed up the regulations so badly that, as written, effectively no conservation gains would be made.

This was noticed after the screwed-up regulations had become official. An emergency teleconferenced meeting of the BOF was called to address this problem and to spell out for a second time exactly what was intended in the original meeting. No new regulations were passed at the emergency meeting. What the board did was clearly and explicitly spell out what it had originally passed, and passed that same intent a second time.

So far, UCIDA knew it didn’t have a leg to stand on regarding substance, so waited to file its lawsuit until it could argue procedural mistakes had been made. First, ADF&G screwed up the notice of the teleconference by claiming the reason for the meeting was to address the loss of opportunity to harvest a resource rather than to correct an error in regulation that would allow continuing harm to a stock of fish already classified as in trouble. UCIDA further argued that the finding of emergency the board made to address the screwed-up regulations was done improperly and that an error in regulation did not constitute an emergency. This almost sounds choreographed, doesn’t it?

You’d think common sense would prevail here, assuming a court that understood the Cook Inlet fisheries situation, at least in overview, and competent representation by the state against the lawsuit. Based on the court ruling, I have to assume the judge doesn’t have a clue about Cook Inlet fisheries and/or the state didn’t put much effort in defending against the lawsuit. That’s right, the court ruled in favor of the poor, starving drifters and issued a temporary restraining order against the corrected regulations taking effect.

In the words of a friend close to this situation, the court ruled on the side of greed and against the conservation of a resource. And, to further add insult to injury, in the finding the judge commented that ADF&G routinely screws up board intent in regulations to the extent that these screw-ups should be expected. That’s why the BOF emergency finding was wrong. People should expect ADF&G to screw up everything they want done.

If that isn’t a slap in the face to ADF&G, I don’t know what is. It would also strongly suggest the entire BOF, Board of Game and ADF&G management structure for our Alaska fish and wildlife is essentially worthless because it’s being done by a bunch of total incompetents.

The commissioner of ADF&G has the authority to correct the errant regulations and has been specifically asked to do so. I think if this is done, that could effectively set aside the court ruling, at least for this current season. But will the commissioner, whose roots are firmly in the commercial fishing industry, have the backbone to do what’s right? I guess we’ll see shortly. Right now is when these changes need to be made or another year will be lost in trying to reverse the downward spiral of our northern district sockeye numbers.

In the event the commissioner wimps out, if this court ruling is appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court, our northern fish might find the relief they need, but probably not this year. So far, in every case when greed trumped conservation in an appealed lower court finding, the Supreme Court has reversed the finding in favor of conservation of the resource.

We can only hope that trend continues.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.