Fish board meetings raise issues

It’s the time of year when, once again, various groups, committees, commissions, and boards begin meeting to plan, discuss, and act on issues affecting the outdoors political world in Alaska. As I write this, the Alaska Board of Fisheries is holding their workshop session in Anchorage.

Most of the issues the BOF is addressing in this meeting do not affect the majority of Mat-Su residents, with two exceptions. First, two agenda change requests, if accepted and passed by the board, would undo all the meaningful changes made to the Central District drift gillnet commercial fisheries management plan by the board since 2011. Undoing those changes would return our Northern District sockeye and coho salmon runs back to the declining and spotty returns we’ve experienced over the past couple of decades.

For those Valley residents who frequent the Kenai and Kasilof Rivers for much of their recreational and/or personal use fishing, several other ACRs addressed toward the commercial set gillnet fishery have been proposed which could have detrimental effects on those salmon runs also.

After the first day of the two-day workshop, I can report the Board of Fisheries did not accept either of the two drift gillnet ACRs or any of the gillnet ACRs, however, we can expect to see all of these items as proposals during the 2017 Upper Cook Inlet BOF meeting.

The second item the board will be addressing is the location of the 2017 UCI board meeting. The board usually sets the location and time for each meeting two years in advance at their workshop meeting. The location for the 2017 UCI meeting was set last year. Anchorage was selected for a large number of reasons including: a central (no home field advantage) location, facilities to support a large meeting, ease of travel, and more.

The Kenai-Soldotna area desperately wants the meeting to be held in that location. The board has not held a regulatory meeting in Kenai since, I believe, 1999, when verbal threats and physical altercations occurred involving department staff and members of the public. I heard this from a then BOF member and other folks who personally witnessed the events.

The Mat-Su has never hosted a BOF regulatory meeting; however the threat of possible violent actions is not the reason. Any claim of discrimination on meeting location can be made perhaps even more strongly by the Mat-Su area.

I’m hearing that the governor has personally intervened with sitting board members by implying future renomination appointments could be jeopardized if the board fails to move the meeting to Kenai. This from the same governor who nominated a now convicted (wildlife issues in Montana) lawbreaker to the BOF and who originally wanted that same person as Fish and Game commissioner. No other governor has interfered to this extent in trying to influence the regulation of Alaska’s fisheries resources. By the way, when will the state start prosecution of that same Montana-convicted individual for PFD fraud here in Alaska?

I have to submit this column for publication before the meeting location issue is settled. I suspect you’ll hear the outcome prior to my next column.

On another note, a public meeting with Fish and Game will be held next Wednesday evening, Oct. 28, at 6 pm at the Central Fire Station 61 in Wasilla to provide a summary of the 2015 Central and Northern District commercial and Northern District sportsfishing season in Cook Inlet. Representatives from both the Commercial Fisheries and Sport Fish Divisions will be present to answer previously submitted questions from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission and, time permitting, questions from the public.

This annual end-of-October meeting has been occurring for several years now and originally began, as I recall, because Rep. Mark Neuman wanted Fish and Game to account to the public how and why they were managing the salmon runs in Cook Inlet the way they were. As you might recall, we were experiencing relatively poor and declining sockeye runs in the Northern District and coho returns were spotty at best.

This public oversight of Fish and Game’s management actions, over time, has resulted in the BOF making significant changes to several Cook Inlet commercial fisheries management plans, resulting in the improving sockeye and coho returns we’ve seen over the last two years.

If you’re interested in the status of our Northern District salmon stocks and possible management scenarios for the 2016 salmon season, stop by and give a listen to the conversation. You might be glad you did.

Howard Delo, a retired fisheries biologist, writes a weekly outdoors column for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.