Fishing for more information at salmon symposium

A nice article appeared in last week’s Frontiersman about the evening salmon story telling event held during the 10th Annual Mat-Su Salmon Science and Conservation Symposium on Nov. 8-9 at the Palmer Railroad Depot building.

I attended the symposium but not the storytelling event.

I’ve been attending this symposium for something like seven or eight years now, dating back to when I was still on the Alaska Board of Fisheries. I still remember how “blown away” I was at my first symposium to learn of all the habitat and fisheries related work being done in the Mat-Su Basin by literally dozens of federal, state, local, and private agencies, businesses or individuals to learn about, conserve, protect, reclaim, or improve our precious salmon habitat and resources. That wide variety of work continues.

Dr. Tara Martin of the University of British Columbia, Department of Forest & Conservation Sciences was the keynote speaker. Quoting from the symposium brochure, Dr. Martin is a conservation scientist and is “a pioneer in the translation of ecological data into conservation management decisions. Dr. Martin’s research is being adopted around the world to help organizations decide what actions to take, when and where to get the best conservation outcomes, while taking into account the many other competing needs of society.”

Her talk was titled, “Strategizing how to avoid irreversible loss of wild salmon populations.” She discussed some of the situations one must consider to avoid irreversible loss of wild salmon populations and prioritizing actions for salmon population restoration and conservation. Much of her presentation centered about the trade-offs which are often made in managing salmon populations.

The symposium presentations are grouped into blocks of three to five presentations of similar topics. The three blocks of presentations on the first day were titled: Identifying and conserving community assets; Improving our knowledge of salmon & their habitat; and Invasive species and fish passage.

The two presentation blocks on the second day were titled: Protections for salmon, conservation & restoration updates; and Understanding origins of harvested salmon in Cook Inlet & spawning distribution. During the two days, there were several networking breaks, a few very short “tidbit” presentations, and an information sharing and open discussion group “workshop.”

To be perfectly honest, some of the presentations were too technical for me and a lot of the information went over my head. I also must admit that the presentations on salmon genetics, spawning distribution, and marine harvest stock composition were more interesting than some of the more habitat oriented discussions. Some of the presentations were more of what I would term “academia” science rather than practical research which could be translated into actual management strategies. While I’m sure others benefited from these “ivory tower” talks, I personally prefer the more practical research discussions with real-world management implications.

The symposium was well attended with an actual head count of about 125 people who represented over 60 different federal, state, and local government agencies and private sector businesses and individuals. I think this symposium makes a very valuable contribution to the well-being of salmon in the Northern District and I hope it continues well into the future.

Just this past week, three of us from the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission were invited to sit on a panel during the American Planning Association, Alaska Chapter, convention in Anchorage. The topic we were asked to discuss was how the commission provided outreach to the public and other agencies while following our mission statement of advising the Borough Assembly, the Board of Fisheries, Board of Game, and other government regulatory agencies in matters affecting fish, wildlife, and habitat in the Mat-Su Borough.

The nearly two-hour discussion was interesting to me because I had never really thought in terms of the commission doing outreach, per say. I have always thought in terms of trying to educate folks about how some of the management and regulatory processes worked, how they could influence these processes, and what they stood to gain or lose if they failed to take any action while these topics were being acted on.

Part of my concern while wrestling with this idea of outreach was that I haven’t felt that we (the commission) have really been successful in mobilizing the public to act. For example, we lost some ground at the last BOF UCI meeting (2017), compared to the 2014 meeting, for lack of sheer numbers of sports fishing folks to represent concerns on how portions of the commercial fisheries were being managed.