Juneau meeting impacts Mat-Su

As I mentioned numerous times in last month’s columns, the Alaska Board of Fisheries held its workshop meeting in Juneau last week. This year’s cycle of meetings concern Southeast Alaska fisheries and normally would not raise much interest in our part of Alaska. However, two things were happening at this organizational meeting which could have a direct effect on the management of our Cook Inlet salmon fisheries.

The first involved the potential of accepting up to nine agenda change requests asking the board to address various Cook Inlet set net and drift net commercial fisheries issues out of cycle. The second item involved setting the date and location for the next Upper Cook Inlet regulatory meeting. The city of Kenai was lobbying heavily to have the next meeting in Kenai.

The Matanuska-Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission, some Mat-Su Borough Assembly members, and the Mat-Su Borough Manager felt having representation at this meeting was important. Three commission members — myself and two other members — spent the week in Juneau attending this workshop meeting and looking out for borough interests.

The Board of Fish didn’t accept any of the nine Cook Inlet related requests. Had they done so, the potential for a full-blown, out-of-cycle Upper Cook Inlet regulatory meeting existed. Recognizing that possibility plus knowing the same requests could be submitted in two years as regular proposals for consideration at an in-cycle meeting contributed to the failure of the requests for agenda changes. Also, neither the board nor Fish and Game felt these requests met the established criteria to be accepted.

An agenda change request has to meet specific criteria to be accepted. Not meeting the criteria does not mean the concern expressed in the request is without merit. I think something like six to eight of the 27 requests discussed at the meeting were this cycle.

The second issue was arguably of greater concern. As I have stated before, holding the Upper Cook Inlet meeting in Anchorage actually facilitates a greater ability for public attendance than holding the meeting in either Kenai or in the Valley for a lot of reasons discussed in earlier columns. Anchorage is also a more “neutral” site than either Kenai, the center of Cook Inlet commercial fisheries interests for the Central District, or the Valley, the center of the in-river user factions in the Northern District.

Hosting a regulatory meeting at a central location of one side of an issue means that user group gains the ability to more intensely lobby the board to see things their way. In 1999, when the meeting was held in Kenai, the police had to be called in to maintain order as the meeting progressed. At the Juneau meeting, the board was told times have changed and things have mellowed in Kenai. That’s great if it’s true. But have things really changed?

Immediately after the conclusion of the workshop meeting, with word spreading the board had voted to hold the next Upper Cook Inlet meeting in Anchorage, commercial fisheries interests in Kenai, on their blog sites, started calling for rioting in the streets to protest that decision. If this was a school yard situation, I would say the class bully just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and now wants to pitch a tantrum in retaliation. So much for changing and better times!

While we’re talking fish, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission’s annual salmon season review with the Department of Fish and Game is at 6 p.m., Oct. 28 at the Legislative Information Office, 600 E. Railroad Ave., Wasilla.

The format followed in past years’ meetings involves having Fish and Game management biologists from both the Sport Fish Division and the Commercial Fisheries Division present return and escapement information on Cook Inlet salmon stocks along with commercial harvest data. The department also will offer information about ongoing research studies and any new genetics work accomplished since the previous year’s meeting.

Questions from the public are normally entertained after the various presentations, as time permits.

And as a final note, the dinner/theater presentation of “Malice in Wonderland,” planned at the Best Western at Lake Lucille in Wasilla Saturday evening has been postponed until February 2015. This event is a fund-raiser for the Brianna Gregory Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit corporation, to furnish a much-needed teen lounge at Children’s Hospital at Providence in Anchorage. For more information, call 373-0961.

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