Keep an eye on all resources

Last week I mentioned wanting to discuss the idea of legislatively mandating the intensive management of salmon stocks. This concept is spreading and may be introduced in the Legislature this coming session.

In order to discuss this idea, some history and term definitions are in order. A lot of what will be presented comes from a paper (“A Call for Intensive Management of Salmon”) written by Tom Payton and distributed at the Mat-Su Salmon Symposium last week.

First, who is Payton? He is a longtime resident of Skwentna who, over the past several years, has split time between Skwentna and Wasilla. He has a long history of involvement in the management issues surrounding our fish and wildlife resources and has been a longstanding member of the Mt. Yenlo Fish and Game Advisory Committee. Payton has also been a strong advocate for subsistence fishing activities in the Skwentna area, including filing a lawsuit against the Alaska Board of Fisheries (BOF) concerning the regulation of these subsistence activities. Payton won the lawsuit.

What is intensive management (IM)? The term has its roots in game management regulations. According to Payton, the Alaska Legislature, challenged by significant downturns in animal population numbers during the 1980s, recognized the importance of taking ungulates (moose, deer, elk and caribou) by residents for personal or family consumption as having “preference over taking by nonresidents.” This view of managing game populations primarily for resident consumptive uses is called intensive management. The current law can be referenced in AS 16.05.255 (13)(d)(e), and has two goals — sustainability and allocation of the resource.

Even though Alaska has no commercial hunting, big game guides and related businesses constitute a commercial use of Alaska’s big game resources. The IM regulation stipulates that the use of game is of such importance to residents that managing for resident use must be the first consideration along with maintaining the sustainability of the game population. The harvest of a moose by an Alaska resident under a sport hunting license is now recognized by both the Board of Game (BOG) and the Subsistence Division of Fish and Game as a “subsistence use.”

The law relies on Article VIII Section 3 (Common Use) and Section 4 (Sustained Use) of the Alaska Constitution for its direction and makes no special stipulations for the commercial use of game. This constitutional provision gives Alaska residents rights to the harvest of fish and game resources for consumptive uses that nonresidents do not have.

How do IM game laws translate into IM fisheries regulations? Virtually all of the harvest of salmon by Alaskan residents fishing under a “sport fishing” license is used to supplement the family food supply.

This consumptive use of the fisheries stocks is critical to thousands of Alaska residents as a personal food resource and is actually more “subsistence” than “sport.”

Quoting from Payton’s paper, “The Board of Fisheries does not readily recognize salmon caught by those residents with ‘sport’ fishing licenses as contributing to the ‘subsistence uses’ in Alaska. Neither does the Board manage, or even spell out in regulations, the need to protect salmon stocks primarily for Alaska’s resident uses above those by non-residents or by commercial fishermen.”

Payton’s paper contains a draft rewrite of the IM game regulations as they might apply to fisheries, specifically salmon. The rewrite, if adopted, would start in AS 16.05.251 (17)(d) and would give preference for the taking of salmon for personal or family consumption over nonresident or commercial harvest. The entire rewrite is too long to include here. Payton essentially took the IM game management language, which is already law and altered it to properly reflect application on the fisheries side.

Now before the commercial fishing industry explodes in protest, this idea does not advocate the closure of any commercial fishery.

The intent is to mandate what the Alaska Constitution already states, that the maximum allowable use of the resource should go for the benefit of the maximum number of Alaska residents. Where approximately 1,300 Cook Inlet commercial fishing permit holders currently take about 80 percent of the harvestable salmon resource and 300,000 to 400,000 Alaska residents around Cook Inlet receive access to whatever is left after broodstock needs are met, this intensive management scenario would shift maybe 5 percent to 10 percent of the harvestable salmon surplus into noncommercial, consumptive use, achieving a fairer balance of resource allocation. The commercial industry would still harvest about three-quarters of the allowable surplus of salmon annually.

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