Salmon symposium starts Wednesday at Palmer Depot

PALMER — A lot of people when they look into a salmon stream see not red, pink or silver, but green.

For a lot of folks, fish are a livelihood and more or less equal to money in their pockets rather than food in their freezers.

It’s this side of fishing that David Batker will provide insight into at this year’s sixth annual Salmon Science and Conservation Symposium organized by the Mat-Su Basin Salmon Habitat Partnership.

“David Batker is an environment economist,” said Mat-Su Borough Planner Frankie Barker, who is helping run the symposium. She said that Batker has been working on “a project in the Mat-Su to evaluate the economics of natural assets such as fisheries.”

Batker is the keynote speaker at this year’s symposium, which is scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday at the Palmer Train Depot.

Barker said that the symposium structured to be a mix of presentations and less structured kind of networking time.

“We’ve tried to structure it so that we have a good amount of time for people to talk to each other because usually there’s many people in the room that need to talk to each other,” she said.

She said there will be plenty to talk about over the course of two-day conference.

“The presentations will be about 12 to 15 minutes long and we’ve got at least 25 of those,” Barker said. “Trying to squeeze it in is always a problem.”

In fact, this year they didn’t manage to fit them all in. Barker said that people who wanted to present, but won’t be able to, were invited to make posters.

“There’s over 10 presenters who are going to have posters and we have time for them to discuss those projects with people,” Barker said.

Topics presented in that manner include things like the economic impact of sport fishing closures, surveying of beaver dams and the contribution of recreational services to property values.

Other topics presented at the symposium either out loud or on posters will include invasive pike, salmon habitat, stream mapping and climate change.

In a press release announcing the symposium, Barker cites a University of Alaska Institute for Economic and Social Research study that says anglers fish 300,000 days each year in the Mat-Su and spend between $63 million and $163 million on goods and services.

“However, with recent fishing closures and weak salmon runs, the economic value of fishing-related activities has been on the decline, affecting the livelihood of tourism/fishing businesses and the way of life for residents,” Barker wrote.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.

WHAT: Sixth Annual Salmon Science and Conservation Symposium

WHERE: Palmer Train Depot

WHEN: Nov. 13 and 14,

9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

WHO: Mat-Su Basin Salmon Habitat Partnership