Alaska about to meet Yukon king salmon treaty

Well, there's good news and bad news when it comes to Yukon River king salmon. The good news, according to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, is that Alaska is about to fulfill its minimum-escapement treaty with Canada for the second time in the last five years. As of Tuesday, more than 44,000 kings have been counted passing the Eagle sonar station, which sits just downriver from the border, and more fish are coming. Furthermore, escapement goals for Alaska's Yukon-area spawning grounds appear on their way to being met this year. The bad news for Alaskans downriver, of course, is that meeting the goal will come because of a closure of the U.S. commercial harvest and strong restrictions to the subsistence fishery all along the Alaska portion of the Yukon. The full impact of those restrictions won't be understood until the run is over and the numbers are in, but it's safe to say the sacrifice was significant. "To be able to meet the goals with a poor run like this is good, but it came at the sacrifice of the fishermen," said ADF&G Yukon area biologist Steve Hayes. "It was a really poor chinook run." Read much more, here.