The Stand For Salmon group has a desire to restore Alaska's salmon populations, but it wants to do it by only addressing salmon habitat. Alaska's salmon bust problems are not that simple. Unfortunately, there are many offenders to blame for our current salmon bust problems.
Blaming only habitat issues for salmon bust, while ignoring user groups, is like trying to catch a serial murderer by regulating the park the murders are committed in. You catch a murderer by going after the murderer, not by regulating the environment they are murdering in. User groups are busy slaughtering hordes of salmon while Stand for Salmon is busy trying to regulate only salmon habitat. Our salmon bust problems are local and foreign user groups slaughtering our salmon, period. We can end our salmon bust problems by directly addressing the people who are overharvesting our salmon.
Alaska could address these people by charging a straight salmon tax for each salmon killed by anyone. A solution can be reached by increasing the tax until users either cannot afford to kill salmon or pay enough tax to finance a real salmon solution. A salmon tax would guarantee a salmon solution either way. Minor habitat impacts could then be addressed after reducing major user group impacts.
— Don Johnson
Soldotna
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