OPINION: To save Alaska’s salmon, we must maintain and restore habitat

For more than 100 years, trollers — small-boat, hook-and-line salmon fishermen — have been integral to Southeast Alaska’s economy and way of life. Southeast’s trollers have the highest state residency rate and live in nearly every Southeast Alaska community. This year, however, instead of preparing for the coming fishing season, trollers are fighting to save their jobs, their communities and the future of wild salmon.

Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy has filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service over salmon management. The Wild Fish Conservancy alleges Alaskans are catching too many of the chinook salmon that Washington’s southern resident killer whale population depends on. Should the Wild Fish Conservancy be successful in court, hundreds of Alaska fishing families will lose their livelihoods, as will the processors and marine businesses tied to the troll fleet.

Wild Fish Conservancy’s claim is misguided and completely ignores the salmon’s complex life cycle — which, for species like chinook, can cover thousands of miles. Instead of addressing the actual causes of wild salmon decline — dams, large-scale mines, urbanization, water pollution and vessel traffic in the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia — the lawsuit tries to place the conservation burden on Alaska. Thankfully, Alaska’s elected officials at the municipal, state and federal levels have taken a strong stand in support of Southeast trollers; they understand the fallacies and dangers of this lawsuit. The Alaska State Senate recently passed House Joint Resolution 5, formalizing the Legislature’s support for trollers with a call on state and federal agencies to do everything they can to fight the lawsuit and protect fishing families.

For decades, Alaska, British Columbia, and the Pacific Northwest have debated who’s catching whose fish, which is why the Pacific Salmon Treaty was formed in 1985. The treaty, which is renegotiated every 10 years, creates a system for allocating salmon harvest between the U.S. and Canada and for conserving regional salmon stocks. Wild Fish Conservancy’s lawsuit perpetuates the false narrative that salmon originating in the Northwest belong to the Northwest.

The reality is Pacific salmon don’t belong to anyone; we are all tied to their life cycle and they depend on us all doing our part to protect the basics they need to survive: cold, clean waters for spawning and rearing and enough food in the ocean. That’s why Alaska fishermen have long been on the frontlines of efforts to protect and restore critical salmon habitat in Alaska, along Alaska-British Columbia transboundary rivers, and along the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia River. That’s also why Southeast’s trollers have cut their chinook harvest in recent decades to help protect chinook stocks originating from the Northwest.

Alaska is in a unique position to lead our southern neighbors in more productive dialogues around the current and future health of Pacific salmon, and not allow groups like Wild Fish Conservancy to continue framing Alaska fisheries as the problem. History and science have shown that ignoring salmon habitat loss will only lead to the continued decline of chinook and all that depend on them. Instead of provoking fights over salmon declines, all of us closely linked to wild salmon have a responsibility to work together to maintain or restore the habitat they depend on.

The Wild Fish Conservancy’s lawsuit highlights that it’s time for the U.S. and Canada to reimagine the Pacific Salmon Treaty to account for the salmon’s entire life cycle and address the root causes driving salmon declines. If we continue to only focus on cutting harvest and passing the blame onto Alaska fishermen, Pacific salmon will soon disappear completely. With them will disappear the Alaska and Pacific Northwest salmon way of life.

Heather Hardcastle was born and raised in Juneau and is a former co-owner of the direct-to-consumer seafood business Taku River Reds. Heather is the advisor for the Salmon Beyond Borders campaign at SalmonState.

Based in Sitka, Linda Behnken is the Executive Director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, the 2020 recipient of the Heinz Foundation environmental award, and has been commercial fishing since 1982.

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