The plan could close fishing for seven more years and open the door for hatcheries. In villages along the river, tribal leaders say the state has cut them out of the process.
The Yukon near the Alaska village of Eagle last summer, when the river was unusually empty of boats due to bans on fishing for chinook and chum salmon. Writers Olivia Ebertz and Bathsheba Demuth boated more than 1,000 miles up and down the Yukon River last summer, hearing the stories and perspective of residents and tribal leaders along the way.
In Canada, where First Nations set many of their own fishing restrictions, some communities have kept their chinook nets out of the water since the turn of the 21st century. Meanwhile, prices have surged at the local store. With food so expensive, fishing is essential to balance rural budgets. The rituals and cooperative work that come with the annual summer harvest also are part of what Freireich describes as “a very good life.”
This leads to “a much better relationship than what I see on the Alaskan side,” says Elizabeth MacDonald, fisheries manager for a Whitehorse-based consortium of Yukon First Nations. Alaska tribal members and organizations object to the lack of a formal consultation process by the Fish and Game Department, and the new draft agreement is no exception.
Today, there are not enough fish just for families to sustain themselves, and the Deg Xinag language is so endangered that the state says there are justThe frustration with the state has driven a desire among village residents to have the federal government take over fisheries management on the Yukon.
The draft agreement calls for the U.S. and Canada to prioritize traditional and local ecological knowledge about chinook health to “better understand the causes of low run abundances and to identify possible solutions.” But U.S. tribal members are worried that with no formal consultation or co-management agreement, the bullet point could easily be ignored.
But the advisory boards and Board of Fisheries both lack designated seats for representatives from tribal governments, and their decision-making processes do not include any consultation requirements with tribal leaders.The language in the draft agreement is not explicit, but Vincent-Lang said the shift toward a rebuilding goal may lead to new hatcheries on the river — a concept Canadian Yukon Panel members and First Nations leaders generally support, at least at a small scale.
Salmon nourish eagles, ospreys, bears, lynx and a host of organisms in the waters where they die after laying their eggs — and their bodies, rich with nitrogen from the sea, fertilize the boreal forest along spawning streams.in Whitehorse to help compensate for fish that die at a city dam, but MacDonald says its small scale has minimal impact and is not meant to provide commercial or subsistence harvests. MacDonald said she worries about what could happen if the U.S.
If hatcheries could restore river populations without causing more problems for wild fish at sea, they would have reversed the low chinook runs in Washington, Oregon and California by now, said“It would be working, and it’s not,” he said. “Responding with a hatchery is a Band-Aid on a gushing wound.”
Alaska managers can only control how many fish people catch in the state’s ocean waters — which extend just 3 nautical miles offshore — and whether hatcheries are putting fish back into the ocean. They can create and restrict. Yukon River residents say the state is handing most of the restrictions down onto them — including in the new draft agreement with Canada.
Huntington says bycatch is being prioritized over human life. Like other residents, he connects fishery closures in the 1980s to increases in suicides along the river at the time, as residents were disconnected from traditions, culture, and meaningful work. It’s not just for optics, he said. “As far as CDQs go, we want to see as many fish get back to the river so future generations are stronger”
“In terms of upriver, I don’t know what to tell them,” Deakin says. “If we caught one fish and that was it, would they still like us to shut down because they can’t catch one?”
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