After consultation with KRITFC's In-Season Managers, the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge Manager, Spencer Rearden, issued another announcement for subsistence fishing in federal waters of the Kuskokwim River. These opportunities are for Federally Qualified Subsistence Users.
Pursuant to authority delegated by the Federal Subsistence Board, the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge Manager, as In-Season Manager, hereby announces additional fishing opportunities for Federally qualified subsistence users only.
Pursuant to authority delegated by the Federal Subsistence Board, the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge Manager, as In-Season Manager, hereby announces additional fishing opportunities for Federally qualified subsistence users only.
Pursuant to authority delegated by the Federal Subsistence Board, the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge Manager, as In-Season Manager, hereby announces additional fishing opportunities for Federally qualified subsistence users only.
KWETHLUK — Word spread through Facebook, and kids made their way to gravel mounds at the edge of the village of Kwethluk for an afternoon with the feds shooting arrows and firing air rifles.
A trio from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had traveled by skiff from Bethel, up the Kuskokwim River, then Kuskokuak Slough, then the Kwethluk River for archery and rifle lessons, part of a village-by-village effort to build good relationships.
Mike Williams heads a western Alaska Native organization, and he says last month’s historic agreement with federal fish and wildlife regulators will ensure there’ll be enough king salmon for subsistence users on the Kuskokwim River now and in the future.
“I’m really excited … to work formally with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Kuskokwim River Intertribal Fish Commission, to make sure that our people have enough to eat,” he said.
The Kuskokwim River Salmon Management Working Group in their Thursday meeting passed a motion to support the Inter-Tribal Fish Commission’s request for a 3 day 4-inch set net fishing opportunity in the Kuskokwim despite fishing restrictions in place until after June 11. Managers say it contradicts their mission to provide an equitable harvest up and down the river.
The Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission signed a historic memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agreement is the first formalization of co-management between the Alaska tribes along the Kuskokwim River and the federal government.
Vm
P
Chair Mike Williams Sr. signs the MOU with USFWS Yukon Delta Refuge Manager Ray Borne. (Photo by Charles Enoch, KYUK – Bethel)
The full Kuskokwim River Intertribal Fish Commission, made up of representatives from village tribes all along the Kuskokwim, gathered at the Cultural Center in Bethel to take part in the Commission’s annual meeting, including the signing of the memorandum of understanding. Mike Williams Sr. of Akiak is the Chair of the commission.
“I’m really excited about the MOU, to work formally with the USFWS and the KRITFC, to make sure that our people have enough to eat and that we have enough escapement of our king salmon and salmon upriver,” Williams said.
The path to unified management of Kuskokwim salmon stocks is uncharted, but along the way, the newly established Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fisheries Commission wants involvement at each step. That begins with tribal consultation in preparations for another summer of sacrifice. The commission’s inaugural meeting concluded Wednesday in Bethel.
The most iconic Alaska fish is in puzzling decline, and the mission for both state and federal fisheries managers is to spread the pain as evenly as possible.
The North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted unanimously on April 11 to pass an amended package of chum and chinook salmon bycatch avoidance measures, including reductions in the performance standards and hard caps for chinook bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery in years of low in-river abundance.
