Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) officials have signed an agreement with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) regarding recovery of Chinook salmon in the Yukon River drainage that implements a suspension of directed Chinook salmon commercial fisheries in the mainstem Yukon River and Canadian tributaries for one full life cycle, a total of seven years.
The agreement, which was announced April 1, is focused on rebuilding those stocks to a level that they can once again support subsistence, sport, commercial and personal-use fishing opportunities.
“After hearing from people living along the river, it is time to look beyond single-year management,” ADF&G Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang said. “This agreement looks to rebuild over a life cycle of the Chinook salmon, seven years.”
The agreement allows Alaska and Canada, at their discretion, to provide limited harvest opportunity during the rebuilding period, for ceremonial use and transmission of cultural knowledge.
The agreement calls for Alaska to minimize incidental harvest of Chinook salmon in all other mainstem Yukon River fisheries during the rebuilding period, and places a priority on traditional and local ecological knowledge and research on the health of Yukon River Chinook salmon.
It also directs the Yukon Panel, stakeholders who live along the river, to develop a recovery plan to guide recovery of the stocks.
Lastly, the agreement calls for further efforts to address long-term cumulative effects of other factors, including habitat degradation resulting from resource and hydroelectric development, competition from hatchery production, cyclic natural phenomena and large-scale environmental variability affecting both marine and freshwater habitats.
The agreement is available online at https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/home/news/hottopics/pdfs/yukon_river_chinook_salmon_7_year_management_2024_2030.pdf.