Top 10 Salmon Moments of 2022
In 2022 we continued to be moved and inspired by Alaskans’ deep connections to wild salmon, and their incredible motivation to defend homes, rivers and ways of life across the state. We are so grateful to everyone who shared their stories with us, and all of you, this year. 🐟 Keep an eye out for more salmon stories in 2023!
2022 saw the start of Defend the West Su — a collaborative campaign to defend the wild West Susitna from a planned 100-mile industrial road that would slice through 182 known water bodies. It would parallel the Iditarod Trail at times, cut across lands with important Alaska Native historical value, fail to offer fish passage in all water crossings, and be paid for with around $450 million Alaskan dollars. It would also endanger the wild salmon, moose and Dall Sheep habitat, ways of life, and businesses of the region. In 2023 we’ll continue engaging on this issue and telling the stories of people in this salmon-rich region of Alaska.
2022 saw a continuation from 2020 and 2021 of many notable executive orders and administrative actions from the Biden Administration improving the federal government’s relationship with Tribes — both in Alaska and outside of it. We applaud this long overdue move, and we are looking forward to seeing more in 2023! Tribes, and Tribal entities, should be in the lead when it comes to the management of traditional lands and these executive orders represent a big step forward.
A few notable executive orders in 2022:
The sentence “We released a damning economic analysis about a state development agency” doesn’t necessarily convey the importance of that report to wild salmon. But the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) — which an independent analysis showed has lost Alaskans $10 billion we’d have now if that money had been invested more wisely — is not only bad at “investing” money, it’s bad for wild salmon. AIDEA’s most recent boondoggle is the planned $450 million, publicly funded West Susitna Industrial Access Road, which would slice 100 miles across pristine wild lands vital to hunters, fishers, lodges, cabin-owners, wild salmon and recreation-based businesses. It would also cross 182 known bodies of water and only provide adequate fish passage in 83 of 171 planned culverts.
We released our report on AIDEA at the end of September. In November, the AIDEA CEO resigned.
Economists Milt Barker and Gregg Erickson’s 130-page report has clearly drawn attention to AIDEA’s shortcomings, as well as the many, many ways the money AIDEA wastes and gives away could be used to actually benefit Alaskans.
In 2022, the Fish for Families project delivered nearly 19,000 pounds of Bristol Bay sockeye salmon to families in the Chigniks and Yukon River regions, where communities saw record-low Chinook, chum and coho wild salmon returns and subsistence fisheries were shut down. That left many Alaska Native families without access to one of their most important sources of food.
“It was really important to us that we expand our salmon distributions to the Yukon where they are facing a true food security crisis due in part to climate change’s impacts on our marine ecosystem and the health of our wild salmon runs. We recognize that this summer’s salmon donations are a band-aid at best and that we ultimately need to address the underlying causes of these devastating declines,” said Linda Behnken, Executive Director of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association and Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust Board President. “Through the Fish for Families project, we hope to meet these short-term needs while at the same time build a network of like-minded fishermen, processors, communities, and organizations that are committed to building a more resilient and equitable food system in Alaska that supports the long-term well-being of Alaskans.”
The Fish for Families project is a collaboration of Alaska fishermen, businesses, and organizations, including the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association, Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust, Northline Seafoods, North Soul Salmon, Net to Table Seafoods, Catch Together, Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, Copper River Fish Market, Boreal Sockeye, Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association, SalmonState, and the Businesses for Conservation and Climate Action.
For more information about Fish for Families and the Seafood Donation Program: https://www.alfafish.org/seafood-donation-program
In August of 2022 the Biden Administration addressed a longstanding conservation opportunity: opening public comment on the protections for 28 million acres of publicly owned land that have been in place for 50 years. Just days before leaving office, the Trump Administration had attempted to lift those protections and opened those lands to industrial development — and Tribes and local communities weren’t consulted or even told it was happening.
The Biden Administration’s move to open public comment on these 28 million acres rightly prioritizes engagement with Alaska Native Tribes and communities that rely on these lands for fishing, hunting, and recreating. We look forward to seeing where this process goes in 2023.
2022 saw an enormous groundswell of Alaskan support for stopping the pollock trawl fleet’s prolific, wasteful bycatch of king salmon, chum salmon, Bristol Bay red king crab and snow crab, and other species.
The facts speak for themselves: Alaska Native and coastal communities are prevented from fishing in order to preserve stocks, while the pollock trawl fleet catches and kills millions of crab, hundreds of thousands of chum, and tens of thousands of Chinook salmon every year. And that’s only what’s documented: 2022 also saw a study showing that “midwater” trawlers, which drag nets through protected crab habitat where crabbers are prevented from fishing, are actually on the bottom up to 100% of the time. That could be leading to enormous undocumented mortality.
Every year, on average, the trawl fleet has 141 million pounds of documented bycatch. That’s more than 1 billion pounds of halibut, sablefish, chum salmon, king salmon, king crab, snow crab and many other species caught and killed every seven years — while Alaska Native communities and small-boat fishermen stay at home, unable to fish.
It’s wrong, and it’s past time for it to change.
Watch our new film on trawl bycatch — and keep an eye out for more in 2023.
This December, a delegation of Tribal, First Nations and conservation leaders met with members of Congress and officials with the Biden Administration and Canadian Embassy to deliver the message that the U.S. and Canadian federal governments must act immediately to protect downstream traditional territories from abandoned, ongoing, and proposed mining in British Columbia — and that they must honor their legal and ethical obligations under the Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909.
“Canada’s mining in our shared rivers is one of the biggest threats to our wild salmon and our Indigenous way of life,” said Richard Chalyee Éesh Peterson, president of the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, in the press release about the fly-in sent out by the National Wildlife Federation. “We have been calling on the United States and Canada to honor their legal and ethical obligations and to act immediately to protect our traditional territories from legacy, on-going, and proposed mining in British Columbia. We must get ahead of this before it’s too late.”
Salmon Beyond Borders director Breanna Walker, who also attended the meetings, said, “For decades, Tribes and communities in Alaska have been expressing concerns about the dozens of existing and planned British Columbia gold-copper mines contaminating shared wild salmon rivers without their consent. Instead of addressing these concerns, B.C. has doubled down. That's why Tribes, communities, and people across Southeast Alaska are calling on President Biden to secure with Prime Minister Trudeau a permanent ban on B.C.'s risky mine waste dams and for a time out on new mines in the Taku, Stikine, and Unuk Rivers until B.C. and Canada uphold the Boundary Waters Treaty and all of us connected to these rivers have a say in their future."
Also this December, Tlingit & Haida joined many other Southeast Alaska Tribes and almost every Southeast municipality in formally resolving to urge President Biden to call for that temporary pause on new B.C. mining and a permanent ban on upriver mine waste dams in transboundary systems.
TAKE ACTION to defend our transboundary salmon rivers.
In 2022 the U.S. Forest Service put its Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy into action with stream restoration projects across the Tongass, many of them led by Tribes and Native corporations. One of our favorite parts of the year was checking out stream restoration projects in Klawock and Petersburg!
You’ll see more from us about exciting Southeast Alaska work in 2023, including some new projects underway from Kootznoowoo Inc, Angoon’s Native Corporation. We will also be kicking off the new year on social media with stories from a unique stream restoration project in East Ohmer Creek, just south of Petersburg.
Big thanks to the Klawock Indigenous Stewards Forest Partnership, Southeast Alaska Watershed Coalition, U.S. Forest Service and many other partners for doing this important work — and welcoming us to their work sites in 2022.
The Sustainability Strategy is a shift in Tongass management that prioritizes Indigenous and local leadership, sustainable economic development, resilience as the climate changes, recreation, and restoration of damaged ecosystems. It was a thrill to see it be put into action this year — and to help communicate the perspectives of some of the many local and Indigenous leaders driving this change.
Read our newspaper column from Klawock.
Read our Klawock salmon stories.
Read our Petersburg newspaper column.
The same year as yet ANOTHER record-breaking sockeye salmon run — and after a record-breaking number of comments both from Alaskans and within the Bristol Bay region — the Environmental Protection Agency completed the third of four total steps that would STOP the proposed Pebble Mine! Then, at the end of 2022, the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust, Pedro Bay Corp, The Conservation Fund and partners FINALIZED conservation easement protections for 44,000 acres owned by Pedro Bay Corp on Lake Iliamna — not only protecting vital sockeye spawning habitat but legally obstructing the northern route to the proposed Pebble Mine. (90% of Pedro Bay shareholders voted in favor of the easement in 2021. In total, the partners have protected more than 56,000 acres!)
For the EPA protections: "EPA Region 10’s action represents the third step in EPA’s four-step Clean Water Act Section 404(c) review process,” said EPA Region 10 Regional Administrator Casey Sixkiller in the agency’s announcement. “If affirmed by EPA’s Office of Water, during the fourth and final step, this action would help protect salmon fishery areas that support world-class commercial and recreational fisheries, and that have sustained Alaska Native communities for thousands of years, supporting a subsistence-based way of life for one of the last intact wild salmon-based cultures in the world."
Meanwhile, in 2022, a truly staggering 79 MILLION wild sockeye salmon returned to Bristol Bay. That number blasted 2021’s 66.1 million fish out of the water. Those kinds of incredible record-breaking returns are only possible with Bristol Bay’s pristine freshwater habitat.
The EPA’s next and final step is issuing its “Final Determination,” most likely in February 2023. This is an extremely important milestone in a two-decade long fight. We have been here before, and it is essential that the EPA finalize these protections as soon as possible.