Sharing knowledge, sharing fish
Encouraging communication and sharing knowledge is the goal of a new cross-border exchange between fishers from different parts of the Yukon River.
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Chinook salmon ready to be cooked for dog teams in Tanana, one of dozens of Alaskan communities that depend on fish.
(photo: Dick Mahoney)
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The educational exchange is a program of the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association (YRDFA), an Anchorage-based group that works on communication and conservation issues related to the Yukon River fishery.
In early July, YRDFA welcomed Yukon delegates for a tour of several Alaskan Yukon River communities. Later the same month, a reciprocal trip took place with Alaskan delegates visiting the Yukon for a tour of the upriver fishery.
This is the second year that the successful Alaska/Yukon educational exchange has been held. According to participant Dick Mahoney, the eye-opening experience is one he strongly recommends for other Yukoners involved in the Yukon River fishery.
"The exchange promotes awareness and understanding of the river upstream and downstream," says Mahoney.
"The perception of fish is very different depending on where you are in the system. For example, the Teslin Tlingit people are very cognizant of certain changes in the environment because they live at the top of the system and they see the salmon spawning in the creeks."
"But the closer you get to the mouth of the river, that awareness diminishes as people are more removed from the spawning beds."
Mahoney is the Fish and Wildlife Management Officer for Na'cho N'y'ak Dun First Nation. Having worked as a fisheries technician and in fisheries enforcement, he found the exchange particularly interesting.
He was joined for the Alaska tour by Sheila Garvice (Little Salmon-Carmacks First Nation), Grace Cohoe (Kluane First Nation), and Yukon fishermen Dale Bradley (Pelly Farm) and Cor Guimond (Dawson).
"Things are quite different in Alaska. So many small communities depend on the fishery, and there are literally dozens of small villages and settlements along the river."
After meeting up with YRDFA staff in Anchorage, the participants were flown to Emmonak, a Yupik village located on the middle mouth of the Yukon River. The Yukon delegates met with people from the community and joined boats to go fishing and driftnetting.
"At its mouth, the Yukon River delta is so huge that you have to go five miles out to reach salt water," he says.
Mahoney noted that a very high proportion of people in the community of 700 people hold commercial fishing licenses.
"They were among the first to observe the disaster striking the Yukon River fishery because it hit them in the pocketbook," he says.
The group flew to Galena, a village near the confluence of the Koyukuk and the Yukon, and then visited the community of Tanana. Delegates toured fish camps and stayed with families, finding out about the substantial mid-river fishery in central Alaska.
On the exchange, he also learned more about a program of the state's subsistence fishery known as 'customary trade'. This program allows the sale of subsistence-caught fish for cash.
"Much of the sled dog empire in Alaska is built on Yukon River fish," says Mahoney, "I also left wondering just how much fish is becoming a commercial product."
He was impressed by the connectedness of Alaskan communities to the river, and how well traditional lifestyles are maintained. But he says the experience also clearly highlighted the disparity in the distribution of fish between Yukon and Alaska.
"People have so little access to the fish in the Yukon, and the loss of salmon is diminishing the nutrient supply. Every fish is like a little bag of fertilizer. The Yukon landscape is so much higher, dryer and less rich than Alaska, and our ecosystems need this nutrient transfer."
If the fish aren't making it back to the Yukon, then these important nutrients are not enriching our terrestrial habitat. As Mahoney explains, this impoverishes our environment of over a period of time.
"Think of the biomass we're losing. Before the modern fishery, it's conceivable there was a quarter of a million Chinook in the upper Yukon River, and instead now we get excited about 50,000 fish."
The educational exchange is just one of many ways that that Yukoners and Alaskans are working together to address salmon-related issues in the Yukon River system. The exchange is supported in part by the Yukon River Panel formed through the 2001 U.S.-Canada Yukon River Salmon Agreement.
- For more information about YRDFA and its educational exchange, check out the organization's website at www.yukonsalmon.com.
