Salmon habitat requires greater protection

I think most Alaskans work here so they can live here, not the other way around. I'm fortunate to be able to work close to home and make a living off of fishing and building where I live. While others have to sacrifice time away from home and family in order to live here in Alaska, many of my friends and neighbors who work in mines or up on the North Slope are supporting a life of hunting, fishing and other outdoor recreation that our Lower 48 relatives only dream of.

John MacKinnon, judging by his commentary in these pages last week (Aug. 16), has clearly forgotten this. Some think of salmon as just another industry, one that should take its place alongside oil and gas, mining and other sectors.

I disagree and I think most of my fellow Alaskans would, too.

Salmon are so much more than a paycheck for me. They are food on the table. Long twilights on the water. Visceral connections to thousands of years of hunting and gathering. For our Alaska Native friends and colleagues, they are the center of continued subsistence life and traditions.

[Salmon habitat advocates scale back initiative]

But the truth is that the narrowly focused worldview of MacKinnon and other industry captains like him has totally eclipsed Juneau and the hundreds of thousands of Alaskans who eat, celebrate or earn a good living from salmon. None of our state's abundant resources have such a broad impact on nearly every aspect of Alaskans' way of life as does the health of our salmon.  Yet our salmon are beginning to suffer.

Everyone who's ever spent time in the state capital, from the governor down to a bush rat like me, knows that mining and other industries dictate exactly what is built and how it's built in salmon habitat across the state.

Our law protecting salmon habitat, implemented with good intent 60 years ago at statehood, has never been updated and is defenseless to modern end runs by heavy industry's political friends. The end result is that the public has been increasingly cut out of the permitting process around our salmon streams. We're totally out of balance when it comes to protecting an Alaska culture and economy that thrives on salmon, while responsibly developing our plentiful oil, mining and timber resources.

Nearly every retired Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist I've talked to tells me the same story.

At one point, according to retired Fish and Game friends, Alaskans could feel good about the system of checks and balances where biologists were protected from the pressures of politicians and insulated from undue influence by developers. Those days are long gone.

Unfortunately, in more recent history, politics have reigned when it comes to balancing development with the health of salmon streams for future generations. Former Gov. Frank Murkowski moved habitat biologists and their entire division out of Fish and Game and into the industry-friendly Department of Natural Resources, and the politically driven decision-making reached right down to the ground. Though former Gov. Sarah Palin tried to restore some independence for biologists by moving them back to Fish and Game, the department has continued to be wracked by budget cuts and political, rather than scientific, directives.

That's how a megaproject like the Susitna-Watana Dam could even be contemplated in my backyard river. The state planned a massive 735-foot wall of concrete across the fourth-biggest king salmon run in the state of Alaska. Not only did designs not provide for fish passage, but the dam itself would have completely altered the flow of the river and threatened the fisheries in upper Cook Inlet, not to mention recreation and tourism in the Denali region. How does that constitute the "proper protection of fish and game?" It's part of a pattern we've seen across the state in recent years, with foreign corporations peddling risky projects — without any real transparency or accountability to the people of Alaska. This is the problem that MacKinnon fails to recognize.

After 60 years, it's time for an update that brings real balance back to the way we permit development in and around Alaskans' salmon streams. We need to give Fish and Game the proper tools to protect our culture, our economy and our way of life.

And that's why I'm in support of updating our salmon habitat law. We'll create enforceable, reasonable science-based standards for protecting salmon and supporting development responsibly. And we'll allow regular Alaskans to have a voice in the process.

Sound science and public participation aren't "roadblocks" — as suggested by MacKinnon and the mining industry lobbyists who have been quite worked up about this issue. Instead, they are part of a needed, balanced update that will allow us to grow in a responsible way. It's what the authors of the Alaska constitution intended, and the path we successfully followed for decades.

I have personally seen bulldozers in a sockeye stream during peak smolt outmigration in May. I have seen salmon streams blocked without adequate fish passage or diverted completely. I'm pro-development, because frankly, it is what I do every day. I just want to see it done in an accountable way that allows our salmon runs to thrive, runs that, in many places like the Mat-Su, are in decline. An entire generation of kids in Alaska haven't even had a chance to catch a king salmon on a rod like their parents and grandparents did.

Our salmon runs are still the envy of the world. It's true, as MacKinnon noted, that Bristol Bay had a record run — but in large part because it has the best salmon habitat in the world without any major projects in its headwaters. But all of that is at a tipping point. Alaska is growing, and so far we have the exact same rules about developing in salmon habitat as all of the Lower 48 states did when they destroyed their runs and lost most opportunities to catch a fish.

The reason that industry insiders like MacKinnon act like there isn't a problem is because they've been running the table for a long time, with a stacked deck in their favor. It's time for a common-sense, balanced update to the law that holds everyone accountable for doing their part to preserve Alaska's reputation as the salmon state now and for generations to come.

We all live in the salmon state for a reason. We need to remember that and bring our values to state government to ensure we keep this place intact.

Mike Wood is a commercial setnetter in upper Cook Inlet. He lives on the Susitna River north of Talkeetna and is the co-owner of Su Salmon Company.

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