Alaskans have every reason to take pride in our fisheries. We have what many can only dream of elsewhere around the world. Anglers descend upon our state from all over the world and many of us call this great state home because of our opportunity to fish and to harvest some of this truly amazing resource.<\/p>\n
A year ago many of us were heartened to see the incoming governor create a process that brought Alaskans from many diverse backgrounds together to form a \u201ctransition team.\u201d That team\u2019s goal was to develop recommendations for the future path of our state. We were especially gratified to see the recommendations of the Governor\u2019s Fisheries Transition Committee.<\/p>\n
Previous administrations have deftly paid lip service to our fisheries, touting their importance to the economy and even to the sense of who we are as Alaskans. Yet, more often than not, fisheries are not prioritized, especially when weighing resource development projects. In response to this history, the transition committee recommended that the Walker Administration adopt a \u201cfish first\u201d policy. What that means is that our fisheries resources, so important to so many of us, finally take priority.<\/p>\n
In general the concept of a fish first policy approach makes sense. Specific examples from the fisheries committee includes:<\/p>\n
\u00ad\u2022 Resource development cannot cause significant loss of fish habitat.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The state must maintain enough water in rivers and streams for fish, particularly ensuring that resource development projects never block the passage and migration of salmon to their spawning grounds.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The state should reinstate the Coastal Zone Management Program, which also ensures that Alaskans have a say in how their waters and fisheries are managed.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Restoring to DNR\u2019s original mission statement the charge of habitat conservation, as it did before the Parnell administration changed it.<\/p>\n
These are pretty common sense benchmarks for putting fish first. In order to accomplish these goals, we need to ensure an approach that places science over politics, while maintaining adequate funding to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.<\/p>\n
We know this is a lot to ask in a time of low oil prices and depleted state coffers, but considering a single king salmon is currently worth more than a barrel of oil, the investment is critical. Fishing has always been a vital part of the tourism industry, bolstering the Alaskan economy. We need to ensure that our world-class fisheries are protected for generations to come.<\/p>\n
If a tax should be implemented on our fisheries, be those sport or commercial fishing, we would ask that these not be placed in general funds, but allocated back into our fisheries, to the ADF&G to be used toward management and for the study of this one-of-a-kind resource.<\/p>\n
We are lucky to have the most intact, still pristine and unaltered freshwater and marine habitat in the world. However, protecting and preserving that habitat, and our fisheries, demands that we do more than maintain the status quo. It demands that we take action.<\/p>\n
Therefore, it is our sincere hope that our leaders both in Juneau and Washington, D.C. will support and act upon the fisheries committee\u2019s recommendations. If our leaders and policymakers don\u2019t opt today for a fish first approach, our fisheries tomorrow are very likely to go the way of the Lower 48 and the rest of the world\u2019s, and that would be a tragic loss to all of us as well as to future generations.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Dave Atcheson teaches fly fishing at UAA\u2019s Kenai Peninsula College, and is the author of several books, including Fishing Alaska\u2019s Kenai Peninsula, and Dead Reckoning, Navigating a Life on the Last Frontier, Courting Tragedy on its High Seas. John Holman is a lifelong Alaskan, who spent many of his early years fishing in rural Alaska. He is a pilot and the owner of No See Um Lodge. Bruce is an avid angler and a retired Alaska Department of Fish and Game Biologist. This editorial previously appeared in the Alaska Dispatch News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alaskans have every reason to take pride in our fisheries. We have what many can only dream of elsewhere around the world. Anglers descend upon our state from all over the world and many of us call this great state home because of our opportunity to fish and to harvest some of this truly amazing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16809"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}