Conservation group says southern Alaska king salmon should be listed as endangered

A conservation group wants the federal government to protect king salmon stocks in southern Alaska under the Endangered Species Act, or ESA for short.

The Wild Fish Conservancy, based in Washington State, filed their petition on Jan. 10.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS for short, will decide whether to accept the petition within 90 days of the filing.

If the petition is accepted, the agency will review the status of the species and within a year decide whether a threatened or endangered listing is warranted. The agency will then publish a proposed rule that the public will be able to comment on before a final decision is made.

The petition has prompted controversy as an ESA listing would disrupt the king salmon —also called Chinook— troll fishery in Southeast Alaska. The Wild Fish Conservancy is the same group trying through various legal actions to shut down that fishery with the purpose of protecting the small population of 75 “Southern Resident” orcas.

“This petition is an extreme attempt to reallocate wild salmon that, once again, fails to consider or address the actual threats to Chinook,” the Juneau-based advocacy group SalmonState said in a statement. “Alaskans and others concerned about wild salmon need to be working together to address threats from habitat degradation, to climate change, to hundreds of thousands of Bering Sea salmon bycaught and killed in Seattle-based trawl nets. Instead, the Wild Fish Conservancy is continuing to attack some of the people who care about wild salmon the most — salmon fishermen — and putting all of Alaska in a defensive position that will ultimately make problems worse instead of better.”

The Wild Fish Conservancy filed the petition to force the federal government to review king salmon in southern Alaska only. The group wrote that this area “encompasses all Chinook populations that enter the marine environment of the Gulf of Alaska (GOA). This includes all populations on the southern side of the Aleutian Peninsula, Cook Inlet, and the coast of Alaska south of Cook Inlet to the southern end of the Alaska/British Columbia border.”

The conservation group argued that these southern stocks should be considered at least one “evolutionary significant unit,” distinct from Bering Sea populations.

Jacob Ivanoff of the Native Village of Unalakleet said he was appreciative that the petition did not include Alaska-Yukon-Kuskokwim king salmon, a move that might have serious implications for subsistence uses of the species for a region that’s already facing declining harvests.

“The Chinook runs here in Unalakleet were horrible,” Ivanoff said of last summer’s salmon run. “I don’t think I’ve seen them as low in quite some time. I think it was not only the Chinook that had a bad run last year. We had horrible returns on all species.”

At certain bends along the Unalakleet River, Ivanoff was used to seeing carpets of spawning pinks and chums. But this past summer he could count the number of fish on his hands. “That was really concerning,” he said.

He also expressed doubt that the petition would be successful.

“I don’t think the Chinook are at the level to be placed on the ESA,” Ivanoff said. “They’re a stock of concern throughout in many areas in the state of Alaska already.”

Ivanoff is part of the new Alaska Salmon Research Task Force. The group was established by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to create a science plan to study Alaska’s salmon after unprecedented chum and Chinook declines in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

The group’s next meeting will be on January 25 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. The public can attend vir