All salmon fishing — commercial, recreational and Indigenous food fisheries — has been closed on both sides of the Yukon-Alaska border for the past three years, eroding the well-being, culture, familial ties and food security of Indigenous communities.
The collapse of wild salmon is causing a current of pain that spans the length of the Yukon River, from its mouth at Alaska’s Bering Sea to the headwaters in Canada’s Yukon territory 3,000 kilometres away.
Wealth for Alaskan tribes along the river is measured by families coming together at fish camps to catch and prepare salmon. The fish traditionally made up half of the community’s winter food stores, she said. Last summer, fewer than 300,000 chum entered the river, down from an average of more than a million fish in years past.
While the situation in the lower portion of the river is becoming increasingly grim, First Nations in the upper reaches of the Yukon watershed have been suffering the disappearance of salmon since the panel was created. Around 30,000 chinook and half a million chum were caught as bycatch in the pollock fisheries and other ground fish operations in 2021. Fisheries in the region that also target other more abundant salmon like Alaskan pink or sockeye can also inadvertently capture endangered Yukon stocks.
Canada supports a more precautionary approach and has long advocated for a long-term closure to fishing along the length of the Yukon on both sides of the border, rather than on an ad hoc basis in bad years, he said.
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