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STEVENS VILLAGE, Alaska (AP) – In a normal year, the smokehouse and drying racks that Alaskan indigenous peoples use to cook salmon to get them through the winter are heavy with fish meat, the fruits of a summer they fish for the Yukon River have spent generations before them.
There are no fish this year. For the first time in memory, both king and chum salmon have dwindled to near zero, and the state has banned salmon fishing in the Yukon, even the subsistence crops that Alaskan indigenous people rely on to fill their freezers and pantries for the winter . The remote communities that dotted the river and thrived on its abundance – far from road systems and easy, affordable shopping – are desperate and double in on moose and caribou hunts in the waning fall days.
“Nobody has fish in the freezer right now. Nobody, ”said Giovanna Stevens, 38, a member of the Stevens Village Tribe who grew up harvesting salmon in her family’s fish camp. “We have to fill this gap quickly before winter comes.”
Opinions vary as to what led to the disaster, but those who study it generally agree that man-made climate change plays a role as the river and Bering Sea warm up and the food chain merge into one Changing ways that are not yet fully understood. Many believe that commercial trawling operations that scoop up wild salmon along with their intended catch, as well as competition from farmed salmon in the ocean, have exacerbated the impact of global warming on one of North America’s longest rivers.
The assumption that unfished salmon will return to their home river to lay eggs may no longer exist due to changes in both the ocean and river environment, said Stephanie Quinn-Davidson, who is addressing salmon problems in the Yukon River has worked for a decade and is the program director of the Alaska Venture Fund for Fisheries and Communities.
King or Chinook salmon have been in decline for more than a decade, but chum salmon were plentiful until last year. This year the numbers of summer friends have plummeted and the number of autumn friends traveling further upriver is dangerously low.
“Everyone wants to know, ‘What is that one smoking gun? What’s the only thing we can point to and stop? ‘”She said of the breakdown. “People are reluctant to point out climate change because there is no clear solution … but it is probably the biggest factor here.”
Many Alaskan communities are outraged that they are paying the price for generations of practices that are beyond their control that have caused climate change – and many believe state and federal agencies are not doing enough to bring indigenous voices to the table bring to. The scarcity has sparked strong emotions about who should have the right to fish in a state that supplies the world with salmon, and underscores the powerlessness many Alaskan people feel when traditional resources dwindle.
The nearly 2,000 mile (3,200 km) long Yukon River rises in British Columbia and drains an area larger than Texas in both Canada and Alaska as it cuts through the lands of the Athabascan, Yup’ik, and other tribes.
The crisis affects both subsistence fishing in distant outposts and fish processing plants employing tribal members in communities along the Lower Yukon and its tributaries.
“In the tribal villages, our people are angry. They are extremely angry that we are being punished for what others do, ”said PJ Simon, chairman and director of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, a consortium of 42 tribal villages in inland Alaska. “As Alaska Natives, we have a right to this resource. We have a say in the design and distribution. “
More than half a dozen Alaskan Native groups have sought federal aid and they want the state’s federal delegation to hold a hearing on the salmon crisis in Alaska. The groups are also looking for federal funding for more collaborative research on the effects of marine changes on salmon return.
Citing ocean warming, Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy called for a federal disaster declaration for the salmon fishery this month and has helped coordinate air shipments of approximately 41,000 kilograms of fish to villages in need. The salmon crisis is a top priority for the governor, said Rex Rock Jr., Dunleavy’s adviser on rural affairs and Alaskan economic development.
That has done little to appease remote villages that rely on salmon to survive the winter, when the snow paralyzes the landscape and temperatures can drop to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 29 degrees Celsius) or below.
Families traditionally spend the summer in fish camps with nets and fish wheels to catch adult salmon as they migrate from the ocean inland to where they hatched for them to spawn. The salmon is prepared for storage in different ways: dried for jerky, cut into frozen fillets, bottled in half-pint glasses or preserved in wooden barrels with salt.
Without these options, communities are under intense pressure to find other sources of protein. In inland Alaska, the nearest road network is often dozens of miles away, and it can take hours by boat, snow machine, or even plane to get to a grocery store.
Store-bought groceries are unaffordable for many: a gallon of milk can cost nearly $ 10, and a pound of steak recently cost $ 34 in Kaltag, an inland village about 528 kilometers from Fairbanks. A surge in COVID-19 cases, which has disproportionately hit Alaska’s indigenous people, has also made many reluctant to venture far from home.
Instead, villages sent additional hunting parties during the fall moose season and look forward to the upcoming caribou season to meet their needs. Those who cannot hunt themselves rely on others to share their meat.
“We have to take care of our people because there will be some who won’t have food in the middle of the year,” said Christina Semaken, a 63-year-old grandmother who lives in Kaltag, an inland Alaska town of fewer than 100 people . “We can’t afford to buy that beef or that chicken.”
Semaken hopes to fish next year, but whether the salmon will return remains unknown.
Proponents of tribes want more genetic testing on salmon caught for fishing grounds in Alaskan waters to ensure commercial fisheries do not intercept wild Yukon River salmon. They also want more sonar to track fish on the river to ensure an accurate count of the salmon that escape the harvest and return to the Canadian headwaters of the river.
But changes in the ocean itself could ultimately determine the fate of the salmon.
The Bering Sea, where the river meets the ocean, has had unprecedented ice loss in recent years and its water temperatures are rising. These shifts are upsetting the timing of the plankton bloom and the distribution of the small invertebrates that the fish eat, creating potential chaos in the still-studied food chain, said Kate Howard, a fisheries scientist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Researchers have also documented warming temperatures in the river that are unhealthy for salmon, she said.
Because salmon spend time in both rivers and oceans during their unique life cycle, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where these rapid environmental changes are affecting them most – but it’s becoming increasingly clear that overfishing isn’t the only culprit, Howard said.
“When you look at all of the data available for Yukon River salmon,” she said, “it’s hard to explain everything without taking climate change into account.”
The indigenous people of Alaska, meanwhile, must strive to fill a gap in their diet – in the centuries-old tradition of salmon.
On a final day in autumn, a small hunting party sped along the Yukon River in a motorboat, searching the coast for signs of moose. After three days, the group had killed two moose, enough to provide meat to seven families, or about 50 people, for about a month in their small Stevens Village community.
At the end of a long day, they slaughtered the animals while the northern lights burned a brilliant green across the sky and their headlamps pierced the inky darkness.
The makeshift camp, miles from any road, usually housed several dozen families who harvested salmon, shared meals, and taught children to fish. It was very quiet that day.
“I don’t think there is any kind of bell that can be rung loud enough to explain this type of connection,” said Ben Stevens, whose ancestors founded Stevens Village. “For us, salmon is life. Where can you go beyond that? “
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