New Law Gives Priority to Rural Alaska Fishermen

Federal authorities took back a treasured prize of Alaska’s statehood Friday, seizing partial control of the state’s rich fisheries to protect the rights of rural Alaskans who depend on fish for food.

Federal law requires the subsistence fishing priority for rural residents, including Eskimos, Indians and other native people, freeing them from many regulations that govern sport hunting and fishing. Opponents contend that discriminates against urban residents who also rely on fish and game.

The federal takeover came after eight Republican state senators blocked an attempt to send voters an amendment to the state constitution that would allow the rural subsistence fishing priority.

“This is about protecting subsistence fishing for villages in Alaska and the people who live there,” said Marilyn Heiman, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s top aide in Alaska.

The subsistence priority applies to about 20% of Alaskans, or 120,000 people, who are classified as rural. Slightly fewer than half of those people are Native Alaskans--including Eskimos, Indians and Aleuts.

The rule allows them to catch more fish and use more efficient methods for fishing. It also allows federal wildlife managers to protect the subsistence users by restricting the amount of wildlife taken by other hunters and fishermen. Though the summer fishing season is nearly over, the impact of the takeover is expected to grow over time.

Federal managers could begin restricting commercial fishing as early as next year to allow more salmon to reach remote villagers on waterways such as the Yukon River. Some subsistence fisheries there have been limited in recent years after commercial fisheries took a big bite out of weak salmon runs.

The return of federal fish managers is a bitter pill for many who recall disastrous federal practices that depleted salmon runs before Alaska became a state in 1959. The federal government’s cozy relationship with big fish canneries was such a sore subject that more people voted to abolish the commercial fish trap than to ratify the state’s constitution.

“We could have prevented the offensive intrusion of federal management of Alaska’s fish and game resources, a right that really was at the root of statehood,” said Gov. Tony Knowles, who called the Legislature into special session in a last-ditch effort to amend the constitution. “We could also have at the very same time protected the vital importance of subsistence to the economy, to the culture, to the way of life in rural Alaska.”

The conflict between state and federal law dates back to 1980, when Congress included the rural priority in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. Nine years later, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that it violated the state constitution’s guarantee of equal access to fish and game.

Federal managers took over subsistence hunting on federal land the next year. A 1994 court decision expanded federal authority to lakes, rivers and streams within or alongside that land. State intervention fended off the takeover until this year.