Evidence of meeting #99 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chinook.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you.
We'll now go to Chief Rhonda Pitka for five minutes or less.
Go ahead, please.
4:45 p.m.
Chief Rhonda Pitka Chief, Beaver Village Council
Thank you for the invitation to appear before this committee to assist in building greater understanding of the crisis involving Yukon River chinook salmon and the impacts this crisis has had on indigenous peoples in Alaska as well as Canada.
I am Chief Rhonda Pitka of Beaver, Alaska. Beaver is a small fly-in-only community on the Yukon River, just south of the Arctic Circle, and the first community downriver of all the confluences of the Porcupine River and the Yukon River. I am chairwoman of the Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments, a consortium that serves nine tribes in the Yukon Flats of Alaska. I am also a public member of the federal subsistence board and a member of the Yukon River Panel.
Our people have historically relied on chinook and chum as our main food sources and as a central part of our culture and way of life. Our people are “salmon people”. Our health and the health of the salmon are inextricably linked. What befalls the salmon befalls our people. Over the past 20 years we have seen stocks of Yukon River chinook and chum salmon obliterated by numerous challenges, all of human origin, all originating from outside our small communities along the Yukon River.
As the stocks of salmon have dwindled, our food security has become imperiled. The smokehouses that used to be filled with a winter's supply of salmon sit empty. Our children's critical link to our food culture and way of life has been severed. We have not had salmon for funeral potlatches for our people. In the last four years of no harvest, this crucial religious and cultural ceremony need has not been met. There are not enough salmon to feed my community or the communities of the Upper Yukon River in Alaska that I represent or our relatives in Canada along the Yukon River and Porcupine River. That much is clear.
We have not fished in the last four years. We have not had a subsistence harvest that has met our needs. We've been told that our subsistence harvest is the reason we have not had returns of salmon. That is simply not true. Subsistence accounts for less than 1% of the total take of statewide harvesting of fish and other resources.
The subsistence fishers of Alaska have generously given their traditional knowledge to the State of Alaska and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Without this traditional knowledge, it is difficult for managers to have a clear idea as to whether their models of the run are correct. The managers use the number of salmon coming in at Pilot Station to estimate the run size and abundance of Canadian-origin chinook salmon. There is currently no mid-river sonar to “ground truth” that estimate.
The subsistence harvest helps management by giving in-season information on the timing of the run and the size of the run and on whether the estimates at the mouth of the Yukon River are accurate. The accuracy of the run size and timing are dependent on the knowledge of those fishermen along the Yukon River.
The chinook salmon fishery disaster hinders the customary and traditional selling, bartering and trading economy of the fishery. This is absolutely the case along the Yukon River, where depleted salmon runs have prevented our people from fishing and from participating in traditional economic practices of selling, bartering and trading Yukon River salmon. We used to have extensive traditional bartering networks and community relations, which have been strained because we have not had enough salmon to trade. The backbone of our livelihood is the traditional salmon fishery. The subsistence fishery is the primary economy in our region. Where I'm from, in the Village of Beaver, we do not have grocery stores. We don't have access to regular fresh food that people have, so we have to fly in food if we don't have it on the ground.
Furthermore, totally unaddressed through existing federal processes is the loss of tribal food sovereignty and food security and the loss of the ability to teach our children and transmit indigenous knowledge related to salmon stewardship, including providing for healthy salmon and salmon populations, processing, preparation and storing. Entire social networks, health and well-being have been devastated. Our children have never handled salmon. Our fishermen slump into depression, while domestic violence incidents and suicide increase along with increases in substance abuse, because our people are not fishing.
The loss of the Yukon River salmon and the cultural activities and spiritual values associated with salmon fishing are devastating our communities and villages.
Our tribes are not sitting idle. While the state and federal governments have continued conducting studies on the impacts of climate change, debating the impacts of bycatch in intercept fisheries and subsidizing commercial fisheries, here is what our tribes have been doing.
We have not fished. We implemented a self-imposed moratorium in 2014 in order to allow salmon to make the spawning grounds. This resulted in meeting the border passage goals into Canada in 2014. We have left our fish camps empty. Many of our children have not fished in their lifetimes.
We were told to buy seven-and-a-half inch nets as one of the management ways to change the numbers of salmon that we were getting, so we did that. We changed our net sizes to six-inch nets. When that didn't work, we bought four-inch nets for our people.
We've educated ourselves on ocean fishery science. As a fisherwoman along the Yukon River, the ocean is not where I'm from, but I've had to educate myself on things that are way outside of my purview.
We have spent thousands of hours and dollars on advocacy and legal action around the fisheries in our region—
4:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
I'm going to have to stop it there, Chief Pitka, because it's gone way over the five minutes. Hopefully, anything you didn't get to say will come out in the lines of questioning.
I'll go to Elizabeth MacDonald now for five minutes or less, please.
4:50 p.m.
Elizabeth MacDonald Council of Yukon First Nations
Thank you very much for inviting me to participate today in the study.
My name is Elizabeth MacDonald. I'm the manager of fisheries at the Council of Yukon First Nations. In this position I support the work of the Yukon First Nation Salmon Stewardship Alliance, which is our local AAROM. I'm also one of the vice-chairs of the Yukon Salmon Sub-Committee, which is an advisory body created under the Umbrella Final Agreement. For that role, I was nominated by the Vuntut Gwitchin government as a Porcupine River salmon representative.
I'm going to focus on the Yukon River salmon because Alsek River salmon are doing relatively better. I did provide additional information in a briefing note as well.
Chinook are the most significant salmon in the main stem of the Yukon River as both a food species and a culturally significant salmon. They are highly dispersed, with over 100 documented spawning locations. They are unique since no other salmon migrates as far, with the furthest migration being 3,200 kilometres. This is part of why they are so important, as they provide many people and habitats with food and nutrients.
Unfortunately, the salmon have been experiencing widespread declines and changes for some time. Traditional knowledge-keepers in the communities say this decline started before western science in the 1980s. Chum are also present in higher numbers, but they are not as widespread as chinook. In recent times chum have experienced highs and lows.
Chum are the most important and numerous species on the Porcupine River, a tributary of the Yukon River. Unfortunately, they are experiencing a long-term depressed population. In the last 23 years since the Yukon River Salmon Agreement has been in place, the spawning goal has only been met nine times. Very little information is available on chinook and coho in this river.
Then in 2020, we had a salmon crash. All salmon numbers plummeted. Chinook have been at about 12% of the average at the mouth of the river in the last two years, and up to 40% of them are dying between the mouth of the river and the border. Chum in the main stem have had four out of five of the lowest spawning estimates since 1980 and about 20% of the average spawning escapement estimate.
Estimates for porcupine chum at the Fishing Branch River weir in 2020, 2021 and 2022 were the lowest on record since 1971, at about 5.5% of the average spawning estimate. Last year was slightly better, I think due to better environmental conditions during the migration. Numbers of Porcupine River coho for the last two years have been the lowest on record.
The situation is dire for all the salmon species on the Yukon River. We are legitimately concerned about their extinction. I am sure we have already lost smaller populations of chinook.
Unfortunately, the solution isn't as easy as stopping fishing. Even if there were zero harvesting by humans, salmon numbers would not rebound. Climate change is having a larger impact. Since the crash, our river has been hot enough to kill salmon. We have sustained frequent flooding and we have seen low water, with much more variance than normal, which has affected migrating salmon and rearing juveniles during the freshwater stages.
The Bering Sea is also warmer than ever. This has impacted the food web, and salmon are switching prey. This has decreased the energy available to them and decreased some important nutrients. It has also resulted in a large increase in Ich disease, which is likely responsible for a significant number of the chinook dying during their migration.
We need climate action and we need to support Alaskans with habitat improvement in the Bering Sea. We also need to watch our own habitat and ensure that development and other impacts don't harm salmon. We need to increase our capacity. We have dedicated, passionate and absolutely wonderful individuals working diligently to improve things for salmon and fishers in the ecosystems on both sides of the border. The amount of passion and knowledge that we collectively share is incredible.
We have truly accomplished so much, but there simply aren't enough of us to do all the work. This is particularly true for my first nation colleagues, as most Yukon first nation governments don't even have a dedicated salmon person. Instead, staff cover many species. Each first nation needs its own dedicated salmon staff, so they can focus on restoration work and on keeping salmon culture alive until the salmon recover.
We also need accessible funding so we can do restoration work. Funding needs to be secure and long term, so we can focus on rebuilding salmon populations and not on administrating funding agreements.
If we lose salmon, we will be losing more than just food and culture. We'll be losing a key ecosystem species. Marine-derived nutrients are extremely rare 3,200 kilometres from the ocean. If we lose these, our freshwater terrestrial animals and habitats will also suffer.
Finally, I want to stress how Alaskan communities depend upon salmon for food. While this is also true on our side of the border, it is a larger issue in Alaska. In Alaska some people need to choose whether to fish illegally or to starve. We need to support Alaskans so they have better options and in turn can support salmon recovery.
Thank you.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you for that.
You gave me back 30 seconds, so that's a great help.
We'll go to Mr. Arnold now, for six minutes or less.
Go ahead, please.
February 15th, 2024 / 4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank all the witnesses for their input. Trying to rebuild our Pacific salmon stocks is of value. I want to start by doing a round with each of you. I want to ask the same questions.
What are the two biggest threats to these Pacific salmon, and what do you see as the key levers that can be pulled or the key tools that can used to remove or mitigate those threats?
Ms. Demuth, perhaps I could start with you, and I'm just going to go through the list as we have it on our notice of meeting.
What are the two biggest threats and what levers or tools could be used to mitigate those threats?
4:55 p.m.
Dean's Associate Professor of History and Environment and Society, Brown University, As an Individual
Thank you for this question.
I think the two biggest threats.... It came up pretty much in everyone's testimony here today that one of them is climate change and what it's doing both in river and to the Bering Sea. Secondarily, they can have increased ecosystem pressures in the Bering Sea that are not directly related to climate change and have to do with large-scale fishing, which hurts salmon as bycatch but also is changing the food webs in the Bering Sea in other ways.
In terms of tools, I think one tool that has been effective in other situations in the United States, where species are both endangered but critical for subsistence, is to have a much clearer way of comanaging the salmon stocks between first nations and Alaskan native communities and the federal and state governments to set priorities that would be more in line with what Chief Pitka and Dennis Zimmermann both outlined in thinking about salmon not just as numbers but in terms of the health of the fish and how they're being used along the river.
I think that secondly—
4:55 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
I'm going to have to stop you there in order to get through all four and the further questions I have.
Mr. Zimmermann, you would be next on my list.
4:55 p.m.
Fish and Wildlife Consultant and Pacific Salmon Treaty Panel Member, Big Fish Little Fish Consultants, As an Individual
Thank you.
I'll predict that a lot of us will have similar thoughts. I'll focus on two quickly.
I think Elizabeth MacDonald mentioned the physiological stress of rising water temperatures, which is resulting in a lot of prespawn mortality. Fish just aren't making it where they used to go. That's a big threat.
What can we do? For the levers we have to pull, to me, it's about all the tools in the tool box. Unfortunately, fishery closures are one of the things we can manage, and we are doing that. That's already been put on.
Secondly, losing connection to salmon culture is a threat for Pacific salmon, because if people are not connected to them—first nations and the general public—we're not going to care and we won't advocate for them, and there will be a shifting baseline.
5 p.m.
Conservative
5 p.m.
Chief, Beaver Village Council
Yes. Thank you for that question. I appreciate it.
The two biggest threats I see are also climate change and the trawl fishery. Shutting down the trawl fisheries and the hatcheries would decrease some of the threats. The salmon are coming back smaller and weaker, but that's also because of ocean conditions. One of those ocean conditions is the trawl fishery and what they're doing to the herring. It's causing malnutrition in the salmon.
Thank you.
5 p.m.
Council of Yukon First Nations
Thank you.
I would say climate change again, as being a big one, and then, as Dennis suggested, people losing connection with salmon is also a major threat. People aren't connected. They won't go out and fight for protections for habitat or give up other things to keep the habitat.
For tools, we definitely have the Yukon River Panel and the joint technical committee as a way to have coordination across the border and work together. I think that's a key tool that we can use and continue to use.
I also think we need to get food out to people, so that people aren't in such a bad situation that they have to choose between feeding family or not eating. I think that's a big tool we could help with, and it is within our realm of control. Otherwise, restoration is something that we need to look at, like what Ms. Mayes talked about earlier with the restoration stewardship centre. It would be a fantastic thing to happen for all the communities.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you.
I want to turn back to Mr. Zimmermann.
I believe you said that the condition of the fish is not considered in the treaty or the process. Can you elaborate a little further on that? Is it just numbers that are used or is it biomass? How is that discussed and negotiated?
5 p.m.
Fish and Wildlife Consultant and Pacific Salmon Treaty Panel Member, Big Fish Little Fish Consultants, As an Individual
It's purely numbers. In fact, they use the word “pieces” quite often. It's the number of pieces of salmon, so that's the essential metric.
We started seeing size declines at the headwaters in particular. Large fish were disappearing. That, of course, is a productivity issue: Less fecund fish have fewer eggs.
Rhonda mentioned the changing net size. We were doing that in relation to trying to preserve and protect the larger chinook. It should be noted that these chinook were up to eight years old. We lost the eight-year-olds. We've pretty much lost the seven-year-olds, and now we're down to four- to six-year-olds. That's a huge canary-in-the-coal-mine problem.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Mel Arnold Conservative North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you.
Basically, as long as the proposed number of fish is getting through, nothing changes in the ratios or, I guess, the catch or retention downstream.
5 p.m.
Fish and Wildlife Consultant and Pacific Salmon Treaty Panel Member, Big Fish Little Fish Consultants, As an Individual
That's correct.
We are reporting on size, sex ratios and various other things now, and age class. We've always reported on age class, but yes, the actual metric for the treaty is the number of fish.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ken McDonald
Thank you, Mr. Arnold.
We'll now go to Mr. Hanley for six minutes or less, please.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you, all of you, for appearing and for the really interesting and important testimony.
I'd like to begin with Chief Pitka.
You gave very moving testimony. Thank you very much.
You mentioned that subsistence accounts for less than 1% of total take. I'm assuming that the other 99% would be largely related to the trawl fishery. Could you explain a bit about that and elaborate?
5 p.m.
Chief, Beaver Village Council
In the state of Alaska, 98.2% of the state total take is the commercial fishery's harvest. About 1% is for sport harvesters, and the other 1% is the subsistence harvesters, who primarily use this to feed our families and keep our culture alive.
Thank you.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
When you say “commercial” fishery, can you just elaborate? What is within that commercial fishery, including what is bycatch and what's deliberate catch?
5:05 p.m.
Chief, Beaver Village Council
I'm not necessarily an expert on the commercial fishery in the state of Alaska, but it is primarily the pink salmon harvest in the Gulf of Alaska and also the area M fishery that are catching most of the salmon. That's where the bycatch is happening for the Yukon River chinook salmon.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you.
Lastly, you mentioned in response to Mr. Arnold's questions the importance of reducing—I'm not sure if you said shutting down or reducing—the trawl fishery. How could you even begin to do that? What would be the steps towards doing that? Is there a federal as well as a state role in addressing that?
5:05 p.m.
Chief, Beaver Village Council
Shutting down the trawl fishery is entirely within the purview of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and the Department of Commerce for the United States federal government, but it's also within the purview of the State of Alaska. They can severely limit the number of commercial fishing licences that they have.
Those numbers account for much higher numbers than the subsistence harvest has ever had, and cutting down that commercial fishing harvest and opportunity has had greater effects on the numbers of Yukon River salmon coming back into the river. We saw that in the 1990s when they shut down commercial fishing around area M because Bristol Bay was not getting enough fish back into their rivers and their lakes. We've seen the effects that it's had. It's been fairly effective.
Thank you.