Commentary: Responsible development ensures our economy, keeps fisheries healthy

By Gayla Hoseth, Stephanie Quinn-Davidson and Mike Wood
For The Cordova Times

Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are a tribal leader, a scientist and a small business owner. We are a subsistence fisherman, a personal-use and sport fisherman and a commercial fisherman. We live in Dillingham, Anchorage and the Mat-Su area. We are Alaskans and we are the primary sponsors of Ballot Measure 1.

We chose to sign on to this ballot initiative because, like many of you, we ae deeply connected to salmon and we want to make sure salmon are around for future generations of Alaskans. It’s as simple as that.

Unfortunately, the current habitat laws meant to protect our salmon are inadequate and insufficient to withstand the impending pressures from development. Because our Legislature has passed the buck for too long, it’s now up to us as Alaskans to define responsible development to ensure our economy and our fisheries remain healthy.

You only have to look to the Kenai Peninsula or the Mat-Su region to see what’s wrong with the current law and impacts of poorly designed development on salmon streams.

Nearly half the culverts under roads on the Kenai Peninsula are inadequate for salmon passage, cutting off miles and miles of spawning habitat because of fault design. The Mat-Su Basin Salmon Habitat Partnership – a collaboration of state, federal, local and nonprofit partners- reports in their strategic action plan that “rapid population growth and the accompanying pressures for development will increasingly challenge the ability of stakeholders to balance fish habitat conservation with these change over time” and that local salmon streams could experience significant health degradation without human intervention to restore and rehabilitate habitat.

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We’re living with a 1950s operating system for salmon streams and it can’t keep up.

Now, projects are knocking on our door that could wipe out salmon runs, as our state population grows and as we look to new resource development to address our state’s fiscal crisis. The Pebble Mine, the Donlin Mine, the Chuitna Mine and the Susitna-Watana Dam are all projects that propose to completely destroy or dam up salmon streams. (Donlin just got approved.) If we allow a whole new generation of projects to skate through without adequate protections, they will assuredly cause significant and irreversible damage to our salmon populations.

This ballot measure is a much-needed update to our existing habitat law and will balance development with protection of our salmon runs, The ballot measure was not designed to say “no” to all development in Alaska, It was designed to create scientifically accepted standards for things that we know salmon need – adequate water quality, water temperature, water flow and streambed habitat. None of these scientific standards exist in current law today. In fact, the current law is vague and open to interpretation from administration to administration,

The Ballot measure also provides for a public process, increasing transparency and accountability, Under the current law, there is no opportunity or anyone to provide public comment on proposed projects that would affect salmon habitat. Because the current law lacks a public process, tribes in the Kuskokwim region were given no opportunity to provide public input on the 13 habitat permits Donlin applied for (and has subsequently received) from Alaska Department of Fish and Game, despite the project happening in their traditional territory and affecting the salmon runs they depend on year after year. As Alaskans, we should have a say in what is being proposed in our backyards and this ballot measure allows for that.

We recognize the need for resource extraction in Alaska, but we need to balance that with a livelihood, a culture, an economy and a way of life that also depend on thriving salmon runs. The scientific standards and public process proposed by this ballot measure will ensure resource extraction co-exists alongside healthy fisheries in our state.

The opposition to Measure 1, led by Donlin and Pebble’s foreign backers and other out-of-state companies, has spent upwards of $10 million on a relentless, alternative reality campaign to make you think this ballot measure isn’t supported by Alaskans and to steer us away from a discussion about the core of this bill: responsible development. Well, we are here to say: We are the Alaskans behind Measure 1 and we are asking you to join us by voting yes on Nov. 6. Help us create a future for Alaska that includes responsible development and thriving salmon runs,

Gayla Hoseth is second chief of the Curyung Tribal Council and natural resources director for Bristol Bay Native Association. Stephanie Quinn-Davidson is executive director of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and a former biologist at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Mike Wood is a Cook Inlet setnetter and owner of Su Salmon Co.

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