Anchorage Representative Les Gara filed a formal request January 30 to reverse the gillnet ruling on the Kenai and Kasilof rivers.
Last week the Federal Subsistence Board approved two proposals from the Ninilchik Traditional Council to subsist those rivers for sockeye salmon, which Gara said is the wrong choice.
Gara: “Alaska has done a good job protecting what are some of the greatest Rainbow Trout Dolly Varden fisheries in the world, we had the greatest King Salmon fishery in the world on the Kenai River and that populations struggling and this whole idea of placing a 60 foot gillnet across one of the most productive trout and dolly areas on the middle Kenai River seems crazy.”
Currently the Ninilchik applicants are allowed a special subsistence educational permit to take up to 5,800 sockeye salmon from the Cook Inlet.
He said the decision has pitted commercial, subsistence and sport fisher people against each other when Alaskan fish should bring people together.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has stated it was opposed to the proposals due to the Kenai River King declines over the past years; Early run Kenai River King runs have fallen from over 20,012 fish in 1988 to roughly 2,049 in 2013. Late run Kenai Kings have fallen from 81,700 in 1988 to 19,700 in 2013.
Rep. Gara said he has urged other memebers of the Alaskan congress to weigh in on the ruling also while the Federal Subsistence Board is accepting reconsideration requests.
