The Upper Lynn Canal Fish and Game Advisory Committee resubmitted a letter to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game protesting the agency’s habitat division’s approval of a Haines Highway construction permit amendment that allows in-river work during high water.
Committee members were concerned with the amendment that stands in contrast with an initial July 2017 permit that stated, “To avoid impacts to spawning eulachon, developing embryos, and juvenile and adult anadromous fishes, you will work in the dry.”
In the letter to Fish and Game commissioner Sam Cotton, committee chair Tim McDonough said allowing work during high water “contradicts all of the conservation measures taken to ensure safe passage of Chilkat River Chinook salmon to their spawning grounds.”
He cited the Chilkat king salmon as a stock of concern—a designation given by Fish and Game earlier this year. He asked that construction activity cease until later in the summer. “We feel that the State of Alaska has a responsibility and obligation to adhere to the intent of having designated Chilkat River Chinook salmon a stock of concern, and that sacrificing even one spawner due to poor planning or unanticipated issues, when a brief hold of in-river activity would mitigate harm, is unacceptable,” McDonough wrote.
Fish and game officials rejected the letter earlier this month after the committee voted by email to approve it, breaking the state’s Open Meetings Act. The board met Aug. 17 to vote again during a public meeting.
While the state didn’t officially recognize the initial letter, Jackie Timothy, Fish and Game’s habitat Southeast region supervisor did respond. Poor king returns to the multiple river systems in Southeast, populations also labeled stocks of concern, reflect poor marine survival, not issues related to freshwater, Timothy said.
“Freshwater is also not the problem in the Chilkat River,” Timothy wrote to the committee. “There is no time of the year when the Chilkat River is absent of salmon of various life stages…and it is unrealistic to expect construction of a large critical infrastructure project like the Haines Highway to occur only in the winter as human safety is a consideration as is the ability to construct the project to industry standards.”
Former Fish and Game area commercial fisheries biologist and state department of transportation environmental analyst Mark Sogge attended the meeting and told the committee that some of Timothy’s statements were untrue.
“What she says in there at the very beginning about you can’t build a project in the wintertime is just not true at all,” Sogge said. “The airport was done in the wintertime all for fisheries issues.”
Sogge said Fish and Game’s Habitat Division is supposed to be concerned about sustaining fish habitat. “That’s what Habitat Division is supposed to do and they’re going, as far as I’m concerned, counter to what their own purpose is,” Sogge said. “This is a time when every single thing should be done to protect the chinook. It isn’t a time when you can say, ‘Well it’s ok to dump rock where we know the fish are.’”
Committee member Will Prisciandaro said he was most concerned about Habitat Division’s willingness to change the original permit. “That’s more of what we need to focus [on]…just disregarding Fish and Game’s comments and changing a permit on the spot seems to be more of what the overall problem is.”
Committee member Shannon Donahue said protecting fish in the freshwater environment will help curb the effects of poor marine survival. “By protecting freshwater habitat, we are also protecting genetic diversity, and genetic diversity makes the run overall more fit to withstand these pressures in the marine environment.”
Committee member Ryan Cook voted against sending the letter because he said the issues related to king survival go beyond placing rip rap in the river during high water. He joined the other committee members in criticizing Fish and Game’s Habitat Division. “I guess in phase two they’re going to fill in half of the 14 Mile pond or something like that. [Timothy] says there’s no spawning…that occurs in that channel and that’s not true either. There’s a lot of things coming up that she’s just blowing off that we know there’s stuff happening there.”
Fish and Game Habitat Biologist Kate Kanouse said before a big project moves forward the department issues more restrictive permits, and approves amendments when more detailed construction methods are known. “We wrote the original permits a year ago before it went out to bid,” Kanouse said. “We knew [SECON] couldn’t possibly do the work when it was dry. We knew we’d be writing amendments.”
The committee will draft a response to Timothy and take action on the correspondence at its next meeting.