RIVERS WITHOUT BORDERS

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Protecting the wild salmon of the Taku

Writer Timothy Egan’s 3/17/11 New York Times opinion piece titled “Frankenfish Phobia” is a good read. With a few choice words, he evokes the seasonal wonder that is spring Chinook salmon returning to home waters. “The alpinists of the maritime world” he calls them, honoring their long upstream journeys from the sea to interior Pacific Northwest mountain headwaters to spawn and die.

Egan compares this marvel of nature with a new product of technology, the so-called Frankenfish – “a lab created hybrid that could soon become the first genetically engineered animal approved by the [U.S.] Food and Drug Administration for human consumption.” This modified Atlantic salmon, reared in captivity, apparently grows to market size in half the time wild salmon require, without the complexities of arduous fresh water river journeys, a life at sea covering vast swaths of the north Pacific, or the need to, miraculously, return to the stream of birth. As Egan says, with Frankenfish it’s “fast fish from the factory, without the hassle of habitat preservation.”

Rivers Without Borders isn’t ready to embrace this new approach. We’re continuing to call for habitat preservation, because we believe wild salmon are a good thing, and wild salmon need wild rivers.

That’s why we’ve been advocating for a proactive measure to protect the Taku. In the heart of the Alaska- B.C. transboundary region, the Taku is southeast Alaska’s number one salmon producer, and one of Canada’s top salmon systems. It’s also threatened by proposed mining development. The Land Use Plan being finalized for the Canadian side of the watershed will protect significant portions of the Taku. And we’ve hoped the Alaska legislature would see fit to designate the lower Alaska portion of the river as Critical Habitat in light of its importance to salmon. Such a designation would insure that salmon habitat is safeguarded.

All this fits with something else Egan wrote. Alaskan’s enjoy “the world’s largest salmon runs because they’ve protected habitats, kept water quality fairly good and regulated fishermen.”

We wish it were so simple. Despite strong and diverse Alaskan support for a Taku Critical Habitat designation, led by commercial and sport fishermen and processors, there has been resistance to this initiative to protect salmon, based, it seems, on a general dislike of proactive government oversight. Where we had hoped to see a Taku Critical Habitat bill advance in the 2011 Alaska legislature, it hasn’t happened. Sights were lowered to a Resolution creating a citizen task force to consider means, including Critical Habitat, to protect Taku salmon runs. But even that goal has encountered opposition. The Resolutions did get introduced, with good language about the importance of the Taku, how fishermen depend on it, and the need for stewardship, but they did not pass out of the legislature. They are in a good position to advance in next year’s session, though the delay is unfortunate.

If anyone opposes Frankenfish, it’s Alaskans. And if anyone appreciates the value of wild salmon, and where they come from, it’s Alaskans as well. But appreciation is not enough. Action is needed, especially if Egan’s words about Alaska’s commitment to protecting salmon habitat are to ring true.