Since its founding in 1990, the Yukon River Drainage Fisheries Association (YRDFA) has acted as a sounding board for communities along the Yukon River. It’s also served as a bridge between fisheries managers, biologists, and stakeholders in Alaska and far upriver across the border in Canada.
The organization was originally formed to facilitate better communication about Yukon chinook salmon declines. Two and a half decades later, amid near-total salmon fishing closures and some of the lowest chum salmon runs ever recorded, the organization’s mission remains as critical as ever.
YRDFA’s current executive director, Serena “Cuucitcuar” Alstrom Fitka, is from the lower Yukon River community of St. Mary’s. She said that the fishing situation on the river where she grew up practicing subsistence has become dismal. But she also said that when it comes to giving the next generation opportunities to harvest salmon and carry on traditional ways of living, losing hope is not an option.
Fitka spoke to KYUK on Aug. 27 after hosting the final weekly YRDFA teleconference of the salmon season to talk about her concerns, her hopes, and what her organization can bring to the table to address the Yukon River salmon crisis.
KYUK: There's so many acronyms in Alaska, and YRDFA is one of a long list there. Can you explain to someone who doesn't know what it does every year during the salmon fishing season?
Fitka: We're a nonprofit organization, and we do not make management decisions. We want to make sure that the communication between the users of the Yukon River and with the managers with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and [United States] Fish and Wildlife Service are hearing each other. Both with the local users, if they have concerns or questions about management, we make sure that there's a platform used to ensure that, and vice versa. If management wants to hear from the local people, we make sure that's also provided, and the perfect scenario is our in-season teleconferences that we have during the season from June all the way to August.
KYUK: Do you feel like that [has been] successful in promoting communication among these communities that live in very different contexts in terms of their subsistence needs?
Fitka: Yeah, I believe every season is successful when we provide the opportunity for local users to jump on a call. And it could be anybody, it doesn't have to be tribal leadership or leaders in the community, could be any user that can jump onto the call to express their questions or concerns or even listen to what's going on on the river. Since I've been on we've kind of focused around providing as much information about what's going on on the river to the users – research, special guests, meetings where we think local industries or leadership should be at voicing their concerns or asking questions. This platform is not only to capture questions and concerns from the users, but also we listen to environmental observations that people are seeing on the river. This teleconference has been going on since the early 2000s, so we've got about 20 years of data, listening to people's changes, their concerns, the size of the runs to the size of the fish. So I think it's a very useful platform that we think is very essential.
KYUK: We're in the first year of a complete closure for chinook on the Yukon. How would you describe the situation on the Yukon, based on what you've heard as executive director?
Fitka: It's very dismal. Even though this is the first year of no salmon fishing within the seven-year agreement, we haven't been fishing for chinook salmon since 2020. It's a big hardship on the people of the Yukon River when they can't go out there and provide for their family, when they can't go out there and teach their children how to get ready for fish camp, get ready for fishing and practice their traditional culture and showing the kids how to put away salmon for the winter. What comes with that is all the social impacts that people are seeing in their communities. It's people getting depressed. And people are tired. They feel like a lot of people have lost hope, which is very scary, because once you lose hope, you know, what is there to fall back on? And I think for not only myself and for our organization, I grew up on the river, I cannot see myself losing that hope. I need that hope because I want to make sure that I ensure that there's salmon for my children in the future. So it's very dismal, it's very hard. How do you prepare for disaster after disaster? And there's nothing really to fall fall back on, besides donations from other regions.
KYUK: I've noticed that the only salmon that people were able to harvest anywhere on the Yukon, and this is mostly limited to the lower Yukon communities, was the summer chum with alternative gear. Is that correct?
Fitka: Yes it was. It was great to see that spike in summer chum, [it] made me happy that people were harvesting what they could this summer on the lower river. But unfortunately, we're seeing a historic low on fall chum. Usually the fall chum mimic summer chum. Unfortunately, we didn't see that this year. It's kind of hard to see one area be able to get salmon where another section was not able to get anything. That's something we will have to deal with.
KYUK: One thing that was a new challenge this year was actually restricting the window for when 4-inch gill nets can be used. What were the impacts of those changes for the communities?
Fitka: Restricting 4-inch was a surprise because many people that use the 4-inch gear are not targeting salmon. It was a shock to see that restriction put in place. They're putting them out now. They're out berry picking. They set their 4-inch when they go out. When they're done, they come back, they pull the net, and it's not even in the water anymore. So it's only a limited time. They're just trying to get some fresh fish for dinner. It's such a small harvest, and it was really hard to hear that they limited that harvest opportunity for non-salmon for the people of the Yukon.
KYUK: It sounds like it's just an inflexible system to say you can only do it during these weekend hours.
Fitka: Precisely. The people in rural communities that rely on our natural resources and have relied on them generation to generation, we live by the species we harvest. You know, the weather is good, let's go out and berry pick. And it's just like when we harvested salmon, we know when to harvest and we know when to cut, because we cut and dry on the days that are going to work. It's that flexibility that agrees with us, and it's not agreeing with management.
KYUK: You said at the beginning of this interview that when you lose hope, that's when all is lost, and that you still have hope. As people consider the situation as it stands currently, what do you hope is able to be improved?
Fitka: I've got a board of 32: 16 board members and 16 alternates, and they're from the river. They're experiencing all these hardships firsthand. So I'm directed by my board to kind of guide me through the year on what I should be working on and we do have a strategic plan for our organization. There's so many organizations on the river, and there's so many entities working on certain things. I want to minimize conflict. Because we're all from the same river. We all depend on the same resources. When we work together, we're much stronger. So we might have differences. We don't agree on everything, but what we do agree on is that we want to fish salmon.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
