In 2024, Alaska and Canada set a new, lower goal for the number of king salmon returning up the Yukon River and into Canada’s Yukon Territory.
Now, fish counters show 2025 returns have again failed to meet that lower target after missing in 2024 as well.
Through Aug. 28, when officials at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) stopped counting, an estimated 23,806 chinook salmon — informally known as kings — had been counted by workers at the sonar site at Eagle, just west of the Yukon border.
Under international agreements, the United States is supposed to allow a minimum number of fish to travel upriver and into the Yukon to maintain the king salmon run and allow fishing in the territory.
In 2024, following years of poor returns, officials in Alaska and Canada agreed to restrict king salmon fishing, including Indigenous subsistence fishing, on the river until escapement — the number of king salmon crossing into Canada — exceeded 42,500 fish.
The ultimate goal of the agreement is to rebuild the number of king salmon returning until 71,000 kings reach Canada each summer.
This year’s figures are slightly lower than they were last year, when 24,183 kings reached Canada, but are nearly double the low of 2022, when only an estimated 12,025 kings returned.
King salmon returns on the Yukon River have steadily declined since 2017, when 73,313 fish passed the sonar at Eagle.
Attention now falls on the Yukon River’s much larger chum salmon run, which is also expected to fail international treaty obligations. As of Sept. 7, ADF&G estimated 276,000 fall chums in the Yukon River, less than a third of the historical run size.
“A run size below 300,000 fall chum salmon is not anticipated to be large enough to meet U.S. tributary goals or Canadian treaty objectives for fall chum salmon,” ADF&G said in an estimate published Sept. 9.
As a result of the shortfall, subsistence fishing for chum salmon, a vital part of Alaska Native traditional culture, continues to be suspended.
Changes in deep-ocean conditions caused by climate change, warming river conditions caused by climate change, commercial fishing, and endemic disease have all been cited as possible reasons for the declining salmon runs.