The Yukon River’s chinook salmon need everybody working together if they are going to survive.

“It’s close to extinction phase and we still have a small window to make a difference,” Nicole Tom, the chief of the Little Salmon-Carmacks First Nation, told the Star Thursday afternoon.

Yukon River chinook salmon must migrate as far as 3,000 kilometres, crossing two countries, to reach their spawning grounds. Because of this, management is a joint effort between nations.

But Yukon MP Brendan Hanley says the current U.S.-Canada treaty governing Yukon River salmon management is too narrowly focused and not up to this task.

So, he gathered a group together, including Tom, to go to Washington, D.C. to try to do something about it.

“We cannot manage this through the existing mechanism of the Yukon River (Salmon) Treaty,” Hanley said in a Thursday morning interview with the Star. “And that’s clear.”

After meeting with his Alaskan congressional counterparts, Hanley said a new framework is needed to work on Yukon River salmon recovery.

“We’re asking for something bigger,” he said.

For several years running now, the number of chinook salmon in the Yukon River — and chum salmon, to a lesser extent — has plummeted.

A wide range of problems have been identified in both the river and ocean, from habitat change to over-harvesting to knock-on effects from the commercial pollock fishery in the Bering Sea.

The Yukon’s salmon are managed jointly by the U.S. and Canada through the Yukon River Panel, which was created more than 20 years ago via a treaty.

Each side gets to appoint six members, and the panel then sets targets for how many chinook and chum salmon need to reach the Canadian spawning grounds to maintain a healthy population.

But Hanley said the panel only really exists to set the goal for escapement — how many salmon get through to the Canada — and even on that they can’t always agree.

“Not only has (the panel) not been successful in late in getting to agreement on escapement goals, but it doesn’t speak to the larger issues,” Hanley said.

So, this Washington trip is the start of an effort to create something better.

“I was looking for ways to elevate the issue, at least as far as my scope of my role can take me” Hanley. “To ignite that the conversation between the U.S. and Canada.”

Hanley went to Washington for meetings between Nov. 14 and 16, and, along with Tom, was accompanied by Yukon Senator Pat Duncan and two members of the non-governmental advisory Yukon Salmon Sub-Committee, Cheyenne Bradley and Dennis Zimmermann.

Zimmermann and Bradley also sit on the Yukon River Panel.

The group met with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Alaska congressional Rep. Mary Peltola, as well as congressman Bruce Westerman on Arkansas, who chairs the House Committee on Natural Resources.

They also met with staff members from Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and representatives from the Sierra Club.

The canary in the coal mine

Though the issues with chinook salmon have been apparent in the Yukon for many years now, it is only recently that the Alaskans began to experience severe drops in numbers.

Beginning in 2022, there was a precipitous drop in the number of chinook salmon being counted entering the mouth of the river at the Bering Sea, with as little as 25 per cent of historical numbers being recorded.

Zimmermann told the Star this is because problems tend to begin in spawning grounds and move downstream from there, comparing those earlier problems to a canary in a coal mine.

“It’s taken 15 years for it to reach the mouth of the river; everyone is in the same boat now,” he said. “You feel the pressure at the headwaters first, and then it trickles down.”

As a result, Murkowski and Peltola are now hearing about it from their constituencies.

“They’ve heard it at the community level,” Zimmermann said.

“Typically, these processes are very management-oriented and technical, and the stories of the sacrifice and the suffering are cutting through all that now.”

Peltola is Indigenous, with a history of work in fisheries. Murkowski is a long-time Alaskan politician.

They were both well-briefed and knowledgeable on the issue of salmon, according to those at the meetings.

“They were very well-informed, very empathetic, very much looking for solutions,” Zimmermann said. “Outside of the box, not the traditional ones we have.”

Hanley said he believes he has found in them some allies to try to figure out what is a complex ecological and jurisdictional issue.

First, they have to come to an agreement on what the goal is.

According to Hanley and Zimmermann, the Alaskan perspective has always been to try to maintain a fish population that allows for harvest.

“They work on maximum sustainable yield.” Zimmermann said of the Alaskan approach.

In Canada, the long-term conservation of the species comes first.

“If there’s an opportunity for harvest in the short term, you’re potentially trading off future returns,” said Zimmermann.

But Hanley doesn’t see this as too much of an obstacle.

“I don’t know that there are significant areas of disagreement,” he said.

“It’s just that there hasn’t been a forum to really discuss or talk about these options.”

Because numbers are now so low on both sides of the border, Hanley is looking to now have discussions on longer-term fishing bans.

A consistent snag these discussions always run into are some of the jurisdictional issues involving U.S. state policy versus federal policy.

Hanley said the Alaskan state government is more concerned with managing salmon as a productive fishery, rather than trying to rebuild an ecosystem.

The federal government under President Joe Biden seemed to him a bit more open to long-term conservation efforts.

First Nations groups, on the other hand, are speaking with a more unified voice.

Chief Tom said this was the clearest message she heard – that Indigenous groups on both sides of the border are saying the same thing.

This is also what Tom said she heard from both Murkowski and Peltola.

“They were aware of what is happening, and I really feel they want to work with us to champion this and to help the First Nations who are feeling such a soul wound,” Tom said.

With such a complex issue and so many people involved with so many different needs, Zimmermann said, these meetings are simply a step toward getting all the different sides going in the same direction.

“I think we’re getting closer, because the conservation concern is getting so much more real for everybody,” he said. “Everybody is feeling it.”

Despite all of these pressures, Zimmermann said, the chinook salmon are resilient, and this is not a time to lose hope.

“It’s just not a possibility for us to give up on the salmon,” he said.