For the first tiime in living memory king and chum salmon have not migrated up the Yukon River. Drying racks on the banks normally filled with salmon are empty. "Nobody has fish in their freezer right now", says a tribe member who grew up with the annual salmon harvest. Alaska has banned salmon fishing on the Yukon in response to the dewindling number of fish. Alaska natives rely on the annual spawn to subsist over the winter. They are frustrated by the lack of control they have over a traditional resource.
Scientists are unable to conclusively pinpoint a cause of the failure, but many think a warming Bering Sea and overexploitation of fish stocks at sea are primary factors. Salmon are often by-catch of commerical netting operations. King or chinook salmon have been in decline for years, but chum salmon were plentiful until last year. Fall chum numbers are dangerously low on the river, one of the longest in North America.
Alaska natives are paying the price of practices of previous generations, and are outraged that the state and federal governments are not more responsive to their concerns. Salmon protein is critical to their diets in a land that goes into deep freeze during the winter. In the remote Alaska interior, roads can be dozens of miles away, and grocery stores are hard to find taking hourse to reach, even by plane. A gallon of milk can cost $10 and and pound of steak $34.
Alaska native tribes have petitioned the federal government for aid and a congressional hearing on the salmon collapse. Alaska's GOP governor has requested federal disaster relief, and coordinated an airlift of 90,000 pounds of fish to needy villages. A descendant of a village founder told an interviewer, "Salmon, to us, is life."