January 29, 2015 — Recent Board of Fisheries appointee Roland Maw’s relationship with the state government has been mischaracterized, according to the president of the fisheries organization where Maw served as executive director.
Maw’s former leadership of the United Cook Inlet Drift Association stirred controversy when Gov. Bill Walker appointed him to the Alaska Board of Fisheries this month. Walker appointed Maw after asking board President Karl Johnstone to resign, Johnstone wrote in an opinion column published in the Empire and other Alaska papers.
Soldotna-based UCIDA is involved in a lawsuit filed in 2013 concerning federal oversight of Alaska’s salmon fisheries, which caused Johnstone to question Walker’s disappoint that Maw’s name wasn’t put forward as a nominee for commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
“Maw, who was the director of UCIDA … and himself a commercial fisherman, had been personally and in a representative capacity actively participating in a lawsuit in federal court advocating that the management of our salmon resources in Cook Inlet, Prince William Sound, and elsewhere be taken away from the State of Alaska and turned over to the feds to manage,” Johnstone wrote.
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