June 14, 2018 — The fisheries group established to try to defuse some of Cook Inlet’s salmon wars is off to an uncertain start.
Gov. Bill Walker issued Administrative Order 291 forming a Cook Inlet Salmon Task Force on June 4, meant to address some of the notoriously fraught salmon allocation political issues in the Cook Inlet region, the most densely populated area and heavily used fisheries in the state. However, the group had already met twice before the administrative order was issued, and at the last meeting, the group suspended meetings for the summer because of the busy fishing activities of the summer in Alaska.
A variety of people attended the initial May 9 meeting, noted as “work group members” in the notes published on Fish and Game’s website. Among them were multiple United Cook Inlet Drift Association members, commercial set gillnet fishermen, sportfishermen and representatives of the Mat-Su Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission. The 18 attendees were split up into three working groups to discuss fishery issues, according to the notes made by consulting firm Professional Growth Systems, which facilitated the meeting.
The mission statement and the membership aren’t pinned down yet, though, said Walker’s Press Secretary Austin Baird in an email.
“Formation of the task force has been postponed until after the fishing season to enable broad stakeholder participation. Exact dates have not yet been determined for meetings, and membership has not been finalized,” he said. “The task force itself will determine what observations or recommendations to make, and any suggestions will then go through more formal boards and advisory committee processes.”