In this episode, we’re joined by Tim Bristol, the Executive Director of SalmonState, to discuss the urgent challenges and exciting successes in protecting Alaska’s iconic salmon populations. With nearly three decades of experience in conservation, Tim offers valuable insights into the complexities of salmon recovery, from commercial fisheries to the influence of Indigenous communities. We dive into the surprising story behind Alaska’s sockeye returns, the role of climate change, and how local efforts are making a difference.
If you’re passionate about salmon and sustainable conservation, this episode is for you! Tune in to learn what you can do to help ensure a future for these incredible fish.
Show Notes with Tim Bristol on SalmonState. Hit play below! 👇🏻
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(The full episode transcript is at the bottom of this blogpost) 👇🏻
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Episode Chapters with Tim Bristol on SalmonState
3:49 – Tim, who has been involved in conservation for 30 years, shares his journey into working with SalmonState, an organization dedicated to preserving Alaska’s status as “the salmon state.”
6:11 – We discuss the significance of salmon in Alaska as an indicator of ecosystem health. Tim highlights the vastness of the region, spanning from Ketchikan to the North Slope, and the importance of the Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the U.S., as a key salmon habitat.
12:37 – Tim discusses the current state of Chinook salmon in Alaska. He contrasts their decline with the resurgence of sockeye salmon, noting that while sockeye populations have flourished, Chinook salmon are facing severe challenges. These include restrictions on fishing in areas like the Kenai River and the Yukon River, where harvests have been completely banned for years. Factors contributing to this decline include food scarcity due to shifting ocean conditions and predation by marine mammals, such as killer whales, which are consuming millions of Chinooks annually.
21:55 – Tim outlines several key projects and initiatives his team is focusing on for the upcoming year. These include engaging with the Trump administration to push Canada to address issues around transboundary rivers, advocating for responsible forest management that prioritizes salmon, and pushing for legislative protections to preserve water quality and safeguard salmon habitats. Additionally, reducing bycatch from industrial trawlers remains a major priority.
27:38 – Tim one emerging issue which is hatchery fish production, with concerns that hatchery fish may compete with wild salmon for resources, particularly food. There’s also the question of where these hatchery fish go after being released, as some may stray into wild systems, potentially disrupting those ecosystems.
29:25 – He highlights various ways listeners can get involved, such as following their organization’s updates on social media and signing up for the weekly news roundup. Tim emphasizes the importance of supporting sustainable fishing by purchasing wild Alaska sockeye salmon. He also encourages visiting Alaska to support local economies and to be mindful of where to spend money.
31:57 – Tim discusses several ongoing issues related to salmon conservation. One key topic is the West Susitna River, the fourth largest salmon producer in Alaska, which is threatened by a proposed industrial access road. This road would be used to access a gold mine, with public funds supporting the project. The region is known for its massive smelt (hooligan) run, which is important to the local ecosystem. The road construction has sparked controversy, with concerns from sport fishing guides, local residents, and conservation groups like the Wild Salmon Center, who worry about the impact on the area’s pristine fishing environment.
Tim also explains the role of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA), a state agency that funds large projects, which is involved in financing this road.
36:17 – I mention Tim’s work on their website, an article entitled “My Turn”. This piece was written in reaction to accusations that their organization is comprised of outsiders aiming to disrupt Alaska’s development. Tim explains that half of their 13-member team, including himself, have deep roots in Alaska, with some being Alaska Native. They have backgrounds in commercial and sport fishing, illustrating their connection to the state.
37:22 – Tim mentions that their organization hosts weekly updates and a series called “Salmon Stories,” profiling individuals with strong ties to salmon. These profiles include sport fishing guides, commercial fishermen, and Alaska Native elders. Although they’ve considered starting a podcast, they currently focus on video interviews and transcriptions shared through their “Salmon Stories.”
39:59 – Tim highlights the robust conservation community in Alaska, particularly focusing on groups involved with salmon conservation and the intersection with fishing. Key organizations mentioned include the Susitna River Coalition and the Wild Salmon Center, which has a strong presence in Alaska under the leadership of Emily Anderson.
41:07 – Despite concerns about fish populations, Tim believes that wild-caught sockeye and coho are good choices for consumers, though he advises vigilance in ensuring that fish is responsibly sourced.
47:01 – Tim highlights how Alaska Native communities have long, uninterrupted histories in the region and emphasizes the importance of working with them.
Over the past few decades, Tim notes, tribal governments have reemerged as key players in conservation, especially in protecting and restoring salmon habitats. They are now at the center of conservation discussions, and Tim believes that their involvement has significantly improved conservation efforts. Indigenous communities also offer a different perspective on timeframes, focusing on long-term sustainability, which is crucial for successful conservation.
52:43 – We talk about the unique aspects of Juneau, Alaska. Tim describes it as a self-contained town with a population of 30,000, accessible only by plane or ferry. Despite its size, it has various amenities, including a hospital, symphony, ice rink, and ski area.
You can find SalmonState on Instagram @salmonstateak.
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Visit their website at SalmonState.org.
Read the Full Podcast Transcript Below
Episode Transcript
Dave (2s):
What current activity do you think is the biggest thing affecting salmon recovery in Alaska? Is it bycatch in the commercial fisheries, the mining companies cross border, international politics, or maybe even climate change? What if there is something you could do today to help move the needle for recovering and protecting Alaska’s salmon species? Stay tuned as we share a path forward with the salmon state. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip, And what you can do to give back to the fish species we all love. Hey, I’m Dave, host of the Wet Fly Swing podcast. I’ve been fly fishing since I was a little kid.
Dave (42s):
I grew up around a little fly shop and have created one of the largest fly fishing podcasts in this country. I’ve also interviewed more of the greatest fly anglers and conservationists than just about anyone out there. Tim Bristol, executive director of the Salmon State, is going to share his insights into almost 30 years of trying to protect salmon in Alaska. You’re gonna find out how logging was replaced by more sustainable activities in his home area and how it’s possible that 72 million sockeye just returned to Alaska recently. But we’re still seeing big changes in Chinook runs and what the connection is to Idaho’s four lower Snake river dams. Plus we’re gonna find out how they work with indigenous people and how this is critical to sustaining these populations.
Dave (1m 27s):
Alaska may be my next home. Water. Here we go. Tim Bristol from salmonstate.org. How you doing, Tim?
Tim (1m 36s):
I’m doing well. Just staring out at the rain here in Southeast Alaska Day. Oh, awesome. Seems like 100 of it’s straight rain.
Dave (1m 44s):
Has it been, yeah, the cooling is is, you know, we’re in Oregon, so we’re south of you, but it has been, it feels like a very wet winter so far. Is that kinda how it’s been for you guys, or is that just normal? Does it rain every day?
Tim (1m 55s):
Well, it, you know, it does. But you hope by, by January it’s, you know, it’s more snow than rain. It’s been incredibly warm.
Dave (2m 2s):
Oh, it has. Like what, what’s the temperature? What’s your average temperature out there?
Tim (2m 5s):
I think today it’s like 42 degrees and you know, by this time of year we should be in the, the twenties and low thirties and we should have snow in the ground and the skiers should be happy. But everybody’s pretty, pretty miserable right now.
Dave (2m 16s):
See, you’re, you’re feeling that’s the ultimate, see, I live in the place where 42, 39 and rain is like the normal. Yep. You know what I mean? You guys are feeling what it feels like. I always feel like I’ve heard these stats. I’m not sure if they’re true that Alaska has like the highest suicide rate in Oregon and Washington. All of them are close behind because of the weather. But do you find that the weather, the 39 and raining is a lot worse than 20 in the snow?
Tim (2m 40s):
It is, but you know, I’ve, I live in southeast Alaska and you know, it’s a temperate rainforest and we kind of do always go up and down below that freezing point. So if you’re going to live here, you just have to embrace it and, and honestly, I think it’s never really bothered me very much. And I think some people think I’m really weird that it doesn’t, but I don’t know, living this close to the ocean and then having a forest directly adjacent to it and you know, you’re kind of amphibious and you either embrace that or, or leave You should probably leave. Or leave. Yeah, exactly. That’s
Dave (3m 9s):
Right. Good. Okay, well this is gonna be great. Today we are gonna talk about, you know, the salmon state and just kind of an update of what’s going on your organization. I know there’s some big talk, I mean, Bristol Bay always comes up, I hear these things where it’s, you know, it’s in the news and then it feels like it’s gone and then it comes back. So we’re gonna talk about some of these big issues. And obviously Chinook, you know, if we talk species is a big species that I think is a big, gets everybody worried because I think it’s, again, back to that story where you would think that Alaska was, you know, never gonna have issues. But now we’re seeing some with Chinook. So we’re gonna talk maybe that and some other topics. But first, before we get there, bring us back into your story. How did, how’d you get into this? How’d you come to be working for Salmon State and getting into the conservation stuff?
Tim (3m 49s):
Well, I’ve been doing conservation work for 30 years now in Alaska Salmon state. We’re 10 years old now. We’re a staff of 13 here in Alaska. And as the name lays out, we’re all about trying to re ensure that Alaska remains the, the salmon state, the, the home of the last great wild salmon runs. And yeah, I, I came over from the Alaska program of Trout Unlimited and had a 10 year stint there and it was great. And I just got to the point where I wanted to try something a little bit different, you know, maybe cast the net a little bit wider. Te was amazing. Chris Wood, you know, the big boss at TE gave us all kinds of freedom to try all kinds of things, but, you know, we wanted to probably do a little bit more work with commercial fishermen and with Alaska native communities and things like that.
Tim (4m 36s):
So, but we still work pretty closely with TU and a whole host of issues and, you know, it was all born a foundation that gave us money. Back in the day, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, they had a wild salmon ecosystem initiative, and we did some polling and some focus group work to try to figure out what really engages and animates Alaskans and salmon was up there with education and employment, like the most important things to Alaskan salmon was right there. And, and ensuring that we had wild abundance salmon for, you know, generations to come was a, it’s, it just pulled so high. It resonated so well with people across the political and social spectrum that we decided you just put it in the name and lay it out there and saying like, this is a, you know, Alaska is a salmon state.
Tim (5m 18s):
And, and then our job is to sort of hold government industry accountable and say like, Hey, you’re not living up to those, those standards that are required to ensure we remain the salmon state. So that’s sort of our, our work, our mission. Right.
Dave (5m 32s):
Wow. Yeah, and I, I feel like, again, there’s, you know, I go back, I remember hearing somebody talk about, you know, the Pacific Northwest and like the old growth forest and talking about how like Oregon, Washington had these old growth forests and now they’re almost gone and, but the fact that Oregon is old growth forest, right? That’s what, without ’em is it the same state? And it feels like with salmon, that’s what you, that’s where you’re laying your stake, like without salmon. Alaska is not Alaska, right? That’s right. That’s kinda what you guys are saying. So how does that, you know, I mean there’s a lot of topics here. I guess maybe let’s start with high level, like right now, what are some of the big topics issues you guys are, are working on? Are there just a whole bunch or do you guys focus on a few?
Tim (6m 11s):
Well, the place is so big, and the other reason we picked salmon is it’s such a good indicator of ecosystem health, right? We have them from Kechika all the way to the North slope, and that’s a span of almost a thousand miles and totally different ecosystem types. So some of the big issues for us, so here in southeast Alaska, the Tonga National Forest is the biggest national forest in the country, and it is a old growth temperate rainforest. It’s this archipelago, a forest of violence, huge salmon producer, you know, there’s three big producers that flow from interior British Colombian out to the, out to the ocean at Ketchikan and Wrangle, and here in Juno, the Unix to Keenan to Taku. And we’ll maybe talk a little bit more about more about that in a second.
Tim (6m 52s):
And then you have the rest of the Tongass National Forest on these big and small islands, and we are on the cusp of a new forest planning process. I think this is really the first time that we can have a, have a plan that sort of dictates what you do in this huge 17 million acre forest that is not premised on large scale logging. Right? We had a lot of logging here in the fifties and sixties and seventies and eighties and even into the nineties. That’s no longer the case. The the economy and the, and the culture here have just totally shifted away from it. It’s, it’s sport and commercial fishing, recreation and tourism and government are really the big drivers of the economy here. And I think we’re at that, we’re at a point where some of that old lag of, you know, we need to get back to the good old days of, of timber production and, and all the jobs are provided.
Tim (7m 41s):
I think that’s, that’s finally sort of in the rear view mirror. And so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out with the new administration. I think there’s gonna be some pushback of, you know, in trying to, trying to bring back some of the, the logging and road building. But I don’t think that the communities here in the region, you know, when they weigh in and, and talk to the, our congressional delegation, they’ll say like, Hey, we’re, we’re not interested in going back to that kind of approach that, you know, we’re just a different place now. So that’s, that’s pretty exciting. And we’re gonna be leaning in really hard on that there. The big rivers I just mentioned, the Euch and the Sta and the Taku there, the major salmon drivers of this region on our side of the border, in the us the mouths of these rivers are all in some kind of protected status, either wilderness, national monument or non-development land use designation as per the forest service over in British Columbia.
Tim (8m 29s):
It’s a totally different story. The mining industry in, in Canada has renamed this transboundary region as the golden triangle. There’s about a hundred mining proposals at some stage of exploration or development, including a couple that are already in operation. And one of ’em we’re concerned is already starting to leak from behind his tailings dam.
Dave (8m 48s):
Oh, wow. So this is in Canada. So you’ve got, what you’re saying is there’s a lot of exploration in Canada, but in, in the US there’s not as much in this area.
Tim (8m 56s):
Exactly. You know, my coworker Heather Hardcastle grew up fishing, commercial fishing on the TA River just south of here. She, she says that we’re sitting ducks and in Canada there’s ticking time bombs. And I think that’s a really, really accurate way of describing the situation. And what we’re trying to do is create some kind of international framework where we can discuss what is and what isn’t appropriate for Shared rivers. There’s a, there’s an agreement between the two countries, the Boundary Waters treaty that’s supposed to govern these things, and it’s never really been applied up here. So, and that’s, you know, this is a really bipartisan issue. Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican, Lisa Murkowski Republican, and, and we’ll see, we don’t know, are we just, we just elected a new representative.
Tim (9m 36s):
They’ve all weighed in saying like, Hey, you know, we need a seat at the table when it comes to how we’re gonna manage these rivers. The problem right now, there isn’t even a table. So that’s what we’re pushing for. So that’s a big, that’s a big issue for us. That’s, we use this, we have kind of a sub-brand, salmon and Beyond Borders. If you visit our website, you can also find salmon and beyond borders. And we have a whole essentially international effort dedicated to that, you know, Bristol Bay and the long saga struggle to prevent construction of the Pebble mine. That’s still something that’s very important to us. And we work very closely with a whole host of groups on that. And you know, that’s ebbed and flowed throughout the years. Right now we’re in a good place. The Environmental Protection Agency put some safeguards in place.
Tim (10m 20s):
There’s active litigation from the mining company and the state of Alaska that, that’s challenging that those decisions by EPA and you know, you never know what the courts are gonna decide. Yeah.
Dave (10m 31s):
Why does the state of Alaska, I would think that with the salmon, like you said, salmon state, I mean the, the bipartisan everybody knows without it you lose the salmon. I mean, that’s not gonna be good for Alaska. Why does the state of Alaska go against that, this situation? What’s the benefit of that for them?
Tim (10m 47s):
It was just this weird psychology up here, right? Where we had a governor back in the day, Wally Hickle, he essentially said to the United States, he said, let us make our own mistakes. Right? We, we, we oftentimes, you know, just don’t wanna, wanna listen to the lessons. Yeah.
Dave (11m 1s):
That’s why people live. Right. That’s the thing about Alaska is that people love Alaska because you are not having to, people aren’t telling you what to do. Right. That’s kind of part of that Alaska mentality.
Tim (11m 10s):
Exactly. And you know, the governor Mike Dunleavy is in place right now. He’s just, he’s just really pro development no matter what. And I think he kind of thinks this, I think he, he thinks of it in a more, more of an ideological than a, than a practical perspective. Right. He doesn’t like the federal government telling Alaska what to do. And so he kind of recoils against any action from the Environmental Protection Agency that flies in the face of the fact that the original petition to do this work was authored by a bunch of tribal governments from the region. About 85% of the people living in the Bristol Bay region are indigenous. And then they were joined by the commercial fishing fleet, you know, which is still a very important economic driver out there.
Tim (11m 54s):
And then, you know, all the sport fishermen and lodge owners and guides and, and then frankly, things that are kind of emerging, like bear viewing operations all weighed in. It was an amazing sort of across the board push for protection. And, you know, our governor’s definitely on the, in the minority, and I would submit on the wrong side of this one. So we’ll see how it plays out. I will say that at the federal level, we had, president Obama took the first steps. President Trump was the one who actually rejected the permit applications from the mining company via the Army Corps of Engineers. And then outgoing President Biden kind of sealed the deal. So, you know, we’re, we’re guardly optimistic that this is something that cuts across the kind of the traditional lines of battle.
Tim (12m 36s):
Right. So
Dave (12m 37s):
That’s great. That’s great to hear. So, I mean, it seems like with Alaska, like you said, it’s so big, there’s so much going on. It seems like, you know, always the question, especially people listening now, where do you start? How can we help? What can we do? Can you give us the chinook from your ex take? Like what is the current status? How are we looking? What’s going on? You know, what’s the future hold for Chinook?
Tim (12m 58s):
Yeah, I mean, you compare, you compare and contrast it, right? Bristol Bay a couple years ago had its biggest sockeye seminar on ever. It was 72 million Phish came back. Wow. It’s astounding, you know, that the experts think that, that maybe it was the biggest run ever. ’cause they can kind of go back into some of the, the sediment beds at the bottom of these lakes and sort of carbon date and kind of reconstruct runs. It’s fascinating. And they, they think that that run is maybe the biggest run ever. It clearly sockeye are a winner right now. And climate with climate change, Chinook on the other hand, are in really, really big trouble throughout the range in Alaska. You know, we, we don’t have any sport fishing on the, on the Kenai River. The, you know, the location of the largest sport caught king salmon ever.
Tim (13m 39s):
And we were totally shut down from king salmon fishing here in Southeast, almost the entire southeast Alaska, almost the entire year. They’ve closed the Yukon River to all harvest, including for, you know, custom air and traditional use by native people for seven years. So the entire life cycle of a Chinook, it’s really dire. And there’s a lot of different factors at play. At least that’s what researchers think. Everything from, there’s a, when out migrating Chinooks, mts get to the ocean, the food that they need to have almost immediately is not there. Maybe that’s due to some, you know, shifting things with climate and water temperature and that kind of stuff.
Tim (14m 22s):
There’s, you know, the thing that a lot of people don’t often talk about, but is clearly a big factor is predation by marine mammals. University of Washington thinks that killer whales are eating up to 2 million mature Chinook each year, sort of Pacific rim wide. So, which is incredible, you know, and if I, if I was a killer whale, if I was an orca, that’s what I would eat
Dave (14m 44s):
Up. I’d take the big Yeah, the biggest, that’s the thing about the Chinook, they’re, they’re the biggest salmon out there, right? Yeah. So they’re, they’re the best food that if you’re gonna pick a salmon, you might as well take a chinook. Yeah.
Tim (14m 53s):
And then, you know, so, so, you know, there’s just a, it’s really complex. I will say that the thing that we focused on, because we feel like we have some control over it over in the short midterm, is to try to try to reduce the amount of interceptive Chinook, particularly heading back to Western Alaska rivers by industrial scale fishing boats trawlers, most of which are based outta Seattle. And they, they haul these big nets behind, behind their boats, some 300 feet long, and they essentially catch everything in Wow. The ocean. And they’re targeting pollock, which goes into file fish sandwiches and simi fake crab and everything else is essentially thrown overboard.
Dave (15m 36s):
No kidding. Yeah.
Tim (15m 38s):
So far this year, it’s been about 32,000 Chinook that have been observed, recorded what they call bycatch in these straw fisheries. And it’s become really controversial up here. It’s, it’s, again, it’s one of those issues that sort of cuts across sort of the old lines of demarcation. And you see Alaska native people and resident sport anglers and guide services and commercial fishermen groups that don’t really agree on much of anything else saying that we need to, we need to reign this in. So that’s been kind of a, one of the other big issues that we’ve been working on. And do we think that that is like the thing that’s going to solve, or the Chinook situation? No, but it, it is one that we have some control on over, you know,
Dave (16m 21s):
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Dave (17m 2s):
Yeah.
Tim (17m 3s):
On rivers like the Kenai, I don’t have ’em off the top of my head, but you know, they have counted fish on the, on the Kenai for a long time. And, and you know, we’re, we’re way below what they, you know, they, they term as the, the optimal escapement goal. And some of the rivers here, like the Taku, which is a pretty significant Chinook producer, you know, some of the, we’ve had some of the worst years ever on the Taku, you know, like just a few thousand fish. And I think like the escaping goal for the Taku is 26 to 30,000 or something like that. Even the Noga River out Bristol Bay, which has, you know, been one that sort of, kind of stood out for quite a few years is, is starting to suffer some significant declines. I don’t think they’ve met their escaping goals on the UTI Act for the last few years.
Tim (17m 46s):
So yeah. We’re at, we’re at a historically low level of returning Chinook
Dave (17m 51s):
For Chinook and then everything else. Do you have a, a feel for, you know, the, all the other species? How do you do that? Right? How do you know how all these other species and all these other areas with these tens of hundreds of millions of acres?
Tim (18m 3s):
Yeah, you know, I, I will say that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game spends an enormous amount of time and money and throws a lot of personnel in trying to actually count fish on a lot of systems, right? And so they have escapement goals for a lot of the big producers. Like I, like I said, sockeyes seem to be doing really well. Bristol Bay, we’ve had tremendous runs that same river just south of where I’m, you know, talking to you today from Taku had a, had their best sockeye run in over a decade, Chinook or a, a coho or all over the place. You know, I, that’s one place. If I was, if I had my, if I had my way and had lots of money, I would ask, or I would require the Alaska Department of Fish and game to, you know, start really doing a better job of, of managing coho.
Tim (18m 46s):
You know, we just, just assume they’re there. And we don’t really have escapement goals for coho. I’ve heard, I’ve heard that South Central had, has had some terrible coho years the last few years. So, and around Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula region, this is sit in the river drainages here in Southeast. It went from good on the north end of this, you know, ’cause the, this region alone, the Tongas is about 250, 275 miles long. So on the north end it was pretty good. And on the south end, I guess it was, there was pretty spectacular coho fishing. So there, that’s all over the map. I think one of the things that really helps the southeast region is a fact. They think there’s probably over 10,000 co-host systems in the Tongass National Forest. Some ’em are really small.
Tim (19m 26s):
But that diversity of the portfolio I think really helps. And then, you know, chums, yeah, chum salmon pretty okay down here. Western Alaska, it’s again, you know, disaster are close to at levels. And you know, back to the TRA fishery last year, the trawlers by caught about 500,000 Chinook. Oh wow. During their operations, during their operations. A lot of those were hatchery fish from the, from Japan and the, and Russia and Korea. But about 70,000 of those chums were bound for Western rivers. And you know, you’ll hear the tra industry will say, well, that’s just a small percentage.
Tim (20m 6s):
And, you know, people live in these communities that have caught chum for thousands of years will say, well, 70,000 is a lot more than zero. So it’s a mixed bag. There’s a lot to be concerned about. There’s a lot to keep us busy.
Dave (20m 28s):
Yeah. Are you the steelhead, you’re the salmon state, but are you the also the steelhead state? Or is that one that doesn’t that, you know, you don’t have enough time? No, def
Tim (20m 33s):
Definitely, you know, but that’s, you know, that’s a whole as you as you know, I mean yeah. The steelheaders are a whole other species and we, and you know, we, we work with so many different sectors. I mean, I I lived in Homer, Alaska for 10 years and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the Anchor River, which is just, just north of Homer. It’s a great little steelhead system. It’s one of the more northerly steelhead systems. And, and that one sort of, that one seems to be doing okay, although it’s a non glaciated system. So there’s concerns about warming waters. And then here in Southeast, you know, travel Unlimited has a, has a pretty cool program where they’re trying to identify systems that they believe have steelhead in them that are not in what we call the end analogous waters catalog.
Tim (21m 17s):
And they’re, they’re finding new systems that have never been identified officially as having steelhead in them. And they’ve got a guy here in here in Juno’s got the dream job of wandering around streams in the spring looking for steelhead. Oh
Dave (21m 29s):
Wow. There go it’s
Tim (21m 30s):
Hard work person. Someone’s gotta do it. And then, you know, some of the big systems, the taku and that there’s definitely a, a, a significant steelhead run. It’s kind of mysterious though that I don’t think anybody really knows how many are there. So, but it, you know, especially Southeast Alaska is definitely steelhead country and there’s quite a few opportunities. Most of the runs are pretty small. They’re not, they’re not long river systems. Right. ’cause they’re island based river systems.
Dave (21m 55s):
That’s right. Yeah. We’ve done, we’ve done some episodes recently on that, so this is good. Okay. And so what is it, you know, just looking again, maybe take us back to the salmon state. What, what is, you know, as you look out, it’s, it’s a good time right? Early January, February. What are some projects you’re looking out that you guys are gonna be really digging into this year? Next year?
Tim (22m 14s):
I think it’s approaching the, the Trump administration about, you know, really kind of pushing Canada to come to the negotiating table on those trans boundary rivers that we talked about. You know, it’s, it’s trying to put some sideboards or, you know, pour some concrete or in around this draft forest plan that’s, you know, we wanna forest plan the space mostly on salmon, right? Like, you know, it just, look, If you take care of salmon, you take care of so many things. And that’s sort of our, our platform, our position moving forward with when it comes to management of this, this big national forest. It’ll probably be a little bit of logging, but it’s gotta be done smart. It’s gotta be done the right way. And, and you know, the wood, that cut does come from the forest, hopefully will go to support local businesses, not get exported in around to Asia, which has been the, a lot of times what’s happened in the past.
Tim (22m 60s):
We have a state legislative session that’s gonna be starting here soon. And we’re always trying to push some proactive legislation dealing with protecting water quality and making sure that some really important salmon systems have, have proper zoning and setbacks when it comes to development. So it’s just a, it’s just a whole host of issues, you know? And it’s all playing out in a place that has 3 million lakes more coastline, the rest of the United States. You know, just, it’s just an, it’s an enormous landscape. And then I think probably other big one for us is just try to see if we can slow down the rate of bycatch associated with those trawlers I was talking about. Yeah.
Dave (23m 37s):
The trawlers. Yeah. The bycatch is a, is a big thing. How do you, I guess that kind of goes back to the partnerships, collaborations maybe. How do you, you, what’s your plan to get there? Maybe you guys could, you could talk about a little bit about maybe some collaboration, some successes you’ve had over the years.
Tim (23m 51s):
Yeah, I think really trying to use the model that kind of evolved, I’d say pretty much organically out in Bristol Bay, right? Mm. So, right. You, you have the largest sockeye salmon producing system in the world. Also some of the, you know, best rainbow fishing on the planet. And all of a sudden it was like late, the early two thousands, there was this rumor happening that they’d found one of the world’s largest golden copper deposits. And I think people in the region at first were like, well, this might be a way to diversify the economy. And then a few of us started to kind of dig into it a little bit and then reached out to some mining engineers and others that had experience and knowledge. And they were like, oh my god. You know, you look at the, the size of the proposed excavation, the amount of standing and flowing water.
Tim (24m 34s):
And they were, you know, we were told pretty quickly by some people in the mining industry that you have to stop this, this is gonna be a catastrophe. And then, you know, over time at this weird, interesting alliance evolved of, I was working for Trout Unlimited and started talking to a lot of the lodge owners in the region and, you know, their whole business model. It’s interesting ’cause a lot of those lodges, you know, salmon is part of it, but it’s really about trout. It’s really about rainbow trout fishing. Oh, it’s, you know, that’s, that’s sort of how they make their money. So they were on board and then the commercial fishing industry and, and out in Bristol Bay you still have, you know, several thousand boats, 32 foot gitters that are working for about six weeks to harvest.
Tim (25m 16s):
And sometimes they take up to half of that sockeye run. And that’s, that’s proven to be about what you can do and be sustainable. And that’s, you know, that’s almost a billion dollar a year industry. And then, like I mentioned at the outset, you have 32 Alaska native communities in a region about the size of Wisconsin. And they have been there, you know, literally, well almost forever 10,000 years or so. And, you know, they make up the most of the population. And through a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, a really interesting powerful coalition came forward and, and we all kind of pushed for the same thing. And I think that’s sort of the model we try to use when it comes to, you know, preventing something really, I would submit dumb from occurring or, you know, hopefully, you know, pushing for something progressive, visionary protective through the legislative process.
Tim (26m 9s):
None of it’s easy. But that, you know, that seems to be the recipe that works better than anything else is try to figure out what you all agree on and spend all your time in that area of agreement and, you know.
Dave (26m 20s):
Right, right, right. And, and for Bristol Bay, it seems like, I guess it’s a little clearer, right? On Bristol Bay, you have this pebble mine, right? And it’s like, okay, we gotta stop that. But I guess the other issue, like you said, are not quite as, as clean, whether that’s trans, you know, international stuff or the schnuck, which really, it sounds like we don’t really know exactly. We know there’s a lot of things going, but we don’t, we can’t just say, okay, if we do that, that’ll fix things. Right?
Tim (26m 45s):
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s really difficult with Chinook, you know, I just, that’s when it’s just, you gotta do everything you possibly can to apply a precautionary principle or a, you know, a conservation first approach and you know, all these things, right? It’s like all the things in society, when you take things away from people, it’s, the reaction isn’t always good. And, you know, people here have been used to being able to essentially do what they want and always had healthy harvestable levels of salmon, including Chinook. And it’s been a real, it’s a real wake up call and you know, the reactions kind of run the spectrum from, to resign to sad, to angry, to whatever.
Dave (27m 24s):
Yeah. Everything. Yeah. No, totally. Well this is, I mean, any other, you know, as you look here, what are, you know, other big topics that we’re, we’re missing here you wanna highlight? I know you have a lot going on, but just to give people a little taste of some of the other issues around,
Tim (27m 38s):
Well, you know, there’s an emerging discussion about hatchery production. Mm. And what that means. And, and it’s not one that we’ve necessarily dove head first into yet, but, you know, there’s a lot more, there’s a lot more talk about some of the research showing that hatchery fish may be competing with wild fish when it comes to food, especially pink salmon production. There’s the know the issue of string. Where do these hatchery fish go? I think there’s always been sort of this faith that fish come out of a hatchery, they imprint on the water where they were, you know, in their net pen for a while before they were released. And that’s where they could go back to. But I think we all know that salmon survival strategy is to stray. And I think we need to start spending a little more time focused on where are these hatchery fish going?
Tim (28m 21s):
Are they indeed going back to where they were released or are they fanning out into other wild systems? And what are the impacts on those wild systems? Then there’s, there’s a pretty robust restoration effort, you know, here in southeast Alaska there was quite a bit of road building and logging that happened in the past, and there’s a pretty strong program going on for via a lot of different nonprofits and tribes and then the forest service to, to fix up some of the things that, that were, were messed up. And that’s really kind of gained a lot of momentum. And I, I think one of the things that’s really good is in these rural communities where you have, you know, folks that used to be in the, in the timber industry, heavy equipment operators, people are really skilled with, with tradespeople and really skilled with their hands or finding out that this is, this is some pretty rewarding work.
Tim (29m 8s):
And you know, I think our responsibility is to make sure they’re well compensated and, you know, they have multi-year of, of employment doing this restoration work. And, and I think that’s starting to come to, that’s starting to really happen is really coming to fruition. So that’s, that’s been a really positive development as well. Yeah.
Dave (29m 25s):
Wow. And what is, you know, for people listening now, what are the, the takeaways that they can do? What would you say somebody wants to have an impact help out? What do you tell people?
Tim (29m 34s):
Well, I mean, you know, we’re, we’re constantly putting stuff out through all our social media channels where, you know, people, you know, are encouraged to take action. We put out a little kind of news and issue roundup every Friday. Our communications director, she’s just awesome. She works really hard and, you know, we, we try not to just talk about ourselves. We try to like highlight issues that we think are important to anyone who cares about salmon and the people depend upon them. So, you know, you can sign up for that. That’s a pretty good resource. Some of the other, other groups that we work really closely with, like Trout, unlimit and I mentioned it, I imagine a lot of your listeners are really familiar with Trout. They do a bunch of really cool work up here. So I, I think just, you know, checking out our, our social media channels and going to the website every once in a while and seeing what piques your interest.
Tim (30m 18s):
And we definitely have a lot of requests out there for people to take action. And then, you know, and I I think consider coming to visit Alaska and do your research and figure out, you know, where you wanna spend your hard-earned money. I mean, it’s, it’s, it can be daunting If you haven’t been up here before I figure out what you want to do. I, I mean, if I had my way I’d, I’d spend all of every fall, all every, yeah. Every September would be in Bristol Bay, you know,
Dave (30m 41s):
In Bristol Bay. Yeah,
Tim (30m 42s):
Yeah, yeah. It’s just unbelievable. And then, you know, I, I think if you’re, and also when you’re shopping, If you see wild Alaska sockeye salmon for sale, you know, really considered buying it, it’s sustainable. You know, it, it puts money in the pocket of small boat family fishermen who in a lot of cases have really kind of stood up and, and took action to protect the resource. And you know, I think that in my experience, having done this for quite a long time, If you don’t have, you know, people in these communities, especially when you’re pretty remote, and if they don’t have a way to, you know, make a living, they can be pushed to make some decisions that I, I’ll just call ’em hasty decisions. Maybe not even like, you know, the decision they, they wanna make, but they’re, they’re forced to, right?
Tim (31m 26s):
I, there’s a proposal for a mine on the Chill Cat River, which is another major salmon producer in Hanes, Alaska at the northern end of the, of the inside passage. And you know, the, the price for salmon and the abundance of salmon has been down and a lot of commercial fishermen up there, gi netters are, you know, saying like, I might just just anchor the boat and go work at this proposed mine. And Oh wow. I don’t think a lot of ’em really are excited about it due to the potential for, you know, damage to the cho Cat river. But you know, we need to make sure that people have those choices.
Dave (31m 57s):
Yeah. Right, right, right. Well, and I’m looking at a couple of issues here on this is the take action on your website, salmon state.org. And you’ve got, you know, basically there’s six kinda stop wasteful bycatch, defend the West Sioux Defend Trans Boundary Rivers. We talked about support southeast communities, tourism reform, A-I-D-E-A fisheries meetings. So, but maybe let’s walk through those. Have we talked about all those w we talked about by catch? What about the Sioux? Now that’s the si sita Yeah, so the
Tim (32m 24s):
West is Sita. So the si Sita River is the fourth largest salmon producer in the state and it kind of drains the Alaska range. So Denali Yeah. As everybody and Denali National Park. And there’s a proposal to build an industrial access road through sort of the western part of this drainage. It’s totally wild now. And really productive salmon producer. You know, the thing that’s interesting about Theit is some people think it may be the most productive Enus river in the world If you include the smelt or the hooligan run. They have a huge amount of, you know, hooligan that come up there in the spring and just massive. So it’s always fun, kind of fun to throw it out there. ’cause you know, we, we talk about salmon and trout, but like there’s all these other species
Dave (33m 5s):
And what are, what are hooligan, what’s that species?
Tim (33m 7s):
Hooligan’s. A smelt sometimes also called candlefish, you know, ’cause they Oh, candlefish
Dave (33m 11s):
Yeah.
Tim (33m 12s):
Run. Yeah. I can run it down the oil and it’s, you know. Yep. So
Dave (33m 14s):
These are smelt. So you have a giant spelt run.
Tim (33m 16s):
Yep. Enormous. And this, this industrial access road will probably end up being private. It’s being paid for with public money. And it’s being used to access a gold mine that was prospected by a Canadian company. And then a lot of the, the additional funding is coming through this entity called the Alaska Industrial Export Development Authority, which it, it takes public Alaskan money and, and invests in projects. A lot of ’em are speculative. I have derisively referred to Ada as the Bank of Broken Dreams, or the Bank of Last Resort. If you can’t get your funding anywhere else, you go to these, you know, folks that are appointed by the governor and they sit on about a billion dollars of Alaskans money and when they kind of invest in these mega projects.
Dave (33m 58s):
Gotcha. And what, what’s ADA stand for? What’s that?
Tim (34m 1s):
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.
Dave (34m 4s):
Gotcha. And that’s a government agency. It’s
Tim (34m 7s):
A state agency that was created by the state legislature and over the years has really kind of become
Dave (34m 13s):
Private
Tim (34m 13s):
Grown and changed. Yeah. And yeah, so that’s become a real, real controversial issue there in South Central Alaska. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of sport fishing guides are, are really concerned, you know, ’cause that’s some of the, the best wildest salmon and trout fishing within a, a, you know, close reach of Anchorage, but, but not drivable. So it’s a, it’s still a pretty remote incredible experience and, you know, I think a lot of us are asking, it’s like, you know, who’s gonna benefit and who’s gonna lose and you know, who’s paying for it. So Yeah. And that’s, that’s become a, that’s another one of those issues. There’s a really interesting cross section of Alaskans working on it. There’s a little local group called the Cent Rivers Coalition. There’s Wild Salmon Center.
Tim (34m 54s):
Oh, okay. Yeah. Wild Salmon Center out of Portland. You know, they have an office up here and they’ve been heavily involved in that. They’ve actually been one of the real leaders on that. Just done tremendous work. A lot of sport fishing guides, like I mentioned. And then just, you know, kind of local residents that live off the grid out there that are just don’t want to see their, their way of life change. So yeah, that’s, that’s another big one. And yeah.
Dave (35m 14s):
Wow. Okay. So you got, yeah, that, and then I think we talked transboundary and then fisheries. And then what about the community’s recreation tourism? Now that’s just basically what you said, come up there and experience Alaska and like support Alaska. That’s what you’re saying.
Tim (35m 26s):
Yeah. And you know, I think we, we love it when people maybe spend a little bit more money and a little more time and get a little bit off the, the beaten track. You know, maybe don’t do the cruise ship thing. Nothing against cruise ships. Well, I don’t know when you Yeah, we had 1.6 million visitors in Juneau last year, maybe got a little more. Oh, right.
Dave (35m 45s):
Yeah. People are getting off. They, they got off their boat for a little bit. Right, yeah. Hang out.
Tim (35m 48s):
Yeah. You know, although there’s, there’s a pretty cool excursion you can do here in Juneau where you, you go fly fishing for four or five hours and get on a plane and, and you know, that gives folks a nice taste. But yeah, obviously, you know, come up and experience Alaska and leave a few dollars here and, and support local businesses. ’cause you know, I think that’s just a really important part of ensuring that Alaska remains a salmon state, is have people who are caring, committed stakeholders who can afford to live in these places and, you know, raise your families here. Exactly.
Dave (36m 17s):
I’m, I’m looking at now I’m on kinda the media part of the website and it’s got my turn by Tim Bristol. Is that a, like a blog you’re writing
Tim (36m 25s):
That was in response to someone who, you know, tried to accuse us of being a bunch of shadowy outsiders that are trying to ruin Alaska and, you know, that that just comes with the territory sometimes. Yeah. Especially in a state that’s, you know, fairly pro-development. I, I took real on bridge to that since literally half of our employee, there’s 13 of us and half half of us were born here. Oh, wow. I was not, but you know, including two Alaska native women who, who literally can trace their history back like millennia. And we have a few former commercial fishermen on staff and a former sport fishing guide. So, and I’ve been here 33 years now, so we have deep roots and they’re, they’re getting deeper every day. And so we just decided to push back.
Tim (37m 6s):
And you, that’s just the latest, you know, on the push and pull of all of it.
Dave (37m 10s):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s just part of it. Do you guys do regular, like board meetings? Are there places, could somebody follow, you know, what you, you have coming up this year? You mentioned like getting on the email list, it sounds like that’s one good place to do it. Yeah,
Tim (37m 22s):
You know, we try to do this weekly roundup and kind of let you know what’s going on. And we, we have kind of, we’ve tried to host a series of what we call salmon stories. So just do profiles of people that we think are interesting that, you know, have some kind of strong connection to salmon. And you know, we’ve had ev everything from sport fishing guides to commercial fishermen to Alaska native elders to
Dave (37m 44s):
Oh, cool. So this is kinda like a, like a podcast essentially. A little video.
Tim (37m 47s):
Yeah, yeah. We’re just, we’re, you know, we’ve kicked around the idea of a podcast and we realized how much work it is Yeah. How much time it takes. So we haven’t gone,
Dave (37m 55s):
You should still do it. It’s worth it. Yeah.
Tim (37m 56s):
Yeah. So we’ve been, you know, we’ve been just sort of like going out and interviewing people and, and videoing them and then, and then transcribing their, their words and, and voices and getting that out there through our salmon stories and that’s been really cool.
Dave (38m 8s):
Oh, cool, cool. Yeah. Is that on? So you can see these on, on YouTube or where can you watch the stories? Yeah,
Tim (38m 12s):
I, I think, I think If you go there on the website it’ll say like, salmon stories and it, and it can direct you to places where, where you can find
Dave (38m 18s):
Love it. Love it. We’ll put a link out to that too so we can take a look. Some of these Yeah, I see ’em now you’ve got Yep. Trollers, you got kind of all the issues. Right on. Yeah, this is good. So what, what about you? What’s your, are you a are you a big angler or what, what are you doing out there? You know,
Tim (38m 31s):
I, I’m a passionate angler. I would not say I’m a, a great angler. I mean that was was, that was when I worked at Tu man, it was like
Dave (38m 38s):
You had to be an angler. Yeah.
Tim (38m 40s):
I mean I was, but like holy cow. I mean, there’s so many people that are so good.
Dave (38m 44s):
Yeah. Are you, are you, is this, is this like fly conventional everything? Yeah.
Tim (38m 47s):
Yeah. I’m, I, I definitely would prefer to fly fish. You know, we had a, it was great, like this fall we had a really good runup coho here, right. In gas, no channel in front of Juno. And, you know, it was, I, I really focused on, on fly fishing for coho and I was just as productive as the guys ripping their hooks through the water. And it was, it felt really good. And yeah, it’s, I, I haven’t been out in, haven’t been out in Bristol Bay the last couple of years and it’s just, it’s just killing me. You know, like just being out there and trying to fish for rainbows in the fall is just, I, it’s just amazing. Yeah.
Dave (39m 17s):
That’s when the rainbows are getting, getting big after they’ve been eating a lot and all that stuff.
Tim (39m 20s):
Yeah. You know, and these big sockeye salmon runs years. I mean it’s been the number of big rainbows they’ve been catching is just, it’s just incredible. Oh
Dave (39m 30s):
Right, right. Because the more, the more salmon, the more food there is for the rainbows. Is that kinda how it works?
Tim (39m 35s):
Yeah, you know, I guess, I guess my, I mean, you know, I can, I can throw a fly, but I learned to fly fish up here so I’m, you know, matching the hatch is like whatever phase of the Yeah. With
Dave (39m 44s):
Food, eggs or flesh. So
Tim (39m 46s):
It’s like bigger stuff. It’s, you know, Ming with beads and then throwing big heavy stuff in the fall and Yeah. And then, you know, going to like a, a stream in Colorado and I still have a lot to learn.
Dave (39m 59s):
Exactly right. What about the groups up there? You mentioned a few of ’em, obviously Tes up there, you got the Wests SITA coalition. Are there, are there a lot of other groups smaller up there or is that kind of the bulk of the, the groups?
Tim (40m 10s):
There’s a pretty, pretty robust conservation community. I think when you think about groups that focus on salmon and, and sort of the intersection between conservation and, and fishing tro in Theos Alaska program, salmon State that defend the West Sioux Coalition was made up of a lot of folks that are, you know, are really deeply committed and embedded in that region. And then the Wild Salmon Center, you know, all the great work they do there in the Pacific Northwest, they have a really super solid operation here in Alaska, run by a woman named Emily Anderson. And, and they’ve, they’ve really established themselves as a really important force here in Alaska. And then, you know, I I think those are some of the, yeah, some of the groups.
Tim (40m 51s):
And then there’s some that, you know, kind of are more in the commercial fishing space and the marine space, the Alaska Marine Conservation Council and things like that. But yeah, that sort of intersection between like terrestrial and ocean and salmon and, and recreational angling I’d, I’d say that’s kind of the, the main groups.
Dave (41m 7s):
That’s it. What is the, you mentioned this earlier on the, the wild. So eating or buying, supporting wild sounds, that’s kind of interesting ’cause it’s a little bit on the surface, a little mis a little bit, you think like, oh, why would I wanna kill wild fish? Right. Yeah. But that’s not that you’re, the fact is you’re saying maybe describe that a little bit. Why is it more important to, to eat wild Alaskan sockeye than other fish in the market?
Tim (41m 28s):
Well, you know, I think I would submit they’re still really well managed and I think the, the abundance of those runs sort of illustrates that, you know, we’re at, you know, close to peak sockeye production, at least in Bristol Bay and a few other places. You know, you end up supporting small community family businesses. And I think I just, you know, the longer I do this work, if, if there isn’t a way for people to make a sustainable living in these places, they’re, they’re driven to some tough choices. And then, you know, I think it, it does take some vigilance and some, some research to make sure that you’re not being sold a false bill of goods. You know, I, you know, but I can say with, with great certainty that I’ll ask him commercially harvested coho and sockeye are, are good choices when it comes to, you know, feeling good about what you’re eating.
Dave (42m 14s):
Yeah. ’cause they’re man, and so they’re managed that, that’s the interesting part, right? ’cause they’re, there’s a lot 72 million sockeye coming back. They’re, they’re managing as part of it. But there’s also just the chinook, the fact that I’m, I’m guessing there was mismanagement too, but there’s also, like we said, other things going on. Do you think sockeye coho maybe just to take sockeye, do you think there’s a possibility in the future that the same thing could happen and it’s like, whoa, are are we seeing, you know, is there a history? Like I get, I’m just trying to get that thing like Chinook, it seems like, okay, we’re here now, no more Kenai, Chinook, no more fishing. It sounds like it’s been a 20 year thing of getting to this point. Do you think these other species have that potential too to, to fall in the same trap?
Tim (42m 52s):
I mean they, they absolutely do. And then, and then I think really the only thing you can do is to ensure the habitat and the water quality is good, right? Yeah. I mean, ’cause salmon are resilient and you know, you look at, I mean, you know this better than me. I mean, there’s examples all over the place. I, you know, it’s interesting. I mean, on the Snake River dam issue Yeah. We’re actually really tightly linked to that because Oh, you are? Yeah. A lot of those, a lot of those Fall Snake River Chinook would come to Southeast Alaska for part of their life cycle. Oh wow. And you know, we’ve seen dramatic reductions in, in harvest by the commercial fleet, the trollers in particular in response to the, you know, the listing of those Fall, snake River Chinook. So, I mean, I don’t know, you, you kind of think, you know, and I’ve only been on the periphery of it, but I’ve been able to talk with a lot of people down there.
Tim (43m 38s):
And you look at all that habitat in Idaho that those salmon can’t get to, and you wonder what would happen. I mean the, the Klamath I guess, you know, the, the preliminary results are incredible. Right?
Dave (43m 48s):
I know. Yeah. What are the, the results of Klamath showing that are, is there already results showing the, the what’s going, the benefit of what, what they did?
Tim (43m 55s):
Well, you know, yeah, I guess like, you know, from what I’ve read that there’s already Chinook, you know, making it all the way to Oregon.
Dave (44m 1s):
That’s amazing. And then the snake dams is obviously, probably no bigger issue, although those are, you would think would kind of be next, you know, but it’s been years, you know, 30 years people have been talking about ’em and you know, these, none of these things are easy. That’s, that’s the challenge. But what you’re saying is these Chinook historically would go up to the upper snake, they’d migrate out, and then they would grow in that southeast Alaska near where you are Yeah. And then turn around and come back.
Tim (44m 26s):
Yeah. They kinda like spent some time in the Gulf of Alaska. I, I actually worked on that issue for a short period of time years ago. And the federal government federal caucus came to Southeast Alaska when they were really thinking about, you know, his first big push to breach those four lower snake dams. And, and there were these, there were these older gentlemen in Petersburg, a commercial fishing community in central southeast Alaska. And this guy told this amazing story where he would go out in a rowboat with his little brother. They were like teenagers and their parents just let him go out in a rowboat at the south south end of one of the big islands here. And one would row and the other one would man the gurneys on the, as they trolled. And they, you know, you could row this boat at, at this dory, at essentially a speed that was perfect for catching king salmon.
Tim (45m 6s):
And, and they were pretty sure they were catching fall snicker or Chinook. They were enormous. And there was a time of year and they kind of consistently found them year after year feeding in this one spot. And, you know, it’s, it was kind of a really evocative story of, you know, something that was lost. And then this guy, you know, this was, this guy was like in this late seventies, but he, he essentially said that they just watched their, you know, ability to catch those fish vanish as those dams went in on the snake
Dave (45m 34s):
Right. In the fifties or whenever that was.
Tim (45m 36s):
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it’s kind of, it’s anecdotal stuff, but those, I think those are powerful stories, you know, that I think we need to make sure get captured and repeated. And you know, that’s the thing with Chinook, right? Is they, they spend so much time in the open ocean and they, they range, they range widely. So there’s a lot of things that can eat them, a lot of things that can, they can interact with their, with their survival. And we’re all kind of stuck with this, right? None of us are blameless. We’re all got, we all got a role to play.
Dave (46m 2s):
Yeah. We all, all part of it. What is the, just quickly on the climate change, I know this is probably doesn’t get any bigger than this issue, but do you guys talk about that? Are you thinking, are you meeting and, and discussing climate change? Like what can we do? What’s going on?
Tim (46m 15s):
Well, we definitely do. I mean, it it definitely hanging over everything and affecting everything. We’ve kind of actively pushed for policies that’s to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas we’re pushing into the atmosphere and you know, we try to use salmon as a way to sort of discuss some of those bigger issues and know they can be so, they can be so hard to get your arms wrapped around. And I think, you know, we’re trying to find ways to talk to people where it’s something beyond, you’re gonna get less and you’re gonna pay more, which I think is often the case when you’re talking about climate change. And so, and you know, it might be true, but sometimes it’s hard for, it’s a hard pill for people to swallow. So, but it, it absolutely, I mean, you know, it, it definitely, you know, definitely flows through all the different issues and we work on, and all the, all the conversations and discussions.
Tim (47m 1s):
Yeah,
Dave (47m 1s):
Exactly. What is the, the, I, I guess I want to kind of start to take it outta here, and maybe we can talk about the indigenous people. I think the Klamath Dam, I think, from what I’ve heard, that was a big part. Like, I think the, the reason that went forward, they were down there really, you know, pushing for all that. And, and it actually happened. And I’ve heard relationships of indigenous people in Canada is different. What’s it like in Alaska? What’s it like for you working with the people there that basically, I mean, we, you know, essentially it’s really this crazy thing, right? Because you think of the history and I’ve even heard some crazy stories about like what the US did and, you know, to the indigenous people, essentially extirpated almost, right? Yeah. Yeah. What’s your take on it now and what can people learn from, like, people now that maybe aren’t around a lot of indigenous people, what can they maybe think about moving out of this today?
Tim (47m 48s):
It’s the most interesting and rewarding part of the work is to work with these communities. You know, they have this just unbelievably long, uninterrupted histories in these places. The way sort of Alaska native rights and title evolved here a little bit differently. We, there was an act in 1971 that created native corporations, believe it or not. So you have these for-profit corporations that own 44 million acres of land, and they’re, you know, required by law to generate revenue dividends for their shareholders, you know, their tribal enrollees. And so that sometimes leads to, you know, kind of like an interesting tug of war, not only within the indigenous communities, but the, you know, the greater Alaskan community between development preservation.
Tim (48m 31s):
And sometimes, sometimes you’ll have a native corporation that, that is pushing development, sometimes even development that we would submit is not great for wild salmon. And then over the last couple of decades, you’ve seen a reemergence of the, of the tribal governments, the, this legislation was supposedly supposed to extinguish sort of Indian country, the land over which Alaska native tribes would manage. But I think that was overstated. So you’ve seen a reemergence of, of tribal governments, and I mean, they’re in the middle of, or in a leadership position on almost every single issue about conserving salmon, restoring salmon habitat.
Dave (49m 9s):
Right. They’re at the table.
Tim (49m 11s):
Yeah. I mean, you know, not only at the table now, I mean they’re, they’re like in the center of all the conversations and, and frankly from a conservation perspective, we’re in way better shape because of that.
Dave (49m 20s):
Right, exactly. That that’s the thing. You want them at the table. That’s an important part of this. Yeah.
Tim (49m 25s):
And also brings a very different perspective, you know, sometimes, you know, we think, we think we’ve got things figured out. We talk in one and two and five year timeframes, and they’re like, you, you know? Yeah.
Dave (49m 36s):
You
Tim (49m 36s):
Need to think a little,
Dave (49m 38s):
I find that too. I, I find that most people think of it as their lifetime. It’s like, okay, I’ve lived here for 50 years and I’ve seen it all, you know, but actually, no. I mean, let’s go back 5,000 years. Yeah,
Tim (49m 49s):
Exactly. My, my coworker Dan said he was sitting down with an Alaska native gentleman elder a few months ago, and he is like, yeah. He’s like, I really appreciate the work you’re doing. You can take care of it for a while until we’re ready to take it all back. Right?
Dave (50m 2s):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, well that’s eventually in the bigger picture. Right? That’s interesting. Because nature will find a way, you know what I mean? Like, there, there might be some species that disappear, but ultimately, I mean, that nature does find a way that’s like the natural evolution. It’s, it’s a kind of weird thing ’cause we’re humans in the middle of this, like making things harder, but it’s always trying to recover. Right. And probably will. And in some form there’ll probably be some different, you know, maybe Chinook, maybe they do disappear, but there will probably be some other life history or species or something that changes it. It’s kind of a crazy thing to think about. ’cause it’s way bigger than us. It’s way bigger than our lifetime. Right. We gotta be. Do you guys look at it? I guess maybe we could leave it here as, when you guys look out, are you looking out a hundred years, 200 years, you know, thousands of years.
Dave (50m 44s):
I
Tim (50m 44s):
Mean, we try, you know, but I, I will say there is a sense of urgency, especially with Chinook, right? Like, I think we do look on a hundred years, and there’s two ways of looking at it. It’s like, well, you know, given a chance, nature probably can and will heal itself. But that said, you know, with climate change and the number of people on the planet, I would hate to, you know, feel like we didn’t do everything we possibly could to make sure that like, you know, two or three generations forward, kids are saying like, I wish I could have caught or eaten or even seen a Chinook. I mean, I don’t want to be in that. I mean, I, no, you know, I don’t want to, no, I wanna be able to say that I did everything I possibly could to ensure that didn’t happen.
Dave (51m 21s):
Yeah, no, I agree. I think in, I mentioned, you know, Adam at The Star, but Fishtown, I mean, he said that too. He is got a daughter and I have a couple little daughters as well, and it’s the same thing. Yeah. You want them to be able to experience what we’re experiencing in our lifetime, you know, in their lifetimes. Yep. So I think, I think you gotta focus there and have that outer view too, the bigger picture to say, Hey, we’re gonna do everything we can right now, but as things change, we’re going to adapt and do whatever we have to do. It’s kinda a crazy conversation. How do you, how do you stay? This is always the, the question I have is, how do you stay positive? How do you keep a positive? Are, are you always positive or are you more of a, like a pessimistic per, how do you look at all this?
Tim (51m 57s):
I think I’m more like, I’m positive, but darkly sarcastic. It’s probably, I think, I think, you know, sarcasm humor. I think humor is really important. You know, remember to laugh at yourself and kind of laugh at the circumstance every once in a while. And then honestly, you know, I mean, one of the best things about here is you just can step outside and, and be in a pretty cool place. Yeah. Very quickly. And that, I gotta say, you know, like you get stuck in front of your computer in an office and stupid phone calls, zoom calls and things like that. But podcasts, yeah, no, podcasts are great. But like, but then, you know, just even like a, just going and wetting the line for an hour or like taking a walk, and it’s amazing how restorative that is. And God,
Dave (52m 33s):
Can you do that right now? Like right out your door? Do you have streams within nearby walking distance? Yeah,
Tim (52m 38s):
I mean, like this time of year they’re, you know, they’re, it’s not real fishable, but Yeah. Absolutely.
Dave (52m 43s):
Well, when’s the best time to, so we’re talking June and what’s the town? What actual town are you in?
Tim (52m 48s):
I’m in Juno.
Dave (52m 49s):
Yeah, you’re in Juno. So what is June? Because Juno’s a obviously a, a huge hub. I mean, describe that a little bit. What, what is Juneau like, how does it compare to say, maybe not Anchorage, but any other bigger town in Alaska?
Tim (52m 60s):
Yeah, it’s, it’s funny, it acts a lot bigger than it is. It’s 30,000 people, but you can’t, you can’t drive here, right? So you either have to fly in here or take a ferry, right? So it’s kind of like, it’s really self-contained. We have a hospital, there’s a symphony for God’s sakes, you know? Oh wow. There’s an ice rink here, it’s ski area. It’s pretty amazing, you know, and it becomes a huge turn. It’s the state capital. So there’ll be a lot of activity here in another couple of weeks when the legislature convenes. Then we have just this exploding amount of cruise ship based tourism, you know, 1.6 million people. But you can go 15 miles away and you’re on the admiral, the Island National Monument, Kouts new wilderness, just a thousand square mile protected area. It was actually designated by President Carter and, you know, subsequently passed by Congress.
Tim (53m 43s):
There’s a thousand brown bears on the island. There’s unbelievable steelhead, salmon Valley varden fishing, super wild, you know, really good deer hunting in the fall. You can go south, you can go north, you can, you can get away from people so quickly. And that’s just incredible. That’s
Dave (53m 59s):
Alaska. Yeah,
Tim (53m 60s):
I mean that’s, that’s Southeast Alaska.
Dave (54m 1s):
Southeast and really, I mean, seems like the Joe kind is with the Anchorage, right? Anchorage is really not quite like Alaska, but everywhere else you can just walk out your door and there’s go for it and nobody’s there.
Tim (54m 12s):
Yeah. I mean it grows, the distance grows a little bit every year. The saying is Anchorage is only a 20 or 30 minute drive from Alaska. Yeah,
Dave (54m 18s):
That’s, that’s the saying. Yeah. That, that’s perfect. Okay. And what about you? If one final one for, you know, we’re gonna be heading up there, actually, like I said, we’re gonna be heading up hitting the road system, going into Anchorage Drive-in. We’re gonna be probably also hitting Togiak that area as well. Wow. But where are you heading if you’re thinking, okay, a place in Alaska I haven’t been to yet, that’s on your bucket list. Where would that be?
Tim (54m 39s):
I have, I’d love to go out and try to fish for steelhead in the Aleutians. Oh,
Dave (54m 43s):
The Aleutians, yeah. Yeah.
Tim (54m 45s):
Heavy weather, you know, I mean, that’s just so cool to be out there
Dave (54m 49s):
So crazy too, isn’t it? The Aleutians, this island chain of that. You could see it when you put up Google Maps. I mean, it is amazing to see the Gulf of Alaska in that huge drop in where the Lucians are. Yep. And it actually goes all the way to Russia almost, doesn’t it? That that chain
Tim (55m 3s):
Almost, I mean, yeah, it, I I can’t remember what the flight time, I mean, they go from adac, which is way out on the end back to Anchorage. I mean, it’s like a, I think it’s like a two and a half hour flight in the Jet
Dave (55m 12s):
Adak. Yeah. And there’s at two at two station. Yep. So you’re saying, yeah, find a little island some, like you said, a little stream, kinda like Southeast. I know we had an episode we did in Southeast for Steelhead, and it sounded like a lot of those are these little tiny streams that just have, you know. Yeah.
Tim (55m 27s):
You know, I was away from Southeast for 10 years and lived in, in Homer up in South Central. I, I guess the other thing I’d love to do is like, sort of the central part of the Tongass has a, has a significant number of those small steelhead systems, you know, and like a spring trip maybe hit like five or six or seven of those from a boat if money wasn’t any object, you know, I, I mean that would be, that’s like super bucket list. And then, you know, I’ve been there a bunch of times, but it’s really hard to stay away from Bristol Bay in the fall. I mean, those rainbows are just, they’re freakish. They’re, I mean, they’re just, they’re also just like so vicious and so powerful.
Dave (56m 2s):
Yeah. They’re like in that last thing before they get, they know it. The cold’s coming, right?
Tim (56m 6s):
Yeah. And then they, you know, like some of the, like the que Jack River, those rainbows there, I guess they did some telemetry studies and they’ll, they’ll like swim like 30 miles in a day. Geez.
Dave (56m 15s):
Yeah. ’cause essentially they’re, I mean, there’s a lot of overlap. They, they’re steelhead, trout, rainbow. Yeah. There’s a lot of, you know, they just don’t go out into the ocean because they don’t have to. Yeah. So good. Well this has been great today. Any, anything else we didn’t cover today? You want to give a heads up before we head outta here?
Tim (56m 30s):
No, just enjoy your trip up here. Keep us posted.
Dave (56m 33s):
Yeah, I will, I will. Yeah, definitely. No, it’s gonna be awesome. We’re really excited about getting up there and yeah, Tim, we’ll we’ll leave it there today. We’ll send everybody out to salmon state.org to connect with you. And like we said, they can sign up to the email. That might be an easy way just to get started and, and figure out what we can do to help support and hopefully protect some of the species. Thanks again for all your time. Oh,
Tim (56m 52s):
Thank you.
Dave (56m 54s):
Alright, what can you do? What can you do? I hope that got you stirred up a little bit and you’re thinking about what you can do. Something easy you can do is sign up to the newsletter, the salmon state.org right now, and they’re gonna send you some information on, on what’s going on, where you can get involved. I think Bristol Bay was a good example. It’s gonna take that sort of effort to protect and recover, you know, and probably more effort and get in the Chinook, you know, recovered and everything that we talked about today. So do that right now. One heads up, YouTube, wetly swing.com/youtube. If you’re interested in checking us out on YouTube, we’re just kind of relaunching the YouTube channel and we’ve got some content there. We’re also gonna have some full link episodes of this podcast there as we go.
Dave (57m 36s):
So stay tuned for that and I would love to hear there If you get a chance to subscribe, would really appreciate that. That helps us tons. Alright, what do we have next? What do we have next? Let’s take a look at what we have next, what we have next. I’m just looking now I’m scrolling down to the very bottom and we are gonna see what do we got here? We got Salmon State, we got a lot of good stuff here. Here we go. So yes, it is what I thought it was so golden Ro week. We had to postpone it a little bit to get some of our episodes up and ready to go. But it looks like we do have Golden Ro week coming, so stay tuned for that set Fly fishing and we’re gonna be putting together a trip to the other side.
Dave (58m 16s):
We’re talking Alaska here, but we’re gonna be heading down to South America, the other side of the, the Americas, and we’re gonna check that out too. So stay tuned for that. All right, I get outta here. Hope you have a great afternoon. Hope you have a wonderful evening or a fantastic morning. If it’s morning, maybe you’re just getting your cup of coffee. Maybe you saw This episode pop up and you’re interested on, you know what you could do. Maybe you’re in Alaska even having a cup of coffee, you got a river in your backyard and maybe it’s even Chinook time. I would love to hear a story from you if it is, if that’s you or if it’s, If you have a story for me, check in dave@weflyswing.com. I wanna give a shout out The Steelhead School. We wrapped, we filled it up. That’s gonna be going strong here.
Dave (58m 56s):
We got the crew. I wanna give a big shout out to Kevin. I know he just joined, he got access to that. So he’s gonna be heading there with Brian. Brian Ska, of course in the Bucket podcast. Jeff Liske Great Lakes dude podcast. And John McMillan from the Deep Wade Podcast, or our brother from another mother, John McMillan is gonna be, is gonna be epic with Jeff on that trip. So I won’t be there this year, but I think the trip is twice as good, if not 10 times as good with those guys. So check it out. If you want to get access to next year’s Steelhead school, the best chance is to go to Wetly Swing Pro. If you go to wetly swing.com/pro, you can sign up there and anybody that’s in Pro gets first access to our trips and whole bunch of other things where you can build trips together with the community.
Dave (59m 42s):
All right, like I said, we’re getting out here. Have a great day and we will talk to you soon.
Outro (59m 47s):
Thanks for listening to the Wet Fly Swing Fly fishing show. For notes and links from This episode, visit wet fly swing.com.
Conclusion with Tim Bristol on SalmonState
Tim Bristol shared invaluable insights into the pressing challenges and victories in Alaska’s salmon conservation efforts. From the impact of climate change to the crucial role Indigenous communities play, there’s no shortage of issues affecting the future of these iconic fish. But the good news is, we all can make a difference. Whether it’s supporting sustainable practices or getting involved with organizations like SalmonState, there’s a lot we can do to help. So, if you’re inspired by Tim’s work and want to contribute to salmon recovery, visit salmonstate.org to learn how you can get involved.
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