The last time the Board of Fisheries met for an Upper Cook Inlet Finfish regular meeting on the Kenai Peninsula, it was a different millennium. Now, local stakeholders are banding together to bring the meeting back.
The board has held work sessions on the central peninsula, and regular meetings for Lower Cook Inlet Finfish in Homer and Seward. But there’s been no regular Upper Cook Inlet Finfish meeting since 1999.
Alaska’s Board of Fisheries is a seven-member group of gubernatorial appointees tasked with directing management of state fishery resources. Decisions impacting local fisheries are largely made during the board’s Upper Cook Inlet Finfish meeting. For instance, at their meeting earlier this year in Anchorage members approved a new management plan for local king salmon runs.
Alongside proposed regulations for local fisheries, the board has also heard at length about the need to hold future meetings on the Kenai Peninsula. The board picks meeting dates and locations two years in advance for each cycle. When the board meets next month, they’ll consider how the next meeting cycle will be organized.
Art Nelson is the board’s executive director. He says he’ll present board members with options for the next slate of meeting locations, including for Upper Cook Inlet Finfish.
“The way I'll lay it out to the board is, I'll show them, you know, that the history of where the meetings have been held, and the possibility of which communities meet the criteria that the board has previously laid out, and that will certainly include the Kenai Peninsula,” he said.
One of the proposals is coming from the Kenai Peninsula Economic Development District, or KPEDD. The organization is putting together a formal package that’s already been backed by the borough’s six incorporated communities, the Kenai Peninsula Borough and the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, among others.
When picking where to meet, Nelson says the board considers a community’s accommodations. He says they want to make sure the location has enough lodging, restaurants, transportation and facilities.
In its proposal, KPEDD is pitching the Soldotna Field House — currently under construction — as the meeting site for the 2026-2027 cycle. The brochure also outlines regional lodging, dining and transportation options.
Cassidi Cameron is KPEDD’s executive director.
“We kind of made all of that available in this proposal so that, maybe, no stone was left unturned in terms of reasons why they could start to say no,” she said. “We wanted to make that argument as compelling as possible and do some of the legwork.”
The board came close to bringing its upper Cook Inlet meetings back to the peninsula about six years ago. In 2018, the board formally recommended a new meeting schedule. The policy proposed rotating the meetings between the Kenai Peninsula, Anchorage and the Mat-Su.
A year later, though, the board reversed its decision. Members decided it violated a rule that says they can’t bind future boards to their decisions – even though the policy was a non-binding recommendation.
KPEDD’s proposing to revive the rotating schedule. Cameron says there’s a lot to be said for the board meeting stakeholders where they’re at.
“The value comes when the people, your constituents, your community members, are able to participate in that process without having the hindrance — the cost and the time and the effort to travel, you know, 150 miles and be gone a week — to participate in it,” she said. “There's that value in itself of just being able to be part of the process.”
Previous board meetings on the Kenai Peninsula have sometimes been marked by passionate testimony and flared tempers. As reported by the Peninsula Clarion, the board considered moving the location of its 1999 Soldotna meeting due to unspecified security concerns. The meeting ultimately proceeded without incident.
Nelson says concerns about meeting safety should be a thing of the past.
“That was quite some time ago,” he said. “As far as my outlook on it, I don't have any safety concerns for a meeting on the Kenai Peninsula.”
Nelson says the board’s Upper Cook Inlet Finfish meetings are some of the QUOTE “most intense.” He attributed that to the proximity of conflicting fishery user groups to the meeting locations.
“You've got an area of the state where a good majority of the state citizens take their sport or personal use to harvest. It’s where they get either their fish for their freezer,” he said. “You've also got commercial fishermen and their livelihoods that they're concerned about, as well as the guides and lodges who derive their income from the fisheries as well. So you got to, you know, all the, all the competing interests coming together.”
Cameron says she’d also like to move forward.
“We're hoping that that that that feeling about the past is in the past, and that we can like this is a point that we can move forward, and that safety isn't an issue, that that people are ready to come to the table and have have meaningful deliberations on the resource, and as it's managed without having a lot of personal emotion attached to it,” she said.
Nelson says he’s not sure if KPEDD’s proposal will make a difference this year. KPEDD’s Cameron is cautiously optimistic.
“This is an opportunity for us to kind of start fresh and start new in a way that people can come together and start managing this resource in a way where all of the viable interests are and perspectives are taken into consideration,” she said.
The board will convene Oct. 29-30 in Anchorage to consider future meeting locations.
