Lunch & Learn: Outmigration of Limited Entry Fishing Permits, 4/1/26, 12pm

And then a return hand it over.

Oh.

All right everybody, welcome, welcome. Uh on behalf of representative Edgman, speaker Edgman, I'd like to welcome you all to his lunch and learn today on the out-migration of fishing permits. I'd like to thank our LIO moderator, Jake, and then also our presenters today. We have co-chair of AFN, Joe Nelson, we have Dr Rachel Donkersloot, and we have Dr Courtney Carruthers from UAF. So I'll hand the mic over to them and we can get started here.

here.

Thank you, Tristan. So we're going to dive right in and just be comfortable. I know you are comfortable eating, and I know there's people coming in still.

I want to thank Speaker Edgeman, so you can relay this back, for making the space for us to come in and have this presentation. I'm, my first half of my life, a commercial fisherman. How many fishermen in the room here? Like commercial fishermen?

And then how many family members related to commercial fishermen then? So there we go. We got a good segment of the room. So thank you for being here. Other part that I'm just going to disclose, but the second half of my life, lawyering. So kind of lawyering. How many lawyers in the room?

No shy lawyers. They're not shy, so I guess, okay. I disclose those two things just to say I'm not the expert. The content of what we're hearing today is from our experts who have been diving in deep for a long time on this issue. My role is part, you know, part being a fisherman, part being a lawyer, but also part being co-chair at AFN where we did pass a resolution

as a collective at the Alaska Federation of Natives to go ahead and bubble this back up to the top line here as a policy priority. And this is a lunch and learn, so all of our jobs here is just really to share some of the history, some of the backstory, and get a deeper understanding so the IQ in the building here can elevate to a point where we feel more comfortable actually making decisions and get out of the fight or flight

type of thing, because you got to get comfortable with this. This law hasn't been significantly changed in the 50 years. I want to acknowledge our recently retired Glenn. So Glenn, thank you for your service in the industry, but specifically on this issue for many years. We really appreciate the work. And the work we're doing here has come through with actually

a number of reports over the years are spotlighting this issue, and the issue being the law that was created served a purpose in 1973.

It's time to revisit it because you compare our village economies from then through the '80s, '90s to now, and it's really, it's heart-wrenching. It's literally heartbreaking to think of all of our villages and the vibrant communities that we had through the '60s, '70s, '80s, really around through the '90s, we're okay. But today

all of you know, our schools are closing down, these villages are shrinking, everybody's moving to urban areas. And then this is not an end-all be-all fix to everything. This is one component of the issue, limited entry. And I don't think your part is covering a bunch of the legal, so I'll go real quickly. Back in the '60s, there were efforts to address too much fishing and too many people coming in.

But we had the state constitution was causing issues, so we did have a constitutional amendment in 1972 that created a pathway for an amendment to create the Limited Entry Act that happened in 1973 to get implemented. And I'll make mine super quick here because it's a couple key points.

Entry into the system at the time, there was a point system.

And through the '70s, there were a couple other things I'm going to bring as an analogy. But that point system to get a permit to address this issue, one of the things was you had to show— it was residency, but it was the economic— there was a term of art, dependency. So that you personally— like, through my first half of my life, commercial fishing was probably about 80% of my income over the year. And that was just through the summer months.

And so I was very dependent on commercial fishing. So I probably got high scores even though I was in diapers, not fishing when this passed. But I was actually out there but not actually having a permit. And then the other was availability of other economic opportunity was another thing to score to actually get one of these commodities, which became a right to fish, which everybody had. To actually limit it,

it created an individual right that commoditized and put a price tag on it. And it became transferable. And the folks that came in early didn't have to pay for these permits.

They just had to show that that was part of their way of life and their livelihood and go through the program and apply. Some people didn't get in because they weren't fishing the last 3 years or whatever for that history, but most— a lot of people did get in. And you got a permit. But then all of a sudden, there was a price tag on that permit. And you have a bad year or two, it's on the free market to sell your permit. And some of those permits, which you didn't— early, the first group didn't have to pay for—

people are paying six figures for some of these permits still today, some of them. So just a huge commodity that's freely tradable. A real quick analogy. ANCSA, all we know about ANCSA, but not everybody knows the depth of ANCSA or even the change of ANCSA over the time. When the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act first passed right around the same time, right before we amended the Constitution for limited entry,

that original act had those shares and the corporations were scheduled to be freely tradable, sellable in 20 years. At '91, you'd be able to sell your shares. Same idea is to put collective ownership into individual hands and put a price tag on it. What was how the original Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was set up. Luckily, there was enough of us that went back, amended the law many times to make sure that doesn't happen

because this individual versus community issue creates a lot of chaos. It pushes the gap between the well-to-do and the so-so farther and farther apart. And that's where we are now. Highliners can afford to make their money and do their thing. Anybody else coming in, you got to inherit that money from somewhere else to get in. And it's just a tragedy.

We're trying to make it more common knowledge for everybody and have the comfort level to address some of it. So I want to introduce colleagues here who've really been the champion of getting this at a level where we have the studies, the data, where there's no questions, I guess, not as many questions.

about really what's happening because we have now decades and decades of data. So I want to thank my colleagues here. I'm going to hand it off and appreciate all of you for being here for the quick lunch and learn and hopefully we'll learn a little something. I know I will, and I'll turn it over to the experts. So the other real quick, the actually the commission itself, 2024 annual report, read that report. There's recommendations from the commission itself that address

some of these issues. There's the task force that they had, the Seafood Industry Task Force had a couple quotes in there. So this is not a new thing. It's just something that we really want all the people in the building to be aware of and own it. It's not a partisan thing. It's an all-Alaska thing because we are a seafood state and we all care about all the Alaskans continuing to be able to

live our way of life in all of our communities.

Do you want us to hit the end of the folder?

Oh super quick. This one is just pre-limited entry. These are from Yakutat.

just showing this is what we've done forever. And those all were handmade. So just forever we've been doing— you know, we're ocean-going people. We're— why, you know, that people view that as a resource, but we view it as a way of life. We're literally salmon people. And so I'll do this since we're in Tribal Affairs, right?

Kaxh'k'wu Yix'at Dusaaq, Teikwidi Yix'at, Kwax'k'waa Nyidi Yix'at, Yakutat Kwax'k'waa Nyidi Yix'at.

It

My Tlingit name is Kaxh'k'wu. I'm Teikwidi from Yakutat. That's a Brown Bear Clan. Kwax'k'waa Nyidi means I'm child of the Kwax'k'waa. My father's people are Humpback Salmon people. All of our crests are tied to the place. And we— eagles marry ravens and they've just been doing that forever. And it's all related to the land and waters. Let's go to the next one real quick. This is preliminary. This is

Little Joe right at the limit entry time, actually. And I had the fortune of being able to fish from Dry Bay, Yakutat Bay, to Icy Bay and all the rivers in between for the bulk of the first half of my life. And that's all my family does. And most of them still do that. And this weird law came in to limit things, but what it's resulted in we'll talk more about.

Here's the one I just referenced, the recommendations from the commission. It does have right in there the aging of the fleet, it's hard to get in, and then the migration out of the permits. So none of this is really news or new, but even the commission's been flagging it for some time.

And then I mentioned this, the task force that recently just published this report a year ago, and there are mentions of this because you have to tackle the whole thing. We know and we well acknowledge that it is a tragedy that there are, you know, the Yukon, the Kuskokwim, all the different issues are going on. That's not the subject of this, but it's part of it. The fact that we aren't able to access our traditional way of life on a lot of these rivers is problematic.

And then finally, the AFN resolution that came through the convention.

And at AFN, we've got, you know, over, you know, a couple hundred tribes in the state, 229 federally recognized tribes, a bunch of the corporations, and so it's a big diverse body.

And our job there is to find things we can agree to work towards together and publish these resolutions to go to work on them. At our most recent convention, this one, we did have some back and forth and got a resolution through the body to go ahead and put a spotlight on this issue and try to make some progress, knowing that that's a tough thing to happen in this building sometimes.

Great. Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity to to present here today. Uh I'm Rachel Donkersloot. My colleague, Dr. Courtney Carothers is is here and we kinda wanted to start with just a list of some of our recent scholarship and studies on this issue. This is kind of the foundation of the work. We have spent um each two decades now focusing on the social and cultural dimensions of fisheries and also the intergenerational and community impacts of fishery policy in Alaska.

Alaska. Some of you might be familiar with our GREENGA the Fleet Study. It's now almost a decade old, but it was uh very productive multi-sited study across Bristol Bay and the Kodiak regions. We carried that out in partnership with Paula Cullenberg, Daniel ringer and Jesse Coleman.

What we wanna focus on today is this large loss of limited entry permits in the state of Alaska, the the departure from our fishing communities and some of the social and and cultural and economic impacts of that type of out migration.

Joe touched on this a little bit, so I just wanna highlight limited entry was passed at a time of crisis. There was a very poor salmon returns, there was declining ex-vessel values in our fishery, and there there was also a rising number of non-residents coming into Alaska fisheries.

Twice in the sixties, at least twice, the state had attempted to limited entry and failed because those attempts were c unconstitutional. Limited entry is a fairly rare programme in this

in the state because it required a programme specific authorisation in the constitution. So uh what's in bold here is one of the way one of the criteria or purposes in which limited entry is allowed to happen in the state, that is to prevent economic distress among fishermen and those dependent on them for a livelihood.

Joe spoke to this a little as well. This is some of the purpose, some of the language in statute.

Any chance I get to put a screenshot of something from the nineteen seventies on, I will. This is a lovely archived video. You can google it on YouTube. It's called Limited Entry, A Necessary Evil, and it's documenting the attempts to uh repeal limited entry. That that attempt was spearheaded by Kodiak shellfish growers at the time.

they were worried that limited entry was coming for them and they wouldn't be able to survive it. They were told we will not amend this programme. So they were trying to repeal it. Those efforts obviously failed, but it's worth It's a twenty six minute video. It's it's fascinating. You should take a look if you can.

Again, one of the main objectives of the programme was to keep fishing right keep fishing rights in the hands of Alaskans dependent on fisheries, especially rural Alaskans with limited economic alternatives. This is what Joe spoke to with that hardship ranking scale, trying to ensure that the permits went into the right hands.

Some of the key features of the programme, it requires issuance to natural persons only, permits can't be held by corporations, they can't be held by processors, that's very important. It prohibits leasing and it created or allowed for the free transferability of permits, so that they can be gifted,

they can be inherited and they can be sold.

What you're looking at here is the cover of a nineteen seventy five CFEC report, it's available online, the report went to the state legislature,

That report identifies the primary disadvantage of free transferability as increasing entry costs to quote unquote undesirably high levels, creating barriers to entry for those who did not receive permits through initial allocation. We're still dealing with that today. The solution to that concern at the time was to create a state loan program that was designed to assist residents in purchasing permits.

unfortunately that state subsidised loan programme inadvertently moved permits from rural hands into urban hands because eighty six percent of loan participants were urbans who co urban residents who could qualify for loans. I'm from the Bristol Bay region no-one from the Bristol Bay region even applied for a loan.

We now over half a century later have decades of studies. I wanna acknowledge uh Dr Stephen Langdon's early work on this subject across Alaska. We have decades of research showing the negative impacts of transferable permits and how they tend to fall on the less powerful segments of a fishery. These are young fishermen, new fishermen, these are our future generations of fishermen. It also includes rural rural communities, low income and small scale fishermen and indigenous fishermen or Alaska Native.

the native fishermen. And what you're looking at

here, Ah.

I think this is also available online. This was a nineteen eighty four CFEC report. It's the first and last time this the state looked at Alaska native participation in limited entry fisheries. At the time it showed a twenty one percent decline in Alaska native permit holdings in Bristol Bay. Salmon fisheries, I think the largest fishery, the largest loss in our fisheries was in the cook intellet drift fishery. It saw a sixty percent decline

in Alaskan Native participation in that fishery.

So I think the important thing to keep in mind here

Hmm.

is that um transferable permits not only create high barriers to entry, but they also create greater pressure to sell and that's especially relevant in our rural communities who often fe feel the pressures of a cash economy differently.

Big picture, half a century later, these are our longtime fishing communities, these are our longtime fishing cultures. You can see here the loss of uh local and rural participation in salmon fisheries in this state. Um, you know this problem has persisted despite many decades of efforts to mitigate the immediate impacts of limit entry, but also the ongoing impacts of limited entry.

And we wanted to include this just as a reference. What has happened in Alaska, what is happening in our state, is

It's not uncommon, it's not unexpected. There is a large global literature documenting how these types of fishery access limitation programs tend to disproportionately negatively impact

rural fishing communities in particular. They create haves and have-nots, which Joe shared a little bit about. They tend to disempower crew, they create conflict and community division. That's been well documented. In 2016, we along with Paula Kullenberg and others helped coordinate a statewide conference focused on this issue. The conference proceedings are available online. But we brought in Alaskans, other

folks from around the U.S. and also some international speakers from Norway, from Iceland and others to understand the shared experience, the shared problem and how other fishing regions and nations have worked to address it. What are the models they're looking at, what are the policy provisions they're looking at.

So this shows net change in local salmon permit holdings in Bristol Bay from 1976 to 2024.

And what I want to share here is that you will see

in only 4 of the last, I think, 46 years up here, we've seen any net gains in permit holdings in Bristol Bay.

And I was thinking back to this. Some of you may have been around about a decade ago when Norm Van Vactor, who was then CEO of BBEDC, the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corporation, he was testifying to the House Fisheries Committee. And he was describing their effort with their new loan program, they have a loan and grant program to get more watershed residents into the

fishery, he described those efforts as getting them halfway to zero. And I think this image is a nice representation of that. So in the '80s, the Bristol Bay region was losing I think around 18 permits annually. And in our most recent decade they're losing around 8 permits annually. So we're still despite everything going on

no amount of research, we really need some policy considerations to addressing this problem. No amount of research is going to solve this problem.

I won't spend a lot of time on this, but I did want to at least flag that there is a gender dimension at play in rural permit loss. This shows change in permit holdings in the Bristol Bay setnet fishery according to BBNC shareholders versus non-shareholders, whether they're men or women. In 2024 Andrea Egli and I published a paper on this and I just wanted to note

let's see. I think in 1980, 57% of all set-net permits were held by women, and today it's around 35%. And roughly two-thirds of the women permit holders in 1980 were BBNC shareholders, and again that's been cut in half. The reason I wanted to flag this for this room was that there are implications for the gendered loss of permit holdings, in part because it impacts the local reproduction of

Mm.

fishing livelihoods. A lot of the people we sit with and interview

they got their start in fishing by starting at the setnet sites with their mothers and their grandmothers.

We share this slide with permission from Dr. Catherine Reedy at Idaho State University. This is showing changes in local participation in Area M salmon fisheries.

The

blue line is showing local Aleut

permit holdings change over time. The red line is showing local non-native permit holdings over time, and that green line you're seeing that's increasing is non-local. So it could be Alaskans from outside the region, it could be non-residents, et cetera.

And now I'm going to pass it to Courtney.

Thanks, Rachel. So nice to be able to co-present with Rachel and Joe. Really, thanks so much for coming out.

So yeah, this is a look at some of the village specific data. I think you might have seen in an earlier slides like Southeast has lost 30 some percent of its permits, but for some villages it's almost a hundred percent. And so hearing Joe speak about, you know, his community in Yakutat and some of the villages in Southeast and where I came to work a lot as a young student was the villages of Kodiak that have really just seen a disappearance of their fishing economy.

me um so

this is another look at some of those changes in the Coneag and Sea Alaska region. So leaders Joe, um Tom Pandemerov in Coneag, uh other leadership from the region really wanted to gather some current data on this issue, and we, as Rachel said, we've been working on this for a couple decades. I'm like there's so much data, do we really need more data? But we did because the survey was super um a illustrative of the issue. So there is a survey that went out back in twenty twenty f

twenty four to shareholders in Cognac and see Alaska. Um not hers. Some of you may know um he has a Pulitzer grant actually to be covering this topic of last access to fisheries because it's a really big national issue. And so this um Nick Nikolay Kotelnikov there is pictured. He's the last commercial fisherman from the village of Yuzinki. And it's just really heart-wrenching. I think Joe used that word. It's really hard, you know I'm an outsider to Alaska, I moved here as a student, a graduate student, and really

really felt compelled and captivated to continue studying this issue, 'cause it seems like such a huge like you can't really the numbers don't do justice to kind of what this means, I think. And so we've been trying in different ways to tell this story. But this survey, I've done a lot of social science research in my career, you never really get such agreement on an issue like you do on this one. So ninety eight percent of folks that responded to our survey talk about fishing being

being fundamental to traditional culture,

to village economies.

90% of people surveyed agree,

you know, village future depends on access to fishing.

It's incredibly high number.

People don't agree on much these days, but we do agree on this.

Over 80% think of their village economies in crisis because of lost access to fishing.

Only 12% of people currently participate in fishing.

Like Joe did with the hand raising a generation ago.

go in places like I'm familiar with in Kodiak and Southeast,

that number was like 70,

80 percent.

Within one generation, it's been such a huge decline.

Only 11 percent of people that filled out our survey have a hope for their villages in the future.

Like this is, I don't know how we can say it in a different way,

but it's absolutely like pressing need for our state to address this issue.

Another overwhelming uh learning from the study is that people have a very negative view of limited entry. There certainly are people benefiting in the system. We're not we're not saying that, but um even among those doing well in the system, they still think the programmes had a negative effect on their village community. So you've seen green there, you know what effects have has this programme had on your village? Negative, very negative, very few positive or mixed responses. And you can see there are some of the impacts around

and um economic loss and cultural loss, uh depopulation, schools closing, youth impacts.

Uh this is a Likert scale. It sort of measures uh agreement or disagreement. In this case it's it's measuring um loss uh in red there, like how has how have these shifts over time contributed to increase or decrease in, you know, fishing opportunities, cultural practices, knowledge. You see this red, a lot of loss, a lot of perception of loss.

One thing we like to I work a lot with economists and they talk a lot about um counterfactual, like what why do we know this wouldn't have happened anyway even without these policies? And so one thing we like to highlight is the village of Metla Katla, they've actually in this report if you'd like to look at it, it's on um U_A_ Scholar Works, they've experienced the same kind of loss of state permits and federal quota, but they have a tribal fishery and so their economy is still based on fishing and their young people are still fishing.

changing.

So what you're seeing here is compared to Koniag and Sea Alaska regions, Metlakatla's economy is still producing a salmon economy. So we use that as an example to say where there's access there's people fishing. And so I think one of the goals, I hope, for our state is to figure out how to repatriate some of that access.

So our main takeaways, we do wanna hopefully have some dialogue and questions, really wanna open up some discussion. But our um takeaways from this current research, it's absolutely fishing is a foundational component of cultural livelihood. You all know this if you're from coastal Alaska or spend any time there. The pronounced loss of fishing is interrupted that cal cultural continuity and livelihood as Rachel was speaking to until very recently most families were engaged and these multi-generational ties are

is or part of what people are proud of, it's how they wanna bring up their young people and right now we're not really able to do that. Um so yeah, again very strong agreement. Happy to speak more on the survey um results as we maybe have some discussion, but wanna pass it back to Rachel.

Yeah.

Yeah, we just have two more slides. I wanted— we wanted to share this one. This was created by The Nature Conservancy in part with— in partnership with G. Laster if any of you had the pleasure of meeting him. What this shows is total salmon earnings that have left the state via non-resident permit holders.

So between 1975 and 2023 non-residents took back to their home communities $7.5 billion worth of salmon earnings. And you can see the relatively thick line coming out of Bristol Bay in particular.

$3.9 billion of that $7.5 billion is accounted for by Bristol Bay. You know, the idea here isn't to find ways to exclude non-residents from participating in our fisheries.

I think

We all know a lot of non-resident families who have multi-generational connections to our fisheries,

but it is, you know, one of the reasons I want to share this, like when you're talking billions, like people tend to sit up and listen,

but I also want to present this as kind of like the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is actually being felt and what is actually happening in our fishing communities.

So one of my colleagues in Naknek,

Dr.

Laura Zimmon, she kind of talks about this like, yeah, we have a high number of non-residents.

coming into fish, but they're also the first and the best situated to buy up homes and property and lots when it becomes available. And that means that even when young people do want to move back with their families, they can't because they can't find housing. That affects the school, that affects school enrolment. Like there's all these cascading

downstream effects that are linked to the loss of access that is that is um or the exodus that's leaving our

our fishing regions and communities. So um we have this online and we can share the data, but I I just wanted to um emphasise that seven point five billion dollars is a big number, but it's also not the complete picture when you talk about why people wanna live in rural communities and how they wanna live in rural communities.

And then lastly we want it to be a little bit solutions focused here um because we have spent time researching and understanding and reviewing like what what do solutions look like? Like what is what are the top policy ideas for such a complicated and and thorny and potentially divisive issue and

we've given some thought to the kinds of tools that would support greater access in our coastal communities and how to develop a solution that's constitutional, but that can also meet the current needs of our our fishing communities, and some of the mechanisms that we've outlined are included in that turning the tide report I mentioned. Paula Cumberberg was the lead author on that, and there's five recommendations in there. But we have other papers, including this writing the ship report, which I think we have copies here today if you're interested.

if you're interested, but some of the kind of top ideas that we've presented on in the past include um new types of permits that could be a new non-transferable permit, that could be a youth permit,

some sort of non-market based access that can um be held, you know, in perpetuity. These are rights that can't move away, they can't be sold away. Uh we've also looked at changes to the transfer provision and then another another model that's in place in both the west and east coast of the U_S_

process is figuring out how to anchor some of that access through um new new entities or or authorizing uh existing entities to hold a portion of permits for use in those communities in perpetuity. So we'd be happy to talk about anything further, but we did just wanna think a little bit about um what are the top ideas and we'd be happy to hear if you have ideas. So I think Joe, should I turn it back to you or should we close out um

I could

There's

better.

We've got time if there's questions, comments

Yep.

which we can field.

And hopefully we do get a few comments or questions. I'm just going to come back around and underscore the, what I see as the main issue, and that's the first permit holders by definition were dependent on fishing.

They had to, they proved a history of fishing and lack of other alternatives to make a living. Within one generation, what is it to get a permit? Highest bidder with somebody with a big bank account from somewhere and a lot of cash somewhere. And there's so many rules in the thing that you can't— you can't, um,

the system is set up so you can't use it as collateral. You can't— there's all these different things that are— were well intended, but just really within the system there's also opportunity just to use the system better because there's a mechanism to buy back, but I don't think buybacks have ever happened. So there's solutions. My point is that there's fixes around the edges, but then structurally there's also bigger, better things that we can probably do and tackle now that we weren't able to back then.

And we've got a bunch of partners is the other part of it that are a lot of eyes on this. So we're trying to shine the spotlight on it from this venue here where the solutions really need to come from. And it needs to be born out of, yes, the communities identifying our issues, but this building is where the work gets done ideally to get decisions done. And

recalling back 50 years ago, we had to amend the Constitution to create this in the first place.

But comments, questions?

Just a heads up for folks, we do have about 15, 20 minutes. So we'll have to give the room back at 1:00. But here you go.

Andrea Gostlik with Native People's Action, you spoke about an example in Metlakatla where they have retained a tribal fishery who flashed over that. Can you give a little bit more context so we can do some comparative analysis.

Yeah, thanks. Good to see you, Agathla. Yeah, so we have been working— we have a student at UAF, Teja Wagner, from Metlakatla. So she's actually doing her master's thesis on some of the history there with this program, limited entry. But I believe that Metlakatla chose not to participate in the land claim, so they retain reservation status. And so they have a tribal fishery. It's the largest tribal fishery in the US. And they manage that, I think, maybe with a little bit of coordination with BIA and the feds, but there's no state

engagement there. So that's, I think, because of their decision around ANCSA. But it's, I think, a potential— again, we use it as a model to suggest— sometimes we get feedback of, well, you know, people just don't want to fish anymore, or things have changed. It's like, no, if there's access to fish, people want to fish. And so that's—

yeah.

As the next question comment comes, the only thing I'd add is they retain the federal trust responsibility in the reservation in a way that the rest of the state doesn't have. So they've got the feds that are, you know, the big brother in a way that is, you know, sometimes big brothers are good, sometimes they're not so good. But there's an issue there, I guess, that they're able to flex, and it's been fun to

watch Metlakatla and support their efforts to be on the front end of trying to do the right things here.

Thank you so much, that was so interesting. And I apologise if I missed this the beginning, but um is there any way that um like the health of fish stocks affects

How many permits are leaving the state, I'm thinking specifically about like you know declining in King Salmon and maybe also Halibut um does that determine, you know, where permits will stay or leave based on yeah, the health of the fishery?

I'm going to leave that to other experts. But right now, there's an avenue there, I think, to focus on that because conservation was part of the why this came about to put a limit there because there was concerns about the stocks. And obviously, there's concerns about stocks now. So it's a fair question. I might leave that for others and not point out somebody in the audience who's been responsible for this for a long time

to comment on that.

you'll see more non-resident interest in the more lucrative fisheries, right? So Bristol Bay, you're going to see a lot of non-resident participation. But there's— in the Kuskokwim fisheries where there hasn't been a commercial fishery for a long time, Yukon as well, it's over 90%

resident permit holders. So you will— where there is money, you will see people from out of the area come in.

But it's really more of a free market thing is the point. It's not

A lot of the trading and movement of of permits is just following the money and who can afford access to the big money when they come in to take the resource wherever they wanna go to. Conservation is not a factor in transferring these permits, that like the the stocks, it's just the market drives it.

With limited entry and the essential privatization of a public resource, have you seen an influx of private philanthropy to, you know, as one route to solve this or to mitigate social impacts?

This is just one person, but on the whole, no. More recently, yes, there's attention for lots of different reasons, but there are still barriers in the system to come in and do that. And that's

partly a factor to get on the table, the whole menu of options to do things. Because yes, in theory, and because there's similar issues, similar patterns in the flatfish and halibut, IFQ federal waters, similar issues the way it all went to IFQ and individual. And they're on the federal side, there's opportunity to collectivize and create community quotas to kind of offset the detrimental effect of

individual quota systems that happen.

So my observation, there's an opportunity there that's not being used right now.

Um

On the chart that showed the linear chart that showed the growth and reduction of permits, and it showed, you know, there are only 4 years that had net increase in permits. It looked like, you know, like the '80s, 2008, and COVID had like major spikes and decreases. But curious what factors contributed to the growth of permits.

Yeah, you're right. When you look at the that large loss in the early years, there was a lot of confusion, a lot of uncertainty, and in many ways the region has never recovered from that.

official knows that. So that kind of— Joe spoke to this around land and shareholders and ANCSA, but like

if we are putting the future sustainability of our fishing communities in individual hands and we've never been able to recover from the life circumstances and choices of individuals in the 1980s, like, is that good public policy? Like, is that a sustainable policy for our fishing economies? I would say that these tiny

net gains, let's see, that might be, you know, some of the benefits of BBEDC's permit loan program in terms of shifting, and it might be— is that 20? I guess I don't have the years up here. They didn't come through, but yeah, really micro movements of— and people probably know who that is.

Hi there.

When I first interned in this building in 2017,

it was for Representative Christ Tompkins from Sitka. And of course, he had a bill that legislature, I think HB 188, that established regional fisheries trusts as a way of addressing this. And I saw in your mentioned potential policies, some kind of connection there.

I guess, could you speak a little bit to legislation like that? I don't think we've really seen anything like that in the legislature.

since then. If if something like that were to come back, um you know what what form do you think it should take? And do you think that a a regional fisheries trust is a reasonable way to try to help with this issue through uh coastal Alaska?

I do think it was a novel idea in terms of a lot of the past efforts that we've seen are primarily around like

New loan programmes or increasing the caps on existing loan programmes, which isn't necessarily gonna serve the people who can't qualify for a loan in the like taking on more debt or qualifying for more debt perhaps isn't the best solution. So I think thinking about, you know, I think regional fisheries trusts as designed were pretty complicated and I think people shy away from complex problems because any sort of change from the status quo is scary, right? There's a lot of fear around making things worse. But I do think that

The issue we're trying to solve is how to address,

like Metlacal is a community,

it has a fishery that

This is what a community looks like. This is what a fishing community looks like when the rights can't be sold away and they can't move away. So finding a way to anchor even a small number of permits in villages or in our fishing regions I think would have a big impact. And I think they've done it on the east coast, they've done it on the west coast, but it I think it's very much depends on who's designing it, who who's at the centre of it. Um, you know, does it cost money or is it what's the affordability, things like that.

And right now we're just learning.

So in learning mode, we know that politics is involved in everything. And when money's there, there's politics involved. And it is in the menu of options. That is, it's not— none of this is novel. It's more get the collective will to understand that this is a real issue that others are putting on the table to generate the capacity in the building to be the lagging indicator in the building here to actually do something

because everybody is saying you have to do something. What that something is, that's not our job right now other than lay out the menu of options. That is one of the options.

That is a viable thing. And the systems are set up to do exactly what they are doing. So let's just go to change the system a little bit.

Appreciate you guys coming today. So uh one of the reputations I think Bristol Bay has is a uh tourist fishery.

So what we're looking at about last time I checked the C_F_E_C_ data it was about fifty three percent non-resident permit holders for that drift net fleet. It's a lot of money leaving the state. So I appreciate you guys coming in today. It's uh seems like one of those things that at some point the band aid's gotta get ripped off because the fact that there's more than half of those boats coming up for about four or five weeks to participate in that fishery just to leave with their earnings.

It uh puts a really difficult position on younger Alaskans looking to get into the industry, but it's extremely cost prohibitive.

Um and then one thing I notice is there's a lot of non-resident permit holders calling in to provide feedback on legislation, which is also ridiculous. So thank you for bringing light to the issue, super important, and uh hopefully something changes in a positive direction.

in uh the upcoming years.

Appreciate that. Right behind you, there's a hand right behind you.

Maybe what I could do is to ask a question of the group, because I think one of the questions that these folks have is how d how do we affect change here. It has to happen in this building.

So does anyone have any thoughts on what to do to rip off the band-aid? I t I will tell you this is a very complicated subject.

What what would we what would we do?

Committees, task force, I mean what's the technical process to move s this issue through this building?

Address

Tristan?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Well, as the speaker staff all just uh prefaced it that uh we are not allowed to advocate for specific bills or legislation, but that being said unfortunately a lot of the bosses you would be able to speak to ideas and concepts are stuck on the House floor. So I think it's definitely worth something all the staff here can take things away and try to think about and do a lot of research on and use this as a starting point and a prompt to learn about pressing problems in Bristol Bay and rural Alaska.

So that being said I'm willing to turn the mic over to folks who would like to have further questions. We've got about nine, ten minutes left.

If there's no further questions, I'd like to thank all of our presenters for coming today. I'd like to thank our L_I_O_ staff, Jake, for being here. I would also like to invite folks to take as much food as you'd like and please take it all home, and I thank you for coming out today. Appreciate it.

Appreciate it.