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Masten, Mais: Tribes are true stewards of the salmon
The Hoopa and Yurok tribes have fished sustainably on the Klamath and Trinity rivers for thousands of years.
Our great-grandparents remember when nearly a million salmon returned to the basin every year to spawn. They watched nearly all of the basin's timber fall, causing mountainsides to slide into the rivers and creeks, burying salmon habitat. They witnessed gold miners disfigure mountains and pour immeasurable masses of silt and mercury in the waterways. They saw dams go up, blocking and degrading hundreds of miles of fish habitat. They watched canneries take almost every harvestable salmon from the river in the early 1900s.
Because of the tribes' reaffirmed right to fish, they are now co-managers of contemporary, world-class fisheries restoration programs designed to return the basin to the prime salmon and steelhead river system it is meant to be. Our efforts greatly benefit tribal and non-tribal fishing communities, as well as the recreational boating and guide services on the Klamath and Trinity rivers. Because of the tribes' hard work, the Klamath and Trinity rivers have a fighting chance to one day see restored fisheries. In addition to restoration work, the Yurok and Hoopa tribes' salmon fisheries are monitored by each tribe's respective fisheries departments. Our expertise is applied not only to monitoring of harvest but extended basin-wide to habitat, hatchery and natural spawner assessments as well.
Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions about tribal fishing. The most common false belief is that we catch all the fish. That is simply not true.
Many ill-informed ideas are apparent in the Nov. 8 edition of the Record Searchlight's article about tribal gill-netting. The most notable example came from blogger Mike Aughney, who misused fisheries data to bolster his untrue contention that "because of gill nets, we are seeing almost no return." He later retracted his misstatement on his blog because a Department of Fish and Game official explained that the data Aughney cited was only a small portion of what is used to make the overall fish count.
In reality, more fish are making it to their spawning grounds and the hatchery than in years past. Up-to-date salmon spawning redds are at their highest counts since 2003. More than 2,500 redds have already been counted in the upper Trinity, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife announcement issued Nov. 9.
The Hoopa and Yurok are federally recognized tribes with federally protected fishing rights. We manage our fisheries and enforce our own laws aimed to ensure fish for generations to come. The Hoopa Valley Reservation stretches the lower 12 miles of the Trinity River. The Trinity is the Klamath's largest tributary and produces many of the Klamath's salmon stocks. The Yurok Reservation is located on the first 44 miles of the Klamath River, where all anadromous fish must pass through as they go out and return from the ocean.
The right of both tribes to fish and regulate their own fishing activities was preserved when the original reservations were set aside by in the mid to late 1800s. That right was later reaffirmed by Congress in the Hoopa/Yurok Settlement Act of 1988 and again in 1993 when the solicitor for the Department of the Interior stated in his opinion regarding the fishing rights of the Hoopa Valley and Yurok tribes: "It reserved for the Indians of the reservations a federally protected right to the fishery resource sufficient to support a moderate standard of living or 50 percent of the harvestable surplus of Klamath-Trinity basin fish."
The decline in salmon populations directly coincides with the occupation and subsequent mismanagement of natural resources by the federal government. This is not a new sentiment. The federal government has begun to recognize its mismanagement, and efforts are under way to remove four dams on the upper Klamath River and bring needed resources to bear upon Congress' mandate for restoring the Trinity River and its fishery.
Today, Klamath salmon provide a livelihood for many Hoopa and Yurok tribal members, and our tribal governments make it a priority to meet the needs of our membership. We have always and will always work and make sacrifices to ensure salmon and our people remain part of the Klamath Basin.
Leonard Masten Jr. is the Hoopa Valley Tribe chairman. Matt Mais is the Yurok Tribe's public relations manager.
As a former salmon and steelhead guide who worked
the Klamath and Trinity for many years I have no issue with the
native take, other than use of nylon gill nets and motorboats.
That does kind of makes it look like commercial instead of
subsistence fishing to me.
Just an opinion.
If you wish it it be traditional, use traditional methods and
have at it.
Think what a tourist attraction working Ishi-Pishi Falls in the
traditional ways might be.
Any reasonable person would not equate thoughtful stewardship of a threatened species with the practice of gill netting. I'm curious at what point the author's Grand Parents memory of vast hordes of returning fish connects with this practice, and eventual decline of the fishery.
It is clear that many practices need to be reversed in order to give the fish the best chance of recovery. Commercial Fishing methods, dam removal, sustained water flow, and a general moratorium on harvest should all be implemented until the salmon recover.
Any non Tribal member who has witnessed a net being stretched across the mouth of the Klamath would have difficulty connecting mass localized harvest with thoughtful stewardship.
If you claim a traditional right, at least utilize a traditional fishing method.
RussellHuntForThePeople writes:
November 22, 2009
Selling the catch to resturants in San Francisco at a nice profit seems less than nursing the environment. Of yes, let's tear the dams down first in say 2040. None of it makes sense. Let the system heal by banning all fishing. The tribes can be helped by settiing up fish farms. Establish more hatcheries. But this game fools nobody.
in response to klamathknot:
If you want to restore the fishery to its full potential the dams on the Trinity River will have to go. Period. All the instream and upslope work done trying to "restore" the fisheries is simply blood money given to the Tribes and Trinity County for destruction of a world class fishery in the name of irrigation and cheap water in the valley. The wild fish need a wild river. Without it they will go the way of the hundreds of millions of other species that have gone extinct on this planet.
Nuking the dams and restricting headwater logging even more is a the real answer as rivers are living creatures which must be allowed to clean and refresh themselves.
But that probably won't happen.
The problem is that our
legislatures at every level think of water not being used for
industry, golf courses, and increasing numbers of homes as
unused water.
Fish simply don't matter in that equation. That's how we got
here.
The Native Americans who fish the river have every right to, but their use of commercial methods like nylon gill nets and motor boats turn it into commercial fishing. If they wish to be seen as stewards of the rivers and the salmon, they need to return to those traditional methods or be considered part of the problem and not the solution.
Eric writes:
November 22, 2009
John, you have no idea how the public respond to any sort of
traditional fishing methods. Nets, Spears, Bows, dams, it
doesn't matter.
As for traditional fishing methods attracting tourists, Please
don't, they use fowl language they point with their middle
finger a lot and they spit a lot.
I hear from my Klamath cousins that their Salmon run was much
better than the Feather River or Sacramento river runs.
Something that I have seen in the past, is when there are
millions of Salmon fry in the shallow waters of the Sacramento
river the powers that be at Shasta Dam start releasing less
water and strand the Salmon fry eventually killing them.
The Federal Hatcheries should be forced to give spawned Salmon
to any one with a valid Fishing license or Tribal ID card.
Right now most of the Salmon processed by a Federal hatchery is
used to feed our Prison population.
You want Salmon? Go to prison.
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Goldnutz writes:
November 22, 2009
klamathknot writes: