Rural Alaska blog: The Village : Tundra Drums: Critics hammer fishery management in Bethel

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The Village is a Daily News blog about life and politics in rural Alaska. Its main author is ADN reporter Kyle Hopkins. Come here for breaking news on village issues, plus interviews, videos and photos. But that's just part of the story. We want to feature your pictures, videos and stories, too. Think of The Village as your bulletin board. E-mail us anything you’d like to share with the rest of Alaska -- your letters to the editor, the photos of your latest hunt or video of your latest potlatch. (We love video.)

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Kyle Hopkins

I was born in Sitka, have lived in Kake, Skagway and Fairbanks and joined the ADN in 2005 after writing for the Anchorage Press and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. I started blogging for the paper in 2006 with The Trail, our blog about the governor's race. Then came the Alaska Politics blog. Now I'm covering government and rural affairs and live in Anchorage with my wife, Rebecca. (Update: Our daughter Alice was born May 31. Thanks everyone for the suggestions.) E-mail me at khopkins@adn.com and find me on Twitter at twitter.com/ADNVillage.

khopkins@adn.com

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Tundra Drums: Critics hammer fishery management in Bethel

Posted by thevillage

Anchorage Daily News

Posted: October 14, 2009 - 1:00 pm

The Tundra Drums reports:

Yukon managers defend limits; 2009 fishery value lowest in decades

BETHEL — Outraged fishermen lashed out at state fishery managers on Monday, telling them at a House Resources Committee meeting that they mismanaged struggling salmon stocks on the Yukon River at the expense of rural Alaskans.

John White, former chair of the state Board of Fisheries, said their decisions showed “antagonistic disregard for the people of Western Alaska."

Related: Natural resources meeting heats up (KYUK)

John Hilsinger, director of commercial fisheries, called Yukon the most difficult river to manage in the state because of its size, the station reports.

"The decision that the manager makes on, lets say the 20th of June, down in Emmonak, he doesn't always know what the result of that decision is going to be until five or six weeks later," Hilsinger said, according to KYUK.

(This is something I've heard from fishery managers about the King run in particular. It's a relatively tiny run on a massive river, they say, making the Chinook needles in a haystack.)