The following release was made by Ahtna, Inc. on May 22, 2024 regarding discovery of burial sites found under the O'Brien Creek to Haley Creek trail. Their original post on Facebook may be found here.

Ahtna, Incorporated

***Copper River Road Closure Due to Discovery of Ancestral Burial Sites***

The State of Alaska Department of Transportation (DOT) has temporarily closed the Copper River Road to allow the installation of a temporary bridge over and around newly discovered ancestral burial sites. These sites were found within and adjacent to the Copper River Road state right-of-way, which traverses lands privately owned by the Chitina Native Corporation.

The closure is a necessary measure to protect multiple ancestral burial sites recently identified in the O'Brien Creek area. The State of Alaska DOT, working in collaboration with the Native Village of Chitina, aims to reopen the road before the start of the dip-net fishing season.

Temporary bridges are being installed over the identified graves, ensuring the protection of these significant cultural resources. The road will remain closed until these bridges are in place. The construction crews and equipment belong to the State of Alaska DOT.

The burial sites were discovered on land owned by the Chitina Native Corporation. The ongoing discussions about the Copper River Road's status involve the State of Alaska DOT and the Native Village of Chitina. Ahtna, Inc. owns the land south of the land owned by Chitina Native Corporation. The right-of-way easement for the Copper River Road passes through both the Chitina Native Corporation's and Ahtna, Inc.'s lands.

During the summer of 2023, a collaborative effort between the State of Alaska DOT and the Native Village of Chitina led to cultural studies on the Copper River Road. These studies utilized ground-penetrating radar and sonar, uncovering 10 graves within the state right-of-way, including one directly beneath the road and another within five feet of it. Several other anomalies were detected, which may indicate dispersed skeletal remains or cultural artifacts from the road's construction.

The Chitina Dipnetters booth at the 2022 Fairbanks Outdoor was another success this year. We met a lot of people bringing in 84 new and renewing members, hosted an informative dipnetter howto seminar, and gave away a fancy Cutco brand filet knife to one lucky member, Sharee Melson of North Pole. Big thanks go out to volunteers Karen Clautise, Jeff Bushke, and Laz Porter for helping us work the booth this year!

The knife has a locking lever on handle that allows blade length of 6"-9". It has a sharpening stone on back of case and the case itself is hinged to act as a plier type fish lip grabber. There's also a line cutter on case.

With the relaxing of  COVID 19 restrictions, CDA will resume its annual in-person meeting in 2022. The annual meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, May 10 at 7PM in the TVSA shooting range building at 1230 TVSA Way, Fairbanks, AK.

We will be conducting the election of CDA board members. F&G will be present to review the Copper River salmon forecast for the 2022 dipnet season, present fishery participation and harvest data from 2021 and answer any questions concerning their management of the Chitina dipnet fishery. A DOT representative will bring us up to speed on future projects planned for the fishery, continuing work on the trail between O'Brien and Haley Creeks as well as expenditures for fulfilling the garbage and toilet servicing contracts for the fishery.

A table with various snacks (smoked salmon, cheese, fruit and vegetable trays, refreshments) will be available at the mid meeting break. Door prize drawings will occur throughout the meeting and CDA memberships as well as apparel will be available for purchase at the door.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has released their 2022 Copper River Salmon forecast.

Forecasts of total run were calculated for Copper River wild sockeye salmon, Gulkana Hatchery sockeye salmon, Coghill Lake sockeye salmon, and for wild Prince William Sound (PWS) pink and chum salmon. Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corporation (PWSAC) and Valdez Fisheries Development Association (VFDA) provide additional forecasts for hatchery-specific stocks. In addition to forecasts, a summary of recent 10-year averages (2012–2021) of commercial harvest for most wild stocks and Gulkana Hatchery production is included (Table 2). Salmon forecasts are inherently uncertain and are primarily used to gauge the general magnitude of expected runs and set early-season harvest management strategy. In 2022, the department will continue to manage PWS and Copper River area commercial salmon fisheries inseason based primarily on the strength of salmon abundance indices including sonar counts, weir passage, aerial escapement surveys, and fishery performance data.

See the attached PDF file for the forecast.

CDA Board Member John Siegfreid and I attended the December meeting of the Alaska Board of Fisheries in Cordova. I'm happy to report that no regulations negatively affecting the Chitina Personal Use fishery were passed. The CDA's one beneficial proposal was denied.

Multiple proposals that would have restricted dipnetting from a boat in the Personal Use (PU) and subsistence fisheries were not approved — boat fishing may continue with no new restrictions. The proposal prohibiting the use of gillnet mesh in dipnets failed. The proposal to lower the current PU bag limit, which CDA got put in place at the 2014 BOF meeting, failed. The proposal to require mandatory online reporting of PU salmon within 3 days of the time of harvest also failed.

Notably, the proposal to reduce the PU allocation from the existing 100,000-150,000 salmon to 50,000 if, by June 1, the commercial harvest is 50% below the 10 year average failed. I stressed to the Board of Fish that most recent commercial drift net harvest restrictions have been in place because of low king salmon numbers. Drift nets indiscriminately catch salmon and kings suffer a high mortality rate in them. Restrictions on the commercial fleet to protect king salmon could easily trigger the allocation reduction in our Personal Use fishery even if the sockeye run is outstanding. The PU fishery should stay open to harvest sockeyes, as dipnetters can release kings immediately, most times unharmed.

The CDA's single proposal before the BOF this year, proposal 18, would have extended the lower boundary of the PU fishery to relieve boat congestion and possible dangerous conditions in a short, crowded area at the very bottom of the fishery area. We twice amended the proposal to alleviate concerns brought forward by ADF&G staff comments, but it failed to pass by one vote.

The only major change to the subsistence fishery in the Glennallen District upstream of the McCarthy bridge was the elimination of paid charter operators such as Alaska Expeditions and Copper River Wild. They must now operate solely in the PU fishery.

The paired burden of king salmon conservation set at the 2011 BOF meeting, with the commercial fleet being restricted to only one 12 hour period inside the barrier islands in each of their first weekly openings and the PU fishery opening June 7-14 instead of, as it was prior to 2011, June 1, did not change.

Without CDA's representation at the BOF meeting, which is paid for with members' annual dues and merchandise sales (shop.chitinadipnetters.com), the proposals and public testimony placing restrictions on the Chitina Personal Use Fishery would have been unchallenged, much to the detriment of dipnetters.

Thank you for your continued support!

Chuck Derrick, Pres.
Chitina Dipnetters Association

Public Comments Concerning Submitted Proposals To The December 2021 PWS/Upper Copper and Upper Susitna Finfish BOF Meeting

The Chitina Dipnetters Association recommends the following support or opposition to these proposals put before the Alaska Board of Fish at the December, 2021, meeting in Cordova. The Proposal Book for this meeting with the full proposal texts may be found at the Board of Fish website (http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/regulations/regprocess/fisheriesboard/pdfs/2021-2022/proposals/pws.pdf)

Prop. 5 - support
Establish an Optimum Escapement Goal (OEG) for Copper River chinook salmon, increasing the escapement goal to 24,000-40,000.

Prop. 6 - oppose
Require in-season reporting of harvest for the upper Copper subsistence, sport and personal use fisheries.
This would require that dipnetters report daily harvest within 3 days of catch rather than end-of-season harvest reporting. This is a recurring proposal to the BOF. It has been rejected by the BOF each time mainly because F&G says in-season reporting is not needed to manage these upriver fisheries. Management of these fisheries and the in-river salmon goal is dictated by actual daily sonar counts at the Miles Lake sonar.

Prop. 7 - oppose
Prohibit guiding in subsistence finfish fisheries.
Many people rely on guided salmon dipnet harvest to supplement their annual family food supply.

Prop. 8 - oppose
Prohibit dipnetting within 500yds below and 100 yds above any stream entering the Upper Copper River.
This would eliminate dipnetting near the mouths of O'Brien Creek, Haley Creek, the Chitina River and, if I read it right, any small creek entering the Copper, further limiting harvest opportunity. Dipnetting is already limited, by regulation, to the main stream of the Copper River and prohibited in any stream entering the Copper.

Prop. 9, 10 & 11 - oppose
Prohibit dipnetting from a boat in the Upper Copper River District.
Public access along the Copper River is very limited for shore based dipnetting, especially in the Glennallen sub-district of the Upper Copper River District. Because access is limited, many dipnetters have opted to use their own boats to access the river and to dipnet salmon. Dipnetters have a set annual limit and once that limit is reached, they are done for the year. Dipnetting from boats is a popular means of obtaining that limit.

Prop.12 - oppose
Prohibit dipnetting from a boat when within 50' of a person dipnetting from shore in Chitina Subdistrict.
Talk about an enforcement nightmare.

Prop. 13 - oppose
Prohibit dipnetting from a boat within 75' of any operating fish wheel.
Enforcement nightmare.

Prop. 14 &15 - oppose
Prohibit use of gillnet mesh in dipnets because it harms king salmon to be released that are tangled in the mesh.
Alaska regulation 5AAC 39.105 states a dipnet mesh must be less than 4.5" stretch mesh. In my experience, the only problem with releasing fish from gillnet mesh is the smaller sockeyes that actually get stuck halfway through the mesh. King salmon, no such problem.

Prop. 16 - oppose
Prohibit the use of depth or fish finders on boats in the upper Copper River District.
The only person I know that tried to use a fish finder in the Copper said it was of little use in the fast, heavily silted water.

Prop. 17 - oppose
Establish specific permit and bag limits when dipnetting from a boat in the Glennallen subdistrict. (The Glennallen subdistrict is the subsistence area upstream of the bridge, not a personal use area.)
Access to shore based dipnetting upstream of the bridge is very limited due to private land ownership and few roads accessing the river. Dipnetting from boats is a means by which some people are able to harvest their salmon. Shore and boat dipnetting should continue under a unified permit structure — there is already a checkbox for selecting gear type when applying for the permit.

Prop. 18 - support
Extend lower boundary of the Chitina subdistrict 1/2 mile downstream.
This is a Chitina Dipnetters Association submitted proposal to address a safety issue. A favorable and high use area for drift dipnetting from boats lies at the downstream end of Woods Canyon, on the east side of the Copper River, just upstream of the lower boundary of the CPUDF. This short drift area is only approximately 250 yards long, has a gravel bottom and stays relatively snag free, saving the loss of $150+ dipnets. This short drift area has become the go-to spot for boat dipnetters and often becomes very congested with 15 or more boats drifting the same area. Extending the existing CPUDF lower boundary 1/2 mile downstream would allow more spacing between boats, and alleviate the congestion of boats that occurs now.

Prop.19 - oppose
When by June 1 the commercial harvest is 50% below the 10 year average, then the Chitina Personal Use sockeye allocation would be reduced from 150,000 to 50,000.
The Personal Use harvest times and lengths are dictated by actual sonar counts. When run numbers are low, it shows in the sonar counts and F&G reduces the PU dipnet opening times and lengths accordingly to meet in-river goals. When commercial harvests are low it is reflected in low sonar counts triggering reduced fishing time in the PU fishery. To reduce the PU fishery allocation on top of reduced fishing time is a double hit. If the run rebounds 2 weeks later, the PU fishery would still be stuck with a 2/3s allocation reduction.

Prop. 20 - oppose
Reducing the annual limit in the Chitina subdistrict to 15 salmon for a household of one and 30 salmon for a household of more than one.
CDA fought hard to get the Personal Use annual limit raised to 25 for the permit holder and 10 fish for each additional household member. F&G supported this bag limit increase at the 2014 Cordova PWS/Copper River finfish BOF meeting. It standardized the PU annual limit between South-Central Alaska PU fisheries and the Chitina PU fishery, thus eliminating confusion between the PU fisheries and making it a more equitable harvest for larger families.

Prop. 21 - support
Amend the opening date of the Chitina PU. fishery from June 7 to June 1.
If salmon sonar numbers warrant it then the Chitina PU fishery should open On June 1 as it did in the past.

Prop. 22 - support
Eliminate the Customary and Traditional finding for finfish other than salmon in the Chitina subdistrict.
If there is no customary and tradition finding for salmon in the Chitina Subdistrict, then why should there be a positive finding for other finfish?

Prop. 41 - oppose
Repeal mandatory closed waters from the Copper River King Salmon Management Plan.
Mandatory inside closures during commercial fishing statistical weeks 1&2 were initiated to protect those early run kings, that thru F&G radio telemetry programs, were determined to be those fish that go farthest upriver to spawn and supply the upper Copper subsistence fishery. To say that in the last several years the king salmon population has been healthy is a stretch as I remember upwards 20 years ago that today's total annual king run for the Copper River of say 60,000 is what the commercial fishermen out of Cordova were harvesting and we still met the total in-river goal.

The Alaska Board of Fisheries (BOF) will meet in Cordova from November 30 - December 6 to deliberate and vote on proposals submitted for Prince William Sound/Upper Copper and Susitna River finfish. The Chitina Dipnetters Association (CDA) will be represented at the meeting by two of our board members to defend proposals beneficial to Chitina Personal Use Dipnetters (PU) and oppose those detrimental to our fishery.

Several of this year’s proposals deal with restricting or eliminating the ability to dipnet salmon from a boat, targeting both the PU and subsistence fisheries of the Upper Copper. Many dipnetters choose to use their own boats to harvest their annual family bag limit. CDA feels that dipnetting from boats is just another viable method of securing that bag limit. Our proposal comment opposes restrictions to boat dipnetting in the subsistence fishery for fear that those restrictions could later be applied to the PU fishery.

CDA will be defending a proposal we submitted, #18, which asks the BOF to extend the lower boundary of the PU fishery 1/2 mile downstream. Not only will this provide more shore based dipping territory, but also serve to relieve the congestion of boats that occurs in the short stretch of Copper River across from Haley Creek, a favored area for boat dipnetters.

The entire CDA Board of Directors encourages individual dipnetters to send their personal comments supporting CDA's position. Comments to the proposals are due by November 15th and can be made online at http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=process.comments. Be sure to select “Prince William Sound – Comments due 11/15/2021” as the Board Meeting for which you are commenting.

The full text of our comments are available in HTML or as a PDF file.

From the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, “For the Chitina permit, this year it is required that all harvest reporting be done online. In the past you could fill out your paper and mail it to the department. No longer. For those without internet access, they can call the Fairbanks F&G office and go through the process over the phone, but mailing physical reports in is no longer an option.

"The department is also going to be working harder to enforce penalties on those who fail to report harvests in the Chitina Personal Use Dipnet fishery. Reporting has fallen almost below 80%. Regulations state that failure to report harvests can result in a fine and a loss of fishing privileges in the following year. This has rarely been properly enforced in recent years, resulting in a decline in reported harvests. Due to this steady decline in reporting, F&G is going to begin enforcing the loss of fishing privileges for dipnetters who fail to report.  For F&G, non-reporting results in more error in the harvest estimation  making it more difficult to manage the fishery.”

Electronically issued permits not only makes the system more cost efficient, but allows for easier enforcement of failure to report. Harvests must be reported by October 15.

Permits for the Chitina personal use dipnet fishery, which have been available online for a couple of years, will become available on May 1. 

Link to the full story     http://fairbanksdailynews.ak.newsmemory.com/?publink=00160a61f

Due to poor sockeye returns, today, June 12, marks 14 days since the Copper River commercial fleet has had an opening. In past years, this circumstance would have invoked a regulation automatically decreasing the Copper River personal use (ie dipnetter) allocation from 100-150 thousand sockeyes to 50,000 sockeyes for the remainder of the season. But not this year or any other! The Chitina Dipnetters Association submitted a proposal to the Alaska Board of Fisheries rescinding that regulation. The BoF considered that proposal at their December, 2017, meeing in Valdez. CDA President Chuck Derrick and VP Paul Harrell attended the BOF meeting to walk our proposal through the process and argue against competing interests. Ultimately, Chuck and Paul successfully convinced the Board of Fish that our proposal stood on its merits, rescinding the 50,000 re-allocation rule. In times of plenty, the 50,000 reallocation rule isn't an issue. In times of scarcity or, more importantly, a late run when fish are aplenty and escapement goals are met, personal use dipnetters were unfairly shouldering a burden. As of today, 2018 is not shaping up to be a good year for Copper River sockeyes, to the detriment of the commercial fleet, subsistence fishers and dipnetters. Under the old rules, if a booming late run of reds materialize, dipnetters would have been automatically restricted to a 50,000 fish allocation this year. Under the new rules, thanks to the CDA's accepted proposal, dipnetters can continue fishing under our 100,00-150,000 allocation instead of being artificially restricted because of a slow start for the commercial fleet. CDA fully supports the ADF&G's work to maintain and build the Copper River sockeye and chinook runs. We are not pushing to over-harvest the resource or to threaten future year returns. We only push to ensure the 10,000 registered Chitina personal use dipnetters have their fair shot at accessing the State of Alaska's salmon resource. If our work protecting and developing your access to the Chitina dipnet fishery is important to you, please consider becoming an annual member and/or purchasing CDA merchandise. Of the nearly 10,000 Chitina dipnet permits issued last year, we had only 300ish members, or 3% of the you! Your membership dues pay for us to send representatives to the Board of Fish meetings and work on other projects. Your membership itself provides us a political voice in Juneau and other venues - the more voices behind us the more powerful our message! Once again, we're offering "door prizes" for all current new or renewing members - the prize list is on our home page! Instead of a single large prize, we've put up a few smaller prizes. Grand prize is a 45/70 guide gun! Thank you for your current and future support!

A new dipnetting season is rapidly approaching and the Chitina Dipnetters Association is hard at work. The $15 dipnet permit fee we supported in the Legislature is in full effect now. Vaulted toilets have been installed at O'Brien Creek and the parking area just above it. Garbage collection is more efficient and timely. Most excitingly, DOT was able to use the money to clear and reconstruct a portion of the O'Brien Creek to Haley Creek trail. That's something our members have been asking about for years! The work performed last fall improved the trail to mile 4.5. Money rolled over from last year will be spent this spring improving the trail to mile 5.1. DOT anticipates the trail maintenance will allow two side-by-side ATVs to pass each other. Ultimately, DOT says the money will allow them to rebuild the trail all the way to Haley Creek, the downstream dipnetting boundary.

Byron Haley, the former president of Chitina Dipnetters Association, passed away Sunday evening, September 24th, at the Pioneers home. He was 90 years old. His funeral will be held Monday October 2nd at St. Matthews Episcopal Church, the log church off 1st Ave by the river near the old library. Viewing is at 11am and funeral at Noon. He will be buried in the graveyard at Manley, Ak. CDA purchased a nice flower arrangement on behalf of the Chitina Dipnetters Association. The card says

Byron's obituary is published in the NewsMiner at http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/newsminer/obituary.aspx?n=byron-w-haley&pid=186801783