Running wild: why Copper River salmon is worth $20 a pound, and why it may disappear forever

Sunset, March, 2003 by Jeff Phillips

Covel, who's been working the delta for 12 years, has seen the commercial fishery's decline. While commercial fishermen netted nearly 1.8 million salmon from the Copper River in 2002, they're still hurting--in large part because of consumers' attraction to cheaper farmed salmon, the world supply of which more than tripled between 1989 and 1998. While prices for the early-season run of the prized king (or chinook) salmon remain high, the farmed-salmon glut has depressed prices for the later runs of sockeye (or red) and silver (or coho) salmon. It is only people's willingness to pay more for quality wild salmon that keeps Covel's boat running.

And that's how the dominoes begin to fall: without a healthy fishing industry, there's less economic incentive to maintain a healthy watershed. Or to preserve wild salmon.

The soul of Cordova

"The reality today is that if the commercial fishery collapses, Cordova is in serious trouble," warns Kristin Smith. She is the head of the Copper River Watershed Project, a community group working to broaden and better manage the area's economy while preserving the natural environment of the watershed and the fishery for commercial, subsistence, and sport uses.

Smith thinks tourism is part of the answer. While there's no mistaking Cordova for anything but a commercial fishing town, it is close to some of the state's most spectacular scenery. There is excellent birding in April and May, with pristine fishing, hiking, and kayaking all summer.

Some landowners in the Copper River Watershed are looking to its natural resources for more immediate returns, however. Chugach Alaska Corporation, which manages 308,000 acres in the watershed on behalf of Native Alaskan shareholders, has proposed a road and logging project that environmentalists claim would threaten salmon-spawning streams and the Copper River fishery.

The issue isn't simple. "We want to create an economy here so our kids won't have to go to Los Angeles to get a job," says John F. C. Johnson, corporate vice president of cultural resources for Chugach Alaska. "For us, the almighty dollar is not the bottom line. Salmon are important. Our children are important. We've been here for 5,000 years, and we know that you don't destroy the nest you sleep in."

Not all of the region's Native Alaskans believe that development is the answer. "There are roughly 17 million acres within the Copper River Watershed, and very little of it is protected from development," says Dune Lankard, an Eyak Indian with the Eyak Preservation Council. "These corporate Indians think that clear-cut logging, oil drilling, strip mining, and selling land are the only ways to make money for native shareholders," he says. Lankard looks to responsibly managed ecotourism and a sustainable, healthy salmon fishery as sources of income that can be developed without sacrificing the environment.

"Salmon are to the native people of Alaska's coastal temperate rain forest like the buffalo were to the Plains Indians," Lankard says. "If we lose the wild salmon, we will lose the spiritual connection to our home."