Kuskokwim River Community-Based Harvest Monitoring

The summer subsistence salmon fisheries on the Kuskokwim River within the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge (YDNWR) are managed through co-stewardship between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (KRITFC). Both inseason and postseason data are limited in the Kuskokwim River watershed and more information is needed to assist management decisions. KRITFC is proposing to continue a community-based harvest monitoring project to provide inseason and postseason data to help assess Chinook, chum, sockeye, and coho salmon populations in the Kuskokwim River. Harvest monitoring data will be collected from the lower river between the villages of Eek and Tuluksak. Near real-time subsistence salmon harvest and fishing effort estimates derived from community-based interviews and aerial net counts will be used to inform inseason management decisions. Data collected will also be used postseason to evaluate salmon run strength as well as management decisions, including whether subsistence fishing opportunities provided over the course of each season were effective in balancing conservation and subsistence harvest needs. In addition, a critical element of this project is the employment of local community members as harvest monitors, providing employment, economy, and local capacity building. During this project period, KRITFC intends to increase the scope and community capacity of the project by expanding community-based harvest monitoring into additional communities within

The overall project goals are to: (1) continue to implement a framework for a community-based fisheries harvest monitoring network to inform inseason management with data on catch abundances, and species compositions and ratios in subsistence harvests; (2) collect age, sex, and length (ASL) data from salmon harvested in the lower portion of the Kuskokwim River; and (3) contribute to fisheries capacity building within Kuskokwim communities and communicate transparent, trusted data to these communities. It is intended that the monitoring network protocols developed over the past nine years continue to be used and refined as needed to continue project success.