By Raven Cunningham
For generations, residents of Cordova have relied on the Copper River for subsistence. It feeds our families, sustains our culture, and keeps our community whole. It also supports our local economy. However, recent decisions by the Alaska Board of Fisheries (BOF) have taken a fillet knife, delivering what many here are calling the final blow to an already fragile subsistence fishery.
The Native Village of Eyak (NVE) has spent over two decades collecting critical data on the Copper River. Providing important information on both Chinook and Sockeye salmon to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for their management of the river. NVE’s biologists have monitored escapement, run timing, harvest, habitat, and health to inform sustainable, science-based management. This long-term investment in stewardship stands in stark contrast to the state’s recent decisions, which disregard both local expertise and threaten the very resources we have worked so hard to protect.
At the BOF meeting held in Cordova this past December, the Board voted to close off safe harvesting areas. Then, the BOF and commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game directed that an emergency order be placed to limit the Copper River District subsistence fishery to just one day, May 17.
By regulation, subsistence users should have been able to fish starting May 15, continuing until 48 hours before the commercial opener on May 22. Instead, this emergency order erased nearly a week of critical access. These actions stripped authority from local biologists who know our waters, tides, and fish runs best, and gutted our limited, catch-restricted subsistence fishery.
The result? An increasingly constrained system where both time and area are now off-limits to local users, threatening food security and deepening hardship in a community already struggling under the weight of rising living costs.
For years, the Board has falsely treated subsistence and commercial fishing in the Copper River District as one and the same. This dangerous conflation has bound the two in regulation despite their clear legal, cultural, and practical distinctions. Subsistence is not a subset of commercial fishing; it is a constitutionally protected right. But when subsistence access is tied to the commercial schedule, rural families are left hoping for a single good-weather day to harvest their catch-limited subsistence fishery.
The problem worsens when you consider the equipment we use. It is not large commercial vessels that are being hurt by these policies. It is the small skiffs, run by families with limited means, that are forced into unsafe conditions in narrow fishing windows. These regulations do not just inconvenience us. They endanger us.
Cordova has no roads to our food sources. We rely on boats, many of which, while registered commercially, are used for far more than commerce. They are used to access hunting grounds, marine mammal harvests, bird collecting, and remote camps. These vessels are our lifelines, not luxuries. Commercial fishing does not conflict with subsistence. It often supports it. Processors donate ice. Families share boats. Old nets are repurposed into new subsistence gear. But support does not equal substitution.
The BOF continues to blur the line between commercial and subsistence use. Nowhere is this clearer than how it calculates the Amount Necessary for Subsistence (ANS).
According to 5 AAC 01.616, Cordova’s ANS is listed as 3,000 to 5,000 salmon only in years when the commercial fishery is open. That figure jumps to 19,000-32,000 in years without it. This policy wrongly assumes that commercial homepacks can replace true subsistence harvests and, in essence, allocate subsistence fish to nonresident permit holders. But homepack is not guaranteed, accessible, or equitable. It should never be counted as a substitute for a subsistence right. This violates AS 16.05.258, which mandates subsistence be the highest priority use, and Article VIII Section 4 of the Alaska Constitution.
Subsistence is the law. Commercial activity should not determine whether or how resident families feed themselves.
Of 535 commercial permits issued for the Copper River, only 14% are held by Tribal members. Yet nearly 70% of Tribal households rely on the commercial fishery in some form, whether through income, deckhand work, tendering, or equipment access.
The people most dependent on the river are the most restricted in accessing it. Cordova families now face fewer openers, smaller fishing areas, and tighter restrictions imposed under the guise of conservation, but with no meaningful input from those affected. The Copper River is not just a fishery. It is a food system. A way of life. And it is being eroded, regulation by regulation.
Subsistence and commercial fishing must be managed separately. Our survival depends on it.
Cordova is resilient. However, even the most resilient communities cannot withstand a policy that ignores the law, excludes local voices, and undermines basic food access. The people of Cordova are calling for change and for the Board of Fisheries to stop weaponizing regulations against the very communities that the subsistence law was designed to protect.
Raven Cunningham is the vice chair of the Native Village of Eyak Tribal Council.
