Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska Gov. Dunleavy picks second ex-talk radio host for lucrative fish job after first rejected

June 14, 2024 — In May, the Alaska Legislature narrowly rejected a conservative talk radio host’s appointment to a highly paid position regulating the state’s commercial fisheries.

Now, after the failure of that pick, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy has chosen a new appointee with a similar — though not identical — background for the six-figure job at the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission, or CFEC.

In an unannounced decision, Dunleavy selected Rick Green last month, according to a letter to Green that the governor’s office released Wednesday as part of a response to a Northern Journal public records request.

Green’s first day on the job is July 1, according to the commission’s chair, Glenn Haight; Green will serve at least through the Alaska Legislature’s next round of confirmation votes in the spring of 2025.

On the airwaves for more than 15 years, Green was known as Rick Rydell during a colorful career as a talk host. His on-air character was that of an “unabashed redneck,” according to one of the books he wrote.

One of those books also chronicled how, with two other hunting enthusiasts, Rydell once attempted to shoot, legally, 30 bears in a single long weekend.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

ALASKA: Alaska Gov. Dunleavy passes over tribal advocate for fishery council post, fueling calls for change

March 23, 2023 — Some tribal and subsistence advocates are criticizing Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s nomination of a rural fisheries executive for an influential federal management post — another sign of the rising polarization and stakes in Alaska fish politics amid historic crashes in salmon stocks.

Dunleavy last week announced Rudy Tsukada as his preferred nominee for an open seat on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. That’s the entity that oversees the huge harvests of Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska crab and whitefish stocks worth hundreds of millions of dollars — and that’s under pressure to reduce accidental catches of king and chum salmon, species that have all but disappeared from the Kuskokwim and Yukon rivers in Southwest Alaska in recent years.

Tsukada is chief operating officer for Coastal Villages Region Fund, one of six Community Development Quota, or CDQ, groups established by Congress three decades ago.

The nonprofit CDQ groups play a unique role in Alaska fisheries and politics. They received whitefish quota when the program was established in the 1990s, so they participate in the trawl fisheries that have accidental catches of Southwest Alaska salmon stocks.

But the CDQ groups are also charged with creating economic development and providing social benefits for Western Alaska residents — and supporters say that mission makes the groups’ leaders responsive to the regional crisis that’s developed amid closures of subsistence and commercial salmon fisheries.

Supporters of Tsukada’s nomination note that Dunleavy passed over other candidates that included an employee of Trident, a for-profit seafood company with investments in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska trawl fisheries.

Read the full article at Alaska Beacon

Alaska Gov. Dunleavy urges EPA to stop veto of Pebble mine

October 26, 2022 — Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to put the brakes on its effort to stop the giant Pebble copper and gold project.

In May, the federal agency proposed halting the proposed mine under a provision of the Clean Water Act it has used sparingly. It says the mine would be among the world’s largest open-pit copper mines and threatens the Bristol Bay region’s valuable wild salmon fishery and people who rely on it.

The agency is expected to decide by Dec. 2 whether it will move ahead with its proposal.

In his Sept. 6, three-page letter to Casey Sixkiller, administrator of the EPA region that includes Alaska, Dunleavy said the proposed veto of the project is “deeply concerning” and would undermine Alaska’s legal decision-making authority in resource development.

The letter, accompanied by the state’s 53-page comment to the agency, was obtained through a routine records request by the Daily News for the governor’s monthly correspondence.

Dunleavy said the EPA proposal, if finalized, would make preemptive decisions about which resources Alaska can develop and how it can develop them. It chooses fisheries over mining, while disregarding Alaska’s ability to protect its fishery resources, the governor said in the letter.

“Whether, and how, Alaska develops Bristol Bay’s mineral resources or its fishery resources — or both, responsibly — is Alaska’s decision to make, considering the input of all stakeholders and working through the standard permitting process,” Dunleavy said in the letter. “EPA would instead choke off further discussion, usurping for itself this important decision affecting so many Alaskans.”

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News