The Chilkat Indian Village of Klukwan rankled some people in Haines in November when it joined a lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Land Management, saying the agency should consider effects of a mine’s development now, not later.
Constantine Metal Resources, the Canadian firm that’s exploring an ore deposit near the Canada border, has said it’s still a distance from determining if there’s enough metals at the site to open a mine.
That’s not the issue, Klukwan said. Its lawsuit asks: What are the environmental effects of the drilling, road-building and other work Constantine is doing now?
Klukwan is rightfully concerned. The Chilkat River’s king salmon run has been on a 15-year slide, and no one can explain why. Compared to just a few decades ago, sockeye stocks returning to the Chilkat and Chilkoot rivers appear to be in decline. And Klukwan Natives haven’t netted eulachon in significant numbers in the Chilkat River for about 25 years.
Historically, eulachon were among the Chilkats’ most valuable sources of sustenance. The fish provided a protein source twice a year, critically in winter and spring. Eulachon oil was not only an important health tonic, it was also a priceless trade good that made the village prosperous.
What happened to eulachon is worthy of a closer look. Up until the late 1980s, Natives dipped for eulachon along the Haines Highway at 4 Mile, 7 Mile and 9 Mile. Fermenting pits and cooking pots can still be found at some of those places, but not fishermen. Since the early 1990s, eulachon have return to the west side of the Chilkat River, far from the roadside channels where they were easily harvested for decades.
Eulachon are something of a mystery. They’re not salmon and even Native lore establishes that the smelt-like fish can be fickle about where they return to spawn, and in what numbers. A few years ago they didn’t materialize at Lutak bridge – an historic spawning spot at the mouth of the Chilkoot River – and instead spawned near Skagway in numbers no one there had ever seen. Then they came back to Lutak.
This much we know. Eulachon have been disappearing from rivers along the West Coast of the United States and Canada since the early 1990s. The fish is listed as “threatened” in the Lower 48 and “endangered” in every river in Canada except the Nass and Skeena. A historic eulachon return to the Unuk River near Ketchikan has largely dried up in the past 20 years, preventing subsistence harvest.
Ominously for Haines, a National Geographic report on the decline of West Coast eulachon in 2015 surmised that the fish may survive in larger rivers like the Columbia and Fraser due to the huge size of their original runs while disappearing altogether from smaller rivers. (The lower Columbia River once saw so many eulachon that there’s speculation the fish’s name gave rise to the English word “Oregon.”)
Natives in Haines were worrying about eulachon as long ago as the late 1980s, when the State of Alaska’s Department of Transportation proposed adding another runway at the Haines Airport. Roadside habitat affected by the project, particularly near 4 Mile, was important for spawning eulachon, the Chilkats said.
Natives, biologists, environmentalists and airline companies all supported an early alternative for a runway that jutted into the river, limiting impacts to near-shore fish habitat. (The airlines liked the jutted alignment because it moved flights away from an airport wind shear that occurs when winds strike the west flank of Mount Ripinsky.)
Natives wanted the project to undergo a full environmental impact statement, not the less- thorough environmental assessment sought by DOT.
“If they can do something to make sure the hooligan don’t get bothered, sure, we can go along with it,” testified Native elder Peter Johnson Sr. at a meeting in Haines in 1990. “But we want to make sure they look at every facet of it before they start doing something…We don’t want to see the eulachon getting messed up. We’re getting scared for the fish around here already,” Johnson said, noting a former eulachon fishing spot at 7 Mile had run dry in recent years.
A dike to be constructed just south of 4 Mile was of particular concern. Testified Marilyn Wilson of the Alaska Native Sisterhood: “You say the dike won’t affect 4 Mile Point, but if it does, how will we be mitigated if we can’t fish there anymore? We get most of our fish from that site.”
A 1990 report by the state’s Division of Subsistence stated, “The Chilkat area is one of the few in Alaska where eulachon are numerous and dependable and where families have maintained traditional in harvesting eulachon and processing its oil.” The federal U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Habitat Division of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game both requested the state conduct the more rigorous environmental impact statement.
In the end, DOT dumped the jutted alignment, which it deemed too expensive, and rejected the call for an EIS, saying the state and federal wildlife agencies had failed to identify a “significant impact.”
This statement by Mike McKinnon, DOT’s environmental coordinator for the airport job, summed up the state’s position with words that capture the void we step into when we alter a natural system, as we have the Chilkat River again and again.
“We can’t guarantee anything about the eulachon,” McKinnon said. “There’s no answer to what is going to happen to the fish. That’s the fish’s business. We’re not going to impact them, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to be there forever and ever.”
Since the airport was rebuilt in 1993, Natives have been dependent on a single site to meet their eulachon needs – the mouth of the Chilkoot River.
Was it the airport project that drove eulachon from the east banks of the Chilkat? Maybe. Maybe not. Neither the Department of Transportation nor the Department of Fish and Game nor any other department can say.
No one knows. DOT’s studies predicted the project wouldn’t impact the eulachon along the river but something did. And the State of Alaska, which got its airport runway, is now not studying what happened to the eulachon there.
So now the Constantine folks are saying their work won’t or doesn’t impact the fish in the Chilkat River. But the king salmon are going away and the sockeye runs don’t look healthy.
There are two ways to respond to what’s going on in our valley: You can say, “Hell, the fish are gone or going away, we might as well move on to other industries,” or you can say, “What’s happening to the fish? We have to fight for their survival.”
Most white folks can afford to take the first response, as fish to us are a resource, like timber or oil, something we sell to make money. Gillnetters can become miners.
But if you live in Klukwan, where the survival of your people and your community for more than 1,000 years has been bound to the fish in the river, you’re more likely to err on the side of the fish. Considering recent history, that’s not only understandable, it’s prudent.