Chinook salmon runs in the Yukon River have been steadily declining, with 2022 marking the smallest run on record. As the fish disappear, Yukon First Nations fear the cultures and traditions built around the salmon over countless generations will too.
Chinook aren’t just food to First Nations in Yukon, they’re a way of life. But 2022 has the lowest run ever recorded.Teri-Lee Isaac and her family would look for cues that have long dictated it was time to get ready for fish camp.
While chinook once ran so thick that elders described feeling like they could walk across the backs of the fish, and Isaac’s family could pull their nets from the river over and over without worry, recent runs have been more akin to a trickle; 2022 is the smallest run ever recorded. Among the markers of the chinook salmon’s nearly Sisyphean ordeal is a physical transformation — a spawning fish trades its silvery blue-green scales for reddish-bronze ones instead, and males grow a sharp beak while females have blunt, rounded heads.
Other salmon people who have stopped harvesting chinook — some for more than two decades now — include the Carcross/Tagish First Nation, Teslin Tlingit Council, Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and Kwanlin Dün First Nation. Others, like Selkirk First Nation, have asked citizens to limit or reduce their harvest.
Left: Brandy Mayes is a Kwanlin Dün citizen and operations manager for the First Nation's lands department. Right: A board at the Whitehorse fish ladder indicates to visitors how many chinook salmon have passed through, as of Aug. 30, 2022. What exactly is causing the decline of chinook on the Yukon River is a matter of heated debate, with possible causes in two categories: problems in the river and in the ocean.
using sonar at Pilot Station, near the mouth of the river, “disappeared” before reaching the U.S.-Canada border, suggesting something was killing them en route.A view of the river and surrounding trees and nature from a boat docked on shore.Two women are seated at a table looking at a computer screen.
“On a personal level, I think all of the salmon users are doing their part,” said James MacDonald, chair of the Yukon Salmon Sub-Committee, which helps develop recommendations for the territory’s salmon management strategy. “However, on a good note, I think we would say that salmon have that ability to turn around in a few lifecycles, which is good.”
Council of Yukon First Nations senior analyst Ed Schultz, himself a LS/CFN citizen, said the event was meant to serve as a “counterbalance” to other salmon meetings that often put Western science — studies, sonar stations, statistics — at the forefront. “If one was to look at the history of our peoples, the connectedness between us and salmon has been so intertwined for thousands of years that the salmon really influenced our languages, our behaviour, our values and traditions, our customs,” he said.
The gathering at Tatchun Creek, he said, was meant to carry on at least the spirit of fish camp — people gathered, shared knowledge, sat around campfires while laughing and eating. “We have to do everything we can. We need to do more, and I keep reminding that to some of our people. No one should be fishing. We all need to step up to the plate.”“It certainly feels like it’s a slow-motion extinction process, but I do have hope,” he said. He’d like to see the Yukon trial more small-scale conservation hatcheries and local habitat restoration and protection efforts.
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