Healthy Land and Habitat

STRATEGIC ACTION 2

Maintain Vegetative Complex that Supports Moose, Fish and Other Species within and Adjacent to the Floodplain The key to assuring that a river system like the Nushagak has healthy habitat for the plants and animals that provide for subsistence is to protect the vegetative complex within the riparian corridor of the river. Each conservation target area we have designated has different vegetative features that are largely determined by an interaction of climate, geology, landform, soils, and hydrology (surface and groundwater flows). These features define the unique role that a conservation target area plays in the life stage of land mammals and fish. Our conservation targets straddle both public lands and private lands, and it is this difference in land ownership that largely directs our conservation strategies.

Private Lands Protection

Alaska Native Corporation Lands

The local Native corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) own most of the land within and adjacent to the 100-year flood plain in the Lower Mainstem and Riparian conservation target area. This area encompasses three permanent villages, Portage Creek, Ekwok, and New Stuyahok, and is the target area most influenced by current human activity. The area receives the largest amount of recreational and subsistence hunting and fishing pressure. Land ownership within this target area is apportioned among six ANCSA Native village corporations: Aleknagik Natives Ltd., Choggiung Ltd., Ekwok Natives Ltd., Stuyahok Ltd., and Koliganek Natives Ltd. The regional Native corporation, Bristol Bay Native Corporation, also owns land along the river between Portage Creek and Ekwok.

Native corporation ownership of land is further divided between the surface and subsurface estate. The regional corporation Bristol Bay Native Corporation owns the subsurface estate under all village corporation lands. Under Alaska Law the subsurface estate is the dominant estate. The surface owner cannot deny the subsurface owner access to resources that may lie in the subsurface estate.

The habitat threat posed by Native corporation ownership is not immediate, nor is it a function of current leadership or management in these corporations. At present, all of the corporations with land holdings on the Nushagak River participate in a unified land management program that controls recreational and subsistence activities on these lands. The program has been functioning for nearly a quarter century and is a model of responsible land management. The program is administered by Choggiung Ltd., the ANCSA village corporation organized for Dillingham, Ekuk, and Portage Creek. The goal of the program is to allow multiple uses that generate financial returns for each participating corporation, but not at the expense of the subsistence values of the land.

The lands selected and now owned by these corporations were the lands most important for perpetuating the survival of the people who traditionally depended upon the wildlife and plant life that lived on these lands and the fish that lived in the adjacent waters. However, under ANCSA, the ownership of these lands was transferred by the Federal government to corporations established by each Native community, rather than transferred to a tribe or converted into Indian reservation lands. The result is that lands once valued for subsistence, are now a corporate asset whose value can only be measured in financial terms. Under the law, the priority use of corporate assets is to make money for its shareholders.

In the years since the passage of ANCSA, the original shareholders (those born before 1971) are a diminishing number. Shares are being transferred to a younger generation that has grown up less dependent upon the land and increasingly no longer lives in the watershed. Also, this new generation generally owns fewer shares per person because they have either been given shares or inherited them from parents. The likely consequence is that in the not too distant future the majority of shareholders will measure the value of the Native corporation not in terms of whether it is "protecting the land," but in terms of the size of its annual dividend. Corporate land will come under increasing pressure to produce profit, and this most likely will mean development or sale.

Our strategy for the long-term protection of Native corporation lands is to harness financial resources that will make it possible for these corporations to perpetuate a land management program that continues to recognize subsistence as the highest and best use of its lands in the Nushagak Watershed.

Small Parcels

Throughout the watershed there are hundreds of small privately owned parcels, mostly Alaska Native allotments. These parcels can range in size from forty acres to one hundred sixty acres. Development on only a few of these parcels, however, is likely to cause concern for habitat. The task before us is to identify those parcels for conservation protection. Generally, the parcels of concern will be those easily accessible by boat or air where development could result in bank erosion, increased sedimentation or other forms of disruption in areas of salmon spawning, rearing or holding activity. Also of concern will be those parcels that if developed would facilitate increased hunting or fishing pressure in areas where subsistence resource depletion may already be a concern. We also want to identify those small parcels that if developed could undermine the land management program of the Alaska Native corporations that own the uplands in the lower portion of the watershed or the management of State and Federal lands in other portions of the watershed. It will become increasingly difficult for these entities to maintain a low impact land management program that protects subsistence resources if these small parcels are used to construct infrastructure that attracts and accommodates more recreational hunters and fishers.

Our strategy for protecting important habitat from damage by development on these small parcels is to first prioritize the parcels and then secure funding to acquire conservation protections on the highest priority parcels. The highest priority parcels would be those located in important subsistence or habitat areas, owned by one person, accessible, and with good land for building.

Public Lands and Waters Protection

Most of the land and water in the Nushagak-Mulchatna drainage is publicly owned. Ownership is divided between the Federal and State governments. Land management and regulatory authority is further apportioned over several federal and state agencies. Our conservation strategies depend upon which particular public agency has management authority in the conservation target area. Our strategy for public lands within a conservation unit is to further the mission of the public land manager by protecting high-habitat-value private lands that are inholdings within the respective conservation unit.

Our strategy for public lands that are not part of a conservation unit is to identify areas of high habitat and subsistence value and seek an appropriate degree of conservation protection for these lands, given the conservation target values.

Overview of State Lands Managers - download PDF