As the Chena's king salmon collapse, Fairbanks debates how wide a riverfront buffer to require

A Fairbanks North Star Borough subcommittee is rewriting the plan that governs the Chena riverfront, and one question it is wrestling with reaches straight to riverfront property owners: how wide a strip of streamside vegetation the river needs to protect fish.

The draft floats buffers ranging from the 15 feet Fish and Game recommends as a minimum up to 300 feet or more — while acknowledging the wider strips "are often not realistic or feasible in urban areas." The plan's stated goal is to balance recreation and development against fish habitat, not to restrict private property outright.

The Chena's king salmon, meanwhile, are in trouble. An estimated 397 Chinook reached the river's spawning grounds in 2024 — far below the state's goal of 3,300 to 5,700, and short of it for the sixth year running. This summer's return ran below average too, and the state closed king salmon sport fishing across the Tanana River drainage through September.

The Chena is one of the Yukon drainage's most important king rivers: a 2017 review found it hosts the second-largest Chinook spawning run among comparable watersheds, behind only the Salcha. And the crisis reaches beyond it — in 2024, Alaska and Canada agreed to suspend directed Chinook fishing on the mainstem Yukon and its Canadian tributaries for a full seven-year life cycle.

The subcommittee met Wednesday to keep drafting a replacement for the current plan, adopted in 1997. The draft sets no funding or regulatory deadlines, listing its strategies only as ongoing or near-term, and no public comment deadline has been set.