Kuskokwim tributaries stay closed to Chinook and chum through July 31

Retention of Chinook and chum salmon remains prohibited in six Kuskokwim River tributaries through 11:59 p.m. July 31.

The closure covers the Eek, Kwethluk, Kasigluk, Kisaralik, Tuluksak and Aniak rivers, all salmon spawning tributaries inside the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. Federally qualified subsistence users may fish those waters with dip nets, beach seines, fish wheels and rod and reel. Chinook and chum must go back.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service action, issued as TSA 04-KSCS-26-01, closed federal public waters of the Kuskokwim mainstem and those tributaries to gillnets and to harvest of Chinook and chum by all users beginning June 1. In the proposal, the agency wrote that "the following Federal public waters of the Kuskokwim River within and adjacent to the exterior boundaries of the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge " are closed to the use of gillnets and the harvest of Chinook and chum salmon by all users.

Non-federally qualified users remain barred from gillnets and from keeping Chinook or chum. They may retain sockeye, coho and non-salmon species with other gear.

The Kuskokwim restrictions are one piece of the broader Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim salmon crisis. Severe Chinook and chum declines across multiple Western Alaska river systems have driven wide subsistence and commercial fishing restrictions.

What the counts show

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cited a 2025 Kuskokwim Chinook total return estimated at 161,295 fish, 35 percent below the 1995 to 2009 average, and chum runs depressed for six years. An independent expert panel found a 40 percent decline in the average total reproductive potential of Kuskokwim Chinook between 1976 and 2018.

The agency said it is managing toward the upper end of the state escapement goal of 65,000 to 120,000 Chinook. It co-manages the federal fishery with the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.

Mainstem restrictions lifted early

The mainstem restrictions did not hold to July 31. USFWS rescinded the mainstem portion, and management of Sections 1 through 3 returned to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on July 13. Sonar counts through July 12 showed 88,590 Chinook and 202,854 chum, well above the chum average of 117,361 for that date.

Alaska News previously covered Kuskokwim households describing empty freezers under the season's closures. KRITFC has pointed to Area M, where South Alaska Peninsula fisheries took 1,388,079 chum and 14,142 Chinook by early September 2025.

The regional salmon crisis also traveled north this week. The Association of Village Council Presidents, a tribal consortium of 56 federally recognized tribes serving 27,000 residents across 48 Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta communities, sent a delegation to the 15th Inuit Circumpolar Council General Assembly in Iqaluit, Nunavut.