There's a narrow window to ask Alaska's fish board to take up new topics

Alaskans have until Aug. 28 to ask the state Board of Fisheries to add out-of-cycle topics to its current schedule, a limited path for raising an issue the board isn't already set to consider this year.

The bar is high. A request has to address a real conservation concern, a mistake in existing regulation, or an unforeseen effect of a rule. It can't simply be an attempt to shift fish from one group of users to another without compelling new information. Some fisheries are off the table entirely because the board is already scheduled to take them up, including Lower Cook Inlet, Kodiak and Upper Cook Inlet finfish.

How high that bar sits showed at last year's session, when the board accepted just two of nine such requests. It will review this year's batch at a work session in Anchorage in late October.

The board is also under scrutiny itself. A legislative committee has ordered an audit of how it has operated over roughly the past three years, and Alaska Native subsistence users have said that audit does not adequately reflect their priorities.