State, Governor Dunleavy Asks Supreme Court To Weigh In On Alaska’s Subsistence Fishing Future

Do very people-friendly subsistence fishing regulations still deserve to be still enforced as is in Alaska in waters within federal jurisdictions? Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (R) and the State of Alaska wants the United States to Supreme Court to decide. Here’s the Alaska Beacon with more:

The state of Alaska is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether rural Alaskans should continue to get preferential fishing rights on most rivers and lakes within federal parks, preserves and reserves.

On Monday, the Alaska Department of Law asked the Supreme Court to reconsider a ruling from a three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the state’s existing two-tiered subsistence fishing system last month. 

State attorneys have argued unsuccessfully since 2021 that federal law, as interpreted by recent rulings from the Supreme Court, means the state, not the federal government, has the power to regulate fishing in navigable waters on federal land.

A federal law, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, requires that rural Alaskans be given preferential treatment when hunting and fishing are regulated in Alaska. Simultaneously, the Alaska Constitution forbids that kind of preference.