Subsistence
Angoon youth harvest event with USFS and Alaska Youth Stewards staff 2023.
The Tongass National Forest provides fish, wildlife, and other resources for harvest by residents and non-residents each year for sport, personal use, subsistence, cultural and traditional uses, as well as commercial uses. In the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) Title VIII, Congress identified “the continuation of the opportunity for subsistence uses by rural Alaska residents, including both Natives and non-Natives, as essential to the physical, economic, traditional, and social or cultural existence” (ANILCA Sec. 801). Maintaining habitat, conserving healthy fish and wildlife populations, and providing reasonable access to subsistence resources across the Tongass National Forest is part of the agency’s multiple-use mission.
USFS and Alaska Youth Stewards staff unloading salmon from Kake, AK youth harvest event 2024.
ANILCA Title VIII defines subsistence uses on federal public lands in Alaska as “the customary and traditionaluse by rural Alaska residents of wild renewable resources for direct personal or family consumption as food, shelter, fuel, clothing, tools, or transportation; for the making and selling of handicraft articles out of nonedible byproducts of fish and wildlife resources taken for personal or family consumption; for barter, or sharing for personal or family consumption; and for customary trade.” ANILCA Title VIII also provides the regulatory framework for the federal subsistence management program.
Congressional policy instructs that “non-wasteful subsistence uses be prioritized on the public lands in Alaska , and that the public lands be managed to “cause the least adverse impact possible on rural residents” who depend on the resources from such lands, consistent with sound management practices and the conservation of healthy populations of fish and wildlife (ANILCA Sec. 802(1)).
Section 802 also states that the purpose of Title VIII is "to provide the opportunity for rural residents engaged in a subsistence way of life to do so[.]" Federal subsistence priority applies on federal public lands and waters in Alaska, including on all Forest Service lands, and allows all rural Alaska residents to harvest under Federal subsistence regulations found in 36 CFR Part 242 and 43 CFR Part 51.
Fisheries Monitoring
Hoonah Indian Association staff with the Neva Lake salmon monitoring weir in the background 2023.
The subsistence fisheries monitoring program develops projects that occur in the federal public waters of the Tongass National Forest that provide harvest opportunities for federally qualified subsistence users. Fisheries monitoring is used to inform the management of resources and track changes in critical subsistence fisheries. Information gathered through monitoring is particularly important for guiding in-season management actions that ensure the conservation of healthy fish populations and/or the continuation of subsistence uses.
Funding for subsistence fisheries monitoring projects may be applied for through the Fisheries Resource Monitoring Program (FRMP). Projects are selected after a competitive review process relying heavily on Priority Information Needs determined by the Southeast Alaska Subsistence Regional Advisory Council. Projects funded through the FRMP must also emphasize rural community or Tribal organization capacity building. Project proposals may be developed independently or with help from the Tongass National Forest Subsistence Program staff:
- Robert Cross
Tongass Subsistence Program Manager
robert.cross@usda.gov - Ashley Bolwerk
Tongass Subsistence Biologist
ashley.bolwerk@usda.gov