Wild Resource Harvests and Uses by Residents of Seward and Moose Pass, Alaska, 2000 By Brian Davis, James A. Fall, and Gretchen Jennings Technical Paper Number 271 Prepared for: Chugach National Forest US Forest Service 3301 C Street, Suite 300 Anchorage, AK 9950s Purchase Order No. 43-0109-1-0069 Division of Subsistence Alaska Department of Fish and Game Juneau, Alaska June 2003 ADA PUBLICATIONS STATEMENT The Alaska Department of Fish and Game operates all of its public programs and activities free from discrimination on the basis of sex, color, race, religion, national origin, age, marital status, pregnancy, parenthood, or disability. For information on alternative formats available for this and other department publications, please contact the department ADA Coordinator at (voice) 907-465-4120, (TDD) 1-800-478-3548 or (fax) 907-586-6595. Any person who believes she or he has been discriminated against should write to: Alaska Department of Fish and Game PO Box 25526 Juneau, AK 99802-5526 or O.E.O. U.S. Department of the Interior Washington, D.C. 20240 ABSTRACT In March and April of 2001 researchers employed by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s (ADF&G) Division of Subsistence conducted 203 interviews with residents of Moose Pass and Seward, two communities in the Kenai Peninsula Borough. The study was designed to collect information about the harvest and use of wild fish, game, and plant resources, demography, and aspects of the local cash economy such as employment and income. These communities were classified “non-rural” by the Federal Subsistence Board in 1990, which periodically reviews its classifications. This study was the first comprehensive harvest assessment done for these communities. Data were collected for the 12-month period between April 1, 2000 and March 31, 2001. The study was funded through a cooperative agreement between ADF&G and the US Forest Service Chugach National Forest. Information was collected during face-to-face interviews using a standard survey form. The goal was to talk with representatives from a randomly selected sample of year- round households in the communities along the first 38 miles of the Seward Highway, grouped in this study as Moose Pass and Seward. Of all households contacted, a majority (81%) agreed to be interviewed. Households were asked for detailed information about their harvest and use of wild foods during the study year, as well as specific locations on the Kenai Peninsula and in Prince William Sound they use to hunt, fish, and gather wild plant resources over the previous ten-year period. Population growth in the study communities has been steady over the past twenty years or so. Between 1980 and 2000, the population in the city of Seward increased by 56.3%. The population of the Moose Pass area has also increased, and although census boundaries have changed of the years, it can be estimated that the area’s population has grown approximately 82% between 1990 and 2000. About 80% of the household heads in both study communities were born outside of Alaska, with an average length of residency in the study communities of around 12 years. Most adults in these communities were employed: 74.5% in Moose Pass and 86.1% in Seward. Much of the work was seasonal. Of those individuals with jobs, about half were employed year-round (60% in Moose Pass and 50% in Seward). Government was the largest employer in Moose Pass (34% of employed individuals), while in Seward 38% were employed in the service sector. People from Seward mostly work in Seward (89.6%), and about half of the Moose Pass workforce commutes to Seward (51.1%). Average household income was similar for the two communities: $61,523 for Seward and $59,051 for Moose Pass. Households in each town reported a similar amount of money spent on food in the study year, $5,600 in Seward and $5,100 in Moose Pass, which represents 9.1% and 8.7% of the average household income, respectively. Answers to the survey questions produced patterns of harvest and use of wild resources for home use in the study communities in 2000/2001. Almost all of the households used wild foods and a large majority fished, hunted, or gathered resources. Sharing of wild foods was also common, with 87% of households in each community receiving at least one resource during the study year. Reported harvests of wild food were 87 pounds per person (236 pounds per household) in Moose Pass and 97 pounds per person (261 pounds per household) in Seward, measured in pounds usable weight. Moose Pass households reported harvesting about 5.3 different resources during 2000/2001 and Seward households harvested approximately 4.4 resources. Salmon was the most important wild resource for each community, constituting 48% of the total pounds harvested in Seward and 37% in Moose Pass. Per capita, salmon accounted for 46 pounds per person per year in Seward, and 32 pounds in Moose Pass, far and away the largest contributor to the household wild food larder. Approximately 20% of all the salmon harvested in Seward came from a commercial catch, and 80% was caught with rod and reel. In Moose Pass, 76% of the salmon was harvested using rod and reel, while only 0.4% came from a commercial catch. Commercial fishing was also the source of 70% of the crab used in the average Seward home. In Moose Pass, large land mammals composed 28% of total pounds of subsistence food harvested. About 16 pounds of moose meat was harvested per person, and caribou and deer each made up approximately 3 pounds per person. In Seward, the large land mammals were the third most important category behind other fish. The average person in Seward harvested approximately 12 pounds of moose meat and about 1 pound each of deer, caribou, and black bear. Fish other than salmon contributed approximately 24% of the total pounds of subsistence food in Seward, and 23% of pounds in Moose Pass. In both Seward and Moose Pass halibut was the most important non-salmon fish harvested, with an average of 13 pounds harvested per person. Rockfish, Dolly Varden, and ling cod round out the category in both communities. Birds, marine invertebrates and plants, when combined for each community, constitute around 12% of the total subsistence harvests measured in pounds. Both communities had a great disparity between high-harvesting households and those that reported taking little or no resources. In both Seward and Moose Pass a small segment of the population harvested most of the wild foods and used on average a much wider variety of wild foods. In Moose Pass the 25% highest harvesting households contributed 81.3% of the community’s total; this top quartile in Seward harvested 81.8% of the total pounds. Looking even more narrowly, 70% of the harvest was taken by the top 15% of Moose Pass households and by 18% in Seward. Conversely, the combined harvests for the 50% lowest harvesting households totaled only 3.4% in Moose Pass and 2.4% in Seward. These low harvesting households also used relatively few kinds of resources, an average of 5.0 kinds in Moose Pass and 4.5 kinds in Seward. In contrast, the top 25 percent of harvesting households in Moose Pass used 13.8 kinds of wild resources and those in Seward used 13.5 kinds. These figures indicate little re-distribution of resources from very active households to relatively inactive households, and the absence of a community-wide pattern of frequent and diverse uses of wild foods. The Division of Subsistence has done survey projects in 14 Kenai Peninsula communities since 1982, with updates in several of those communities. The findings from Seward and Moose Pass from the 2000/2001 study align these communities with the more populous, road connected communities and set them apart from the more remote communities off the road system. Populations range from over 6,000 people in Kenai, and 4,542 people in the Seward study area, to the small communities such as the Moose Pass study area (402 people), Cooper Landing, Hope, Nanwalek, and Port Graham. Nanwalek and Port Graham are largely Alaska Native communities (over 80 percent of the population is Alaska Native). In all other communities, Alaska Natives are a minority. Seward and Moose Pass displayed high levels of employment and cash income. These study communities, along with Kenai, all reported year-round employment for greater than 50 percent of all employed individuals, with an average of around 10 months of employment. According to household survey results, per capita monetary incomes in Seward and Moose Pass are in the same range as those of Kenai, at the high end of the scale for the Kenai Peninsula Borough. Communities off of the road system--Seldovia, Port Graham and Nanwalek-- all had a relatively high level of seasonal employment and a relatively low per capita income. These measures indicate that, despite the presence of seasonally available employment in Seward and Moose Pass, employment is relatively available and reliable, with cash incomes comparable to the most populous areas of the state and generally higher than those of remote areas off the road system. In all Kenai Peninsula communities surveyed by the Division of Subsistence, a very large majority of households, always close to or at 100 percent, used at least one wild resource in the study year, and generally 80 to 90 percent or more harvested wild foods. Estimated pounds of wild foods harvested per household indicate different patterns of use for these communities, however. The road-connected communities, including Seward and Moose Pass, as well as Kenai, Homer, Cooper Landing and Hope, trend toward a per capita harvest of 90-100 pounds.