About Redzone
Welcome to Redzone, the virtual home of Alaska’s wild salmon, the Kings, Reds and Silvers, fished and protected for over 3,500 years by the Eyak people of the Copper River Delta. Our still intact ecosystem, with its salmon returning annually to spawn in their millions, is home to eagle, bear, beaver, moose and 16 million migratory shorebirds and waterfowl.
Our mission is to preserve and protect the Delta and Prince William Sound watersheds so that the salmon will continue to return to their birthplace and nurture the wildlife for which they are the cornerstone species. And, also, so that the community of fishermen in Cordova and the region will flourish, for the circle is one: bioregional conservation means local economic sustainability. This is a model for the planet. We focus our work in four major areas in our work towards realizing our missions objectives: Stewarding a Fragile Environment, Preserving Wild Salmon Habitat, Sustaining a Way of Life and Engaging a Community & Perserving a Culture
Stewarding a Fragile Environment
Spanning boreal forests, complex wetlands, and coastal barrier islands, the Copper River watershed is a highly productive ecosystem rich in fish and wildlife resources. The 700,000-acre delta that lies at the base of this watershed comprises the largest continuous wetland on the Pacific Coast of North America. The delta is a labyrinth of constantly changing river channels, marshlands, tidal flats, and sloughs that end in a series of offshore barrier islands.
The ecology of the delta is closely linked to its unique geology. It exists in an exceptionally dynamic geological environment, influenced by earthquakes, glaciers, and nearby volcanic activity. Over the past 2,000 years this area has undergone gradual subsidence punctuated by radical uplift. Violent earthquakes occur at intervals of 600 to 1,000 years, uplifting the entire area 2–3 meters. After each uplift, the area undergoes rapid ecological succession. Few areas in the world have such a dynamic wetland landscape.
The Copper River Delta and the southeastern end of the Prince William Sound watershed covers approximately 2.3 million acres. The region is surrounded by the Chugach and Wrangel mountains, which comprise the highest coastal mountain range in the world.
Through stewardship of this magnificent and sensitive ecosystem, unbridled destructive development will continue to be overshadowed by a great respect for the natural balances that have existed and flourished here for millennia. We do not need extraordinary amounts of science to tell us what pollution, road building, clear cutting, and over hunting and fishing will do to this exquisite region.
Over the years we have met a lot of amazing people that are dedicating their efforts, indeed their lives, to save, preserve, and restore ecosystems all over the world. With the global climate change we are experiencing, all of us have to do everything we can to respect our regional environments, and strive to consider our carbon footprint in all of our endeavors.
Preserving Salmon Habitat
We know that salmon habitat is incredibly sensitive, and wild salmon habitat is even more sensitive. In Alaska, we do not have any farmed salmon- it is thankfully, illegal. All Alaska salmon are either hatchery raised or wild. An alarming fact is that Alaska has the only wild large marketable commercial fishery left in the United States.
Five species of Pacific salmon spawn and rear in our Copper River and Prince William Sound watersheds: Oncorhynchus nerka commonly known as sockeye or red salmon; O. gorbuscha commonly known as pink salmon; O. keta known as chum or dog salmon; O. tshawytscha commonly called king or Chinook salmon; and O. kisutch commonly known as coho or silver salmon.
The fact that wild salmon are actually a forest animal is not stressed nearly enough. When the wild salmon return to their spawning grounds, they must have pristine waters, not too silty, not too rough, to splash and play and spawn. When they die, they provide nutrients for their hatchlings, who reside there for several seasons, feeding in the waters on bugs that drop from the trees. Most importantly, the spawning streams must have forest shade; direct sun will fry the eggs – deforestation will drive the salmon closer to the cooler waters of the ocean where competition for suitable spawning gravels will greatly reduce the size of the fishery.
Sustaining a Way of Life
In Alaska our way of life is aligned with an intimate journey with nature. The weather, the animals, the plants, and the seasons all have impacts on our livelihoods. In the Copper River region, we go out onto the Delta and the beauty there never ceases to amaze us. You will surely see trumpeter swans, beaver and eagles as you view Scotts glacier, and ultimately Childes glacier at 50 mile, where the road thankfully stops at the “Million Dollar Bridge.” Quite possibly – you will see bear, or moose, and if you listen, hear the coyote singing.
The Native Athabaskan Eyak people have practiced a wild-salmon way of life in the Delta region for over 3500 years. Wild Copper River salmon have provided a critical food source and are at the heart of a traditional subsistence way of life passed down through generations. In addition to on-going subsistence practices, wild Copper River salmon are the economic basis of the local fishery, generating estimated gross earnings of $20 million annually. Recognizing the connection between people and preservation, our goal is to foster truly sustainable communities in which culture, economics, and education all reinforce preservation of the environment.
We are currently engaged in non-profit and for-profit ventures designed to support and sustain the local economy with a stimulation of cottage industry, jobs, a fishermen's collective, and energy efficient operations. Through these actions we intend to provide local and regional incentives for cultural pride over homogeneity, resource stewardship over resource exploitation, and habitat preservation for the benefit of both today and future generations. Please see our Culture Conservation Initiative for more information.
Engaging a Community & Preserving a Culture
We have crafted a plan for outreach to upriver tribes to create a Copper River Tribal Keeper program to protect the integrity of the wild salmon and wild salmon spawning habitat. Tribal elders have endured as the original stewards, keepers, and monitors of the Copper River; they are essential ancestral stakeholders.
The Copper River watershed continues to go without a comprehensive action plan for oil spill response or development. At this time, twenty percent of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs directly over and next to tributaries feeding into the Copper River, and should the pipeline spill oil into those tributaries now, the best we could hope for is an uncoordinated reaction. Those most at risk, the tribal communities of the Delta, are largely silent on the issue. Villages far up the river often do not hear about potential developments and their impacts on wild salmon for many months. In particular, the upriver tribal villages have been largely unaware and therefore unresponsive to the numerous environmental threats to the ecosystem in which they live.
Spread out along 300 miles of riverbank, the twenty-three Native communities living within the Copper River Delta have no formally recognized or ongoing collaborative relationships. While they have respected each other’s coexistence and right to the salmon for survival, they have for the most part acted independently on social and economic matters. In 2008, EPC proposes we begin the process of uniting these constituents to collective preservationist action through the development of a Waterkeeper program, to be called the Copper River Tribal Keeper (“Tribal Keeper”).
Waterkeeper programs help people preserve and protect a body of water that is in close proximity and important to them. Citizens unite through water quality monitoring, environmental education, and effective advocacy – the tools they need to promote clean water in their watershed. Tribal Keeper will be the first Waterkeeper program to focus on the Indigenous people of a region. It will help them establish habitat protection policies for subsistence and commercial stakeholders.
