Salmon Champions & Energy Surveys

— Satchel Pondolfino & Josie Oliva

As Salmonfest has grown into a large music festival (for Alaska standards), Inletkeeper is still committed to supporting the festival organizers in keeping its salmon mission at its heart. And so, with Inletkeeper’s support, salmon champions arrived in schools to spread salmon culture and salmon advocacy across the swirling ocean of fish, love, and music that filled the Kenai Peninsula Fairgrounds in Ninilchik this August 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. 

Each day, the mainstage audience heard messages that ranged from calls to protect salmon from threats such as Donlin, Pebble, the West Su Industrial Road and trawling bycatch to salmon stories and lessons from champions from the Dena’ina Language Institute, the Salamatof Tribe and Molly of Denali. Young athletes from the Native Youth Olympics, who hosted workshops in the Salmon Causeway throughout the weekend, shared a lively demonstration with the mainstage audience and Quentin “The Kid” Simeon shared his original spoken word poem “Mother Hugger” which asked the audience to contemplate how are we taking care of our shared mother?

It is our hope that when folks depart from the Salmonfest sea, their hearts are filled with joy and a renewed dedication to the salmon movement in Alaska. As Nels Ure of Naknek and Sophie Swope of Bethel stood side by side on the mainstage to call for solidarity in our resistance to the proposed Pebble and Donlin mines, Nels reminded the audience why we were there:

 “Salmon support and nourish so many life forms, they support our fishing industry, they support our environment, they support our cultures, they support our economy, they support who we are as Alaskans. We are a salmon state in Alaska and so it’s very important that because salmon cannot advocate for themselves, we are in right relationship with our lands and waters and we are advocating for them.”

Over in the Causeway at our Inletkeeper booth, the Energy Transition Team was helping to connect the dots between salmon and renewable energy. Inletkeeper has long been dedicated to supporting the understanding of how rising salmon stream temperatures impact the health of salmon. We talked about how mitigating climate change by transitioning to renewables supports the long term vitality of our vulnerable salmon streams. Clean energy keeps salmon cool!

We were happy to see so many new and familiar faces at our booth, welcome and thank you to all who were able to connect with us! If you didn’t have a chance to stop by, we were sharing the renewable energy potential that exists here in the watershed with data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and asking people to fill out a Community Energy Survey.

So far, we’ve learned that Alaskans are most excited to see more solar development for variable renewable energy and tidal energy development for firm renewable energy. Keep an eye out for the results sometime in late fall/early winter.

If you missed out on adding your voice to the mix, feel free to complete the survey online and share it with other Alaskans!