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Agulowak River Project
The Agulowak River is one of the salmon rich jewels of Southwest Alaska. The river provides a robust fishery for sport anglers, subsistence and commercial users.
The Conservation Fund, the Nushagak-Mulchatna / Wood-Tikchik Land Trust, the State of Alaska, Bristol Bay Native Corporation, Aleknagik Natives Limited, and the USFWS Coastal Program worked together to secure a conservation easement on Native land within the Wood-Tikchik State Park, including both banks of the Agulowak River and approximately 42 miles of shoreline along Lakes Aleknagik and Nerka—a total of about 21,000 acres of land with high fish and wildlife values.
The agreement is one of the largest land deals ever completed in the Bristol Bay region, arguably home of the world’s best cold water fisheries and certainly its most abundant wild salmon populations. Bristol Bay is widely recognized as one of the world’s great wildlands recreation destinations with superb opportunities for angling, hunting, river running, hiking and other recreation.
The Agulowak provides spawning habitat for 200,000 sockeye salmon and passes an additional 1.2 million sockeye and other salmon species to spawning grounds higher in the drainage. The Agulowak supports abundant populations of rainbow trout, Dolly Varden, and Arctic grayling. It is one of the most heavily used sport fisheries in Southwest Alaska and is an important area for subsistence harvest of fish and wildlife by local residents. The Agulowak is an important feeding area for the brown bears that abound in the region.
The conservation easement, which keeps the land and waters forever wild by prohibiting development, provides for public recreational access to this heavily used and highly desirable area.
The Conservation Fund, a national non-profit organization dedicated to conserving the United States most important natural landscapes, is coordinating a large partnership to raise money to complete this agreement. The partnership includes hunting, fishing and other non-profit organizations like the Dallas Safari Club, Shikar Safari Club International, outdoor manufacturers and retailers like industry leaders Woolrich, Orvis and Under Armour, lodge owners, businesses, foundations, private donors and competitive federal conservation grant programs like the USFWS’s National Coastal Wetlands Program, USFS’s Forest Legacy and NOAA’s Coastal and Estuarine Lands Conservation Program.
A major grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation was the catalyst for this complex conservation accomplishment. The Moore Foundation grant was the magnet that attracted donations from numerous sources across the country, which collectively provided the necessary money to meet the major match requirements of the federal grants.
For more information regarding this project contact:
Glenn Elison
Alaska State Director - The Conservation Fund
6400 Andover Drive
Anchorage, AK 99516
907-868-7974
glennelison@alaska.com
John DeLapp
Habitat Restoration and Conservation Partnerships Coordinator
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
1011 East Tudor Road
Anchorage, AK 99503
907-786-3925
john_delapp@fws.gov