A panel of research management experts sifting through Kenai and Russian rivers watershed research needs said that habitat research tends to be more expensive and difficult to conduct, compared to fisheries research, but it is nonetheless valuable in keeping the watershed healthy and productive.
The research managers were participating in a Kenai River Sportfishing Association workshop Friday, held to prioritize a list of research needs in the Kenai and Russian rivers watershed. KRSA will use the list of informational needs to award funding to research addressing two areas of study: managing sustainable fisheries and conserving and rehabilitating fisheries habitat.
KRSA is managing an ongoing project that began in 2004 and distributes about $4.6 million to Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery and Southeast Sustainable Salmon Funds to support research in the watershed.
About $2.6 million has already been directed toward studies, and Friday’s workshop marked the second phase of determining how the approximately $2 million in remaining funds will be spent.
Workshop participants first addressed informational needs for the management of sustainable fisheries and later said many informational needs had been satisfied by studies KRSA had already distributed funds to.
“They already addressed a lot of the needs last year, so I’m pretty satisfied,” said Bob Clark, a representative from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Sport Fish Division. “They did a really good job.”
Potential fisheries research ideas discussed tended to build upon the fisheries research projects completed last year, he said.
“We got a lot of information needs solved,” said Ricky Gease, executive director of KRSA. “Which indicates they were well-designed projects.”
However, studies on how to conserve and rehabilitate fisheries habitat on the Kenai River are harder to tackle, and the meeting’s facilitators asked research managers to offer ideas on how habitat studies can be improved.
“It’s a newer field of research than fisheries research,” Gease said. “There are fewer well-defined answers in that field.”
The workshop outlined 10 habitat research objectives, followed by a multitude of informational needs to be discussed, including the need to assess habitat restoration projects, the significance of shoreline disturbance in juvenile rearing and the need to examine fish passage before and after culverts are installed.
With respect to culvert installation, most of the resource managers appeared to agree that research identifying where working culverts are most needed and which culverts are most in need of maintenance would be valuable, since culvert maintenance and repair can run into the millions.
“All of this kind of work is expensive ... the maintenance issue is a serious problem,” said Robert Ruffner, executive director of the Kenai Watershed Forum. “There is a need to continue working on the prioritization.”
Gease said the number of projects that will receive funding has not yet been determined and will depend on how much each of the selected projects costs.
Although $2 million may sound like a lot of money, it does not last long when funding research projects, he said.
