Opinion ID: 1138725
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Urban-Rural Subsistence Patterns

Text: Appellants' basic objection to the 1986 act is that by excluding from eligibility as subsistence users all urban dwellers and by including all rural dwellers, the act unfairly excludes some urban residents who have lived a subsistence lifestyle and desire to continue to do so, while needlessly including numerous rural residents who have not engaged in subsistence hunting and fishing. Appellants claim, in other words, that the urban/rural criterion is both unfairly under-inclusive, because it excludes deserving urban residents, and over-inclusive, because it includes undeserving rural residents. Appellants instead suggest that the right to subsistence should depend upon individual needs and traditions, not on one's place of residence. The record supports the appellants' claim that there are substantial numbers of urban subsistence users. A state study of subsistence use patterns [8] found that of some 255 holders of subsistence salmon permits for the 1980 Tanana River fishery, approximately 20% exhibited the attributes commonly associated with a traditional subsistence lifestyle, even though they all resided in the urban Fairbanks area. The report states: Despite their residence in or near populated areas of the Fairbanks North Star Borough, these households generally participated in the wage economy on a seasonal basis and had longer histories of participation in the fishery, lower cash incomes, and somewhat larger household sizes than the majority of users. Some of these households have longstanding cultural ties to the subsistence fishery. For these more intensive users, fishing in sub-district Y-6C was less a recreational outing than an integral component of their way of life in Interior Alaska. Their residence in an area which is currently defined by regulation as urban, coupled with escalating demands upon the resource base, however, raise questions about whether these more intensive uses can continue in the future. Study at 12. Similarly, in the city of Homer, an urban area under the regulations, [9] the study reports that 38.2% of the city residents obtained at least one-half of their meat and fish supply from personal hunting and fishing activities. Id. at 162. Likewise, the study documents the fact that numerous Alaskans who live in areas classified by the regulations as rural do not engage in subsistence activities. For example, in the City of Sitka, which is classified as rural, although it has a population of 7,803, some 26% of the households sampled did no hunting and 7% did no fishing. Id. at 235. Similarly, in the City of Nome, population 3,249, which is also rural under the regulations, id. at 93, some 5% of all households use no locally taken fish or game. Id. at 111. The study also amply supports the critical importance of subsistence hunting and fishing to residents of the numerous small and remote villages of our state. For example, in the Wade Hampton census area of Western Alaska, the average annual per capita cash income was only $2,737 (1979), [10] id. at 30, and the average household harvested 4,597, dressed weight, pounds of fish and game each year. Id. at 42.