The State of Alaska now approaches the regulatory process for its salmon fisheries within a framework of scientifically accepted principles and supporting criteria designed to achieve sustainability known as the Sustainable Salmon Fishery Policy. The long and contentious process of adopting this fishery policy should provide instructive to any renewable resource management program with a mandate for sustainable use. In initiating the Sustainable Salmon Fishery Policy the three central objectives were to identify and synthesize principles and definitions of sustainable fisheries management from the general scientific literature and adapt them to Alaskan salmon fisheries, to forge the scientific principles into a coherent body of policies and to adopt the policies into regulations applicable to all salmon fisheries in the state. All objectives were successfully completed on March 23, 2000, when the Alaska Board of Fisheries adopted the Sustainable Salmon Fisheries Policy (SSFP).

Faced with a large number of apparently related conservation and allocation issues, and finding no standard lexicon with which to describe the issues, nor any generally accepted code of salmon management practice to apply in all localities, the Board initiated a series of actions in October 1996 that ultimately resulted in adoption of the definitions and management principles in the SSFP. First the Board made the case to the principals, including the Alaska Dept of Fish and Game that principles and definitions were necessary. Second, the board gained firm policy support from the Knowles administration. Third the department on behalf of the Board hired an independent third party to abstract the principles and definitions from the scientific literature. Fourth the Board and department built a broad base of scientific and policy support by converting the basic scientific synthesis into a coherent set of policies and definitions through a combination of processes including scientific peer review, public hearings and debate, and public and scientific advisory committees. The resultant draft SSFP debuted in January 1999 in an atmosphere of skepticism and amidst stiff opposition to undergo a grueling public involvement process. A central challenge during the public involvement phase was to answer the concerns of interests in both the management and harvest sectors. The SSFP and its genesis is a diagram for the practice of sustainable management of natural resources.

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