Karluk River

Conserving a World Class Salmon Fishery

The Karluk River is world renowned for providing greater salmon returns per mile than any river on earth along while supporting the highest brown bear density on record. Winding through a tundra landscape unchanged since the Plestocine Era, the river flows twenty-one miles from Karluk Lake to the Shelikof Strait separating Kodiak Island from the majestic volcanic peaks of the Alaskan Peninsula.

Most of the Karluk drainage is privately owned by Koniag Inc. and Alaska Native corporation. However, due to one of the largest conservation partnerships in recent times, a consensus emerged to use the Exxon Valdez oil spill settlement to conserve over 90% of the Karluk drainage. ALC is now in negotiations with the Karluk Tribal Council to explore the potential of acquiring a conservation easement on 1,800 acres of critical habitat along the unprotected lower stretch of the river outside the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge and inside the Karluk Reservation.

The project area is incredibly rich in wildlife and cultural resources. In addition to prodigious wild salmon returns numbering in the millions annually, the Karluk supports native stocks of steelhead, rainbow trout, and Dolly Varden, while the lush surrounding terrain is home to hundreds of Kodiak brown bear and Sitka black-tailed deer. More than thirty registered archaeological sites along the Karluk River continue to provide evidence about one of Alaska’s most populated settlement areas for the First Americans with village sites dating back more than 7,000 years.

Today, as a result of conservation agreements between the U.S. Department of Interior, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and Koniag Inc., the traditional subsistence hunting and fishing lifestyle of the local people coincides with public recreational access to an Alaskan adventure destination whose unsurpassed scenery and abundant wildlife thrills one and all.