Applications and Nominations for Regional Advisory Councils are being accepted now through March 12, 2021 (New extended deadline!)
The Federal Subsistence Management Program is committed to providing the most up-to-date information on the subsistence way of life for all rural Alaskans. The Federal Subsistence Management Program is a multi-agency effort to provide the opportunity for a subsistence way of life by rural Alaskans on Federal public lands and waters while maintaining healthy populations of fish and wildlife. Subsistence fishing and hunting provide a large share of the food consumed in rural Alaska. The state’s rural residents harvest about 18,000 tons of wild foods each year – an average of 295 pounds per person. Fish makes up about 56 percent of this harvest statewide. Nowhere else in the United States is there such a heavy reliance upon wild foods.
This dependence on wild resources is cultural, social and economic. Alaska’s indigenous inhabitants have relied upon the traditional harvest of wild foods for thousands of years and have passed this way of life, its culture, and values down through generations. Subsistence has also become important to many non-Native Alaskans, particularly in rural Alaska.