A Juneau judge has denied Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s request for an injunction that would have required the Alaska Department of Fish and Game develop new procedures in the weeks leading up to the Sitka Sac Roe Herring Fishery.
One day after hearing oral argumentsfrom STA, ADF&G and the Southeast Herring Conservation Alliance, Judge Daniel Schally made his ruling in writing.
“No party disputes the importance to the Tribe…of the subsistence fishery” he wrote in the order. But he said the Tribe had not demonstrated that it faces “irreparable harm” if the relief isn’t granted between now and the beginning of the 2019 commercial and subsistence fisheries. And they had not, he said, shown that the seine fleet and ADF&G would be protected if the injunction was granted.
Schally went on to say that trial courts have been “cautioned” against the “too frequent resort to the injunction, and in this case he said neither test for an injunction– was met.
As of press time, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska had not issued a statement in response to the judge’s ruling.