Local Alaskan permits, which are the combined permits from Alaska Rural Local and Alaska Urban Local resident types, are the focus of this section. Alaska local permits are defined as those held by persons who reside in the area near a limited fishery. Tables similar to those in the previous section on Alaska Rural Locals are provided on the transfers between Alaska Local permit holders and other resident types.1 In every year since 1977, the number of permits held by Alaska Locals declined as a result of transfer activities with the Nonresident and Nonlocal resident types (Table 28). Over the 1975-1994 time period Alaskan Locals transferred 2,535 permits to other resident types. Alaskan Locals received 1,855 permits from other resident types which resulted in a net decrease of 680 locally held permits. Total net decreases were greatest in the years 1979 through 1986.
The corresponding net increases within the other resident types were 344 permits to Alaska Urban Nonlocals (50.6%), 278 permits to Nonresidents (40.9%) and 32 permits to Alaska Rural Nonlocals (4.7%). Transfers to the Department of Commerce or CFAB through loan foreclosures and subsequent resales by these agencies have resulted in a net decrease of 26 (3.8%) permits from Alaska Locals.
The cumulative numbers of transfers to and from local permit holders are presented for each fishery in Table 29 and by fishery and year in Appendix E.2 By the end of 1994, the number of permits held by Alaska locals decreased in 28 of the 41 fisheries that showed net changes in cross-cohort transfer activity.
Numerically, the greatest decreases in permit numbers have been in the Bristol Bay fisheries (351 permits), the Prince William Sound salmon fisheries (113 permits), and the Peninsula/Aleutian fisheries (84 permits). The Bristol Bay fisheries alone accounted for 51.6% of the 680 net decrease in the number of permits held by Alaska locals. The net local shift in these fisheries was highest in the late 70s and early 80s but this shift has been reduced in the 1988-1994 period (Appendix E).
Of the few fisheries that marked net increases in permits to Alaska locals, the power troll (66 permits), Cook Inlet drift gill net (22 permits), and Kodiak seine (24 permits) fisheries showed the largest numerical gains.
Transfer survey information from 1980-1994 describing 1,902 transfers from Alaska Locals to other resident types is provided in Tables 30-32. The relationship between transfer parties by fishery and year is presented in Table 30. Statewide, survey responses indicate that 63.7% of the transfers from local residents to other resident types during the 1980-1994 period were between people who had no pre-existing relationship (1,211 out of 1,902).3 Since 1984 the range of this percentage has been from 62.2% to 71.7%, except in 1992 when it rose to 83.8%; however, the Yakutat and Kodiak salmon set net fisheries, and the Upper Yukon gill net fishery all show relatively high proportions of transfers to friends and relatives in these cross-cohort transfers (Table 30).
Transfer acquisition methods are presented in Table 31. From 1980 to 1994, the majority of the transfers from Alaska Locals to other resident types were sales (78.6% or 1,495 of 1,902 transfers). Statewide, the majority (79.6%) of all cross-cohort transfers (regardless of resident type) were also sales. Cross-cohort transfers appear to more likely be transfers between people without a pre-existing relationship and therefore are more likely to be sale rather than gift transactions.
Sources of permit financing are shown in Table 32 for 1,495 purchases where non-local buyers acquired locally-held permits. For all fisheries combined, 66.9% of the permit sales throughout 1980-1994 were financed through the personal resources of the transferee. This figure is higher than the amount of self-financing used by only Alaska residents (51.0%) and higher than the overall all-resident percentage (56.1%) reported in Table 22;4 however, both tables indicate that since 1980 the use of personal assets to buy permits has increased.
Table 32 also shows the percentage of state-financed loans is less for non-local buyers of local permits (11.8%) than the percentages reported for only Alaskan buyers (27.7%) or all buyers (19.4%) (Table 22).5