https://www.adn.com/opinions/2...-rights-of-alaskans/



Defending the hunting rights of Alaskans

Author: Doug Vincent-Lang | Opinion clock Updated: 34 minutes ago calendar Published 34 minutes ago



The Federal Subsistence Board, or FSB, will soon consider an ill-advised request to close Northwest Alaska to non-federally qualified moose and caribou hunters. This means Alaskans from outside the region could be locked out of vast swaths of hunting territory. As the governor recently said, even his wife Rose would be unable to hunt the land she grew up on.

The FSB’s willingness to preempt state management and act outside of its scope of authority is nothing new. Last year, a similar action affected a popular hunting area near Glennallen. Hunters who were not federally qualified were simply banned. This meant someone who grew up and traditionally hunted around Glennallen, but had been displaced to Anchorage for health reasons, could not hunt the land they’d spent a lifetime hunting.

Worse, the proposed closure of moose and caribou hunting access in Northwest Alaska is based on a faulty premise. Supporters of this overreach claim that a small number of non-local hunters are having a significant impact on the migration of caribou and disrupting traditional hunting of these herds. This is flatly false.

The hunters being targeted by this potential closure harvest only 2% to 3% of the caribou taken each year, and caribou populations in the region are healthy. The Western Arctic Caribou Herd population is about 244,000 animals, which is above our population management goal. The amount considered necessary for subsistence is 8,000 to 12,000 animals, with harvest levels falling within this objective. In short, the population is healthy and providing for the subsistence needs of all Alaskans under state management.

Population levels are extremely important because Section 8 of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or ANILCA, makes it clear that the FSB cannot close federal lands for just any reason. Specifically, hunting, fishing and trapping cannot be limited to federally qualified users unless there is a conservation concern or the continuation of subsistence is in danger. In this instance, much like the closure around Glennallen last year, the case for either of these reasons does not exist.

State management authorities have worked hard to come to amicable compromises between local residents and the small group of non-locals who hunt in Northwest Alaska. Over the past 30 years, the Alaska Board of Game has established Controlled Use Areas in the region that restrict the use of aircraft for hunting. Opportunities to hunt without the interference of aircraft already exist, and if additional areas are desired, state regulatory processes are available. A perfect alternative to get to the heart of their concerns is to work with the already-established Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group to address these issues. They can then propose and advocate for solutions to the Alaska Board of Game.


The consequences of this proposed closure will be felt far and wide. If federal lands are closed to non-federally qualified users, then the non-local Alaskans who wish to hunt this area will only be able to utilize state lands or thread the needle by hunting on navigable waters below the ordinary highwater mark where the state has jurisdiction. This will affect their subsistence opportunities.

The economic ripples will be felt locally across many sectors of society. The Alaskans and non-residents who travel to Northwest Alaska to hunt may be a small group, but they spend significant money on travel, gear, guiding services, and provisions — money that benefits local small businesses.

The state of Alaska is a sovereign entity with a legal interest in the management, conservation and regulation of all fish and wildlife within its borders. My number one goal, as mandated by Alaska’s constitution, is to deliver to the people of Alaska the maximum use and benefit of fish and game resources while ensuring a sustained yield for future generations. Providing for subsistence users is important and the state strives to meet its statutory mandate to provide a reasonable opportunity for subsistence use first. However, in this instance we find no evidence that the requested closure is warranted, nor does the Federal Subsistence Board have the authority to approve the closure since it does not qualify under the provisions of ANILCA.

Alaska strongly urges the FSB to follow the law and reject this proposal. To accept it would be blatantly illegal and an unjustifiable impact on the hunting rights of Alaskans. My department has a constitutional obligation to protect these rights, and, if necessary, will take action to protect Alaskans from harmful federal overreach.

Doug Vincent-Lang is the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

What is going on is the FSB has cast a wide net in an effort to save the NW herd from the same fate as the once mighty Mulchatna Herd. We were guideing on the Squirrel River in the early eighties taking mixed bag hunters and doing well, and then an Outfitter (air taxi) put a camp just downstream from us and within 2 years there was hundreds of tents and more outfitters arriving yearly,,,we left!! I watched exactly the same thing here in the Iliamna area with our caribou,,we have 11000 nor so now,,quite a drop from 275,000. Hopefully residents don't lose the right to hunt there but I could care less about the greedy air taxis that follow herds around to decimation and then move on to the next!

quote:

Originally posted by waterrat:
I watched exactly the same thing here in the Iliamna area with our caribou,,we have 11000 nor so now,,quite a drop from 275,000. Hopefully residents don't lose the right to hunt there but I could care less about the greedy air taxis that follow herds around to decimation and then move on to the next!

Waterrat,

I assume the guys that the air taxis take in are hunting bulls. I can’t see how killing mature bulls could cause the population to crash, as the bulls that are left are capable of breeding the available cows.

Is there some other cause that I am missing that the air taxis were doing that caused the heard to crash?

And in the case of the proposed closure, they say that the hunters who would be excluded are only taking 3% of the total harvest. So again, is there something else that the hunters are doing that is disrupting the heard?

I saw the crash of the Norther Peninsula caribou herd and it had been predicted years before by state biologists due to over population.

The "crash" involved some die off, but primarily resulted in a mass migration towards Illiamna. It is true that numerous vacuum cleaner air taxi's capitalized on the availability of game, but, as unseemly as it was,it was not enough to stop the growth and the herd again moved on toward the Bethel area where they had been "missing" for 70 years.

There is a lot we are still learning about game in Alaska.

quote:

Originally posted by waterrat:
What is going on is the FSB has cast a wide net in an effort to save the NW herd from the same fate as the once mighty Mulchatna Herd. We were guideing on the Squirrel River in the early eighties taking mixed bag hunters and doing well, and then an Outfitter (air taxi) put a camp just downstream from us and within 2 years there was hundreds of tents and more outfitters arriving yearly,,,we left!! I watched exactly the same thing here in the Iliamna area with our caribou,,we have 11000 nor so now,,quite a drop from 275,000. Hopefully residents don't lose the right to hunt there but I could care less about the greedy air taxis that follow herds around to decimation and then move on to the next!

I hunted along the Squirrel River quite a bit in the mid 80s - just north of Kiana. I did see some hunters on that old strip with the broken down D5 but never saw hundreds. Saw more along the Kobuk River hunting up the high water line. Shot my last caribou that way.

23 in the 80s was magical.

quote:

Originally posted by AnotherAZWriter:

quote:

Originally posted by waterrat:
What is going on is the FSB has cast a wide net in an effort to save the NW herd from the same fate as the once mighty Mulchatna Herd. We were guideing on the Squirrel River in the early eighties taking mixed bag hunters and doing well, and then an Outfitter (air taxi) put a camp just downstream from us and within 2 years there was hundreds of tents and more outfitters arriving yearly,,,we left!! I watched exactly the same thing here in the Iliamna area with our caribou,,we have 11000 nor so now,,quite a drop from 275,000. Hopefully residents don't lose the right to hunt there but I could care less about the greedy air taxis that follow herds around to decimation and then move on to the next!

I hunted along the Squirrel River quite a bit in the mid 80s - just north of Kiana. I did see some hunters on that old strip with the broken down D5 but never saw hundreds. Saw more along the Kobuk River hunting up the high water line. Shot my last caribou that way.

23 in the 80s was magical.

Things are different now than 40 yrs ago. The influxe of hunters and permanent camps alter the caribou's migration routes sometimes with disastrous results as Phil noted!

I lived in Dillingham,AK during the rise and down turn of the mighty Mulchatna herd. At one time they were expanding at 16% per year and as Phil says they were seen in areas to the West where the elders had never seen caribou. Across the Wood River from the dock at Dillingham there were nine thousand that we could see from the dock at one point as estimated by F&G. Times of plenty.

All during the rise the State resident biologists kept saying if they don't keep expanding their territory they will crash. They did crash but the herd just got bigger and bigger for about 15+ years that I knew of. Hunting was never an issue in the decline. Having said that I agree the air taxi operators bombed the heck out them and put far too many people in one location.

Mark

https://www.outdoorlife.com/hu...ublic-lands-closure/


Plan to Close 60 Million Acres of Public Land to ‘Non-Local’ Caribou and Moose Hunting Stalls. But More Requests to Restrict Hunting in Alaska Are on the Way

This is a temporary win, but there’s a continued effort to keep ‘non-local’ hunters from hunting on federal land in Alaska

BY TYLER FREEL JUNE 23, 2021


There’s been an ongoing push to restrict “non-local” hunters from hunting on federal public lands in Alaska (which I covered a lot this spring). Last week, we saw a small victory in the struggle to prevent this from happening.


The Federal Subsistence Board in Alaska held a meeting on June 16 to consider closing about 60 million acres of federal public lands to non-local hunters pursuing moose and caribou this fall. There was plenty of trepidation around this meeting, following a public comment tele-meeting that produced hours of public input against the proposed special action. Ultimately, the FSB chose to defer action on this decision until next year, requesting more information from the agencies that manage caribou and moose herds, as well as the user groups that rely on them. They plan to schedule a meeting to revisit the issue, officially called proposal WSA21-01, before the 2022 fall hunting season and will announce the meeting to the public beforehand.


To be clear, to be a local hunter in this case meant “federally qualified subsistence users.” In other words, even though I am an Alaska resident—I live in Fairbanks—I wouldn’t be allowed to hunt the areas if WSA21-10 passed. Any hunters from the lower 48 would certainly be out of luck.

So, the fact that this proposal didn’t pass is a short-term victory for hunters, in that the board could not find sufficient evidence to justify this closure of hunting on public lands. But some interpret the deferral, rather than a full dismissal, as an effort to find an excuse to push the measure through. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which is the state agency charged with managing wild game and hunting, strongly opposed this federal proposal to restrict non-locals from hunting on public land.

“While I am pleased that Alaskans and everyone else will be able to go hunting as they’ve planned this fall, deferring it just means we know for sure we’ll be dealing with this next year,” Alaska Department of Fish and Game Deputy Commission wrote in a message after the decision. “Please know we at ADF&G are in the fight to protect the rights of everyone to hunt in Alaska and do our best to keep the FSB from acting outside their authority. The Commissioner has been very adamant about these efforts.”


Either way, WSA21-01 isn’t going away yet, and in the coming year we will do our best to keep you updated on this issue.

For many hunters, the scary part of this request, and the closure of some federal lands in Unit 13 for caribou hunters, is the precedence it sets. Already, more proposals are being generated for exclusionary closures of federal land to non-local hunters in Alaska. Three Wildlife Proposals—WP22-07, WP22-08, and WP22-09—are all set for the next cycle of federal subsistence hunting regulation changes, and are only open for public comment through July 19, 2021. Find information on how to comment on these proposals here.

The proposals pertain to areas in Unit 4 of Southeast Alaska, including part of Admiralty Island, Chichagof Controlled Use Area, and the Lisianski Inlet. The proposals differ slightly, but two of them are designed to close federal lands to non-local blacktail deer hunters for certain prime hunting seasons, and to change bag limits. All 3 proposals are opposed by Alaska Department of Fish and Game, which cites healthy deer numbers and relatively light hunting pressure in their draft comments against the proposals.


The result of these proposals, and the many more that are sure to follow, will depend greatly on how well informed the public is about these issues. Left to quiet meetings with no public user input, these proposals will surely pass quietly, one after another, and we will continue to lose our rights to access and hunt on federal public lands in Alaska. If you hunt in Alaska, if you hope to one day hunt in Alaska, or if you simply believe in the idea of allowing all hunters to hunt on federal public land, please voice your opposition to these proposals.

Apply the "logic" of this proposal for any area in the Lower 48. Scary stuff. Freel has done some good reporting on this issue and helped raise public awareness. If you want more info he had a recent Tundra Talk podcast, episode 110, with a ton of information. Kudos to him.