https://www.ktoo.org/2023/01/2...lk-hunt-in-17-years/



Board of Game authorizes first Zarembo Island elk hunt in 17 years


January 27, 2023 by Sage Smiley, KSTK - Wrangell


Alaska’s game management board has authorized an elk hunt on Zarembo Island in Southeast Alaska for the first time in nearly two decades. The state Department of Fish and Game opposed the hunt, but strong support from Wrangell and other local communities helped convince the board to take the leap.

Elk are not native to the Alexander Archipelago in Southeast Alaska. They were introduced to Etolin Island in the mid-1980s and spread to other islands nearby. That includes Zarembo, which is about 10 miles across the Zimovia Strait and visible from downtown Wrangell.

But the Alaska Department of Fish & Game has shut down elk hunting on Zarembo for the past 17 years, concerned about low population.

Chris Guggenbickler is the chair of Wrangell’s Fish & Game Advisory Committee. He says locals have kept the flame for a Zarembo elk hunt.

“Elk is always something that we’re talking about,” he says. “There are so many people that have talked to us about the abundance of elk on Zarembo and the fact that they want to have a hunt again.”

Biologist Frank Robbins, who oversees Game Unit 3, the area around Petersburg and Wrangell, told Board of Game members at their January meeting in Ketchikan that he’s seen at most 23 elk on Zarembo Island. He says the current population is around 50, although that’s just an estimation because elk are hard to spot on the island.

“There is no available data that suggests that the Zarembo Island elk population has increased since hunting ended in 2006,” Robbins told the Board of Game.

For Board of Game members, that raised the question of whether it’s possible to sustainably harvest elk when the population is so small. Biologist Robbins was doubtful but conceded it’s feasible.

“I’ve been a biologist for pushing 30 years,” Robbins related, “I did at one time manage the Chitina bison herd, and year in and year out we would fly over the Chitina bison herd and count 50 animals. We issued two permits annually.”

Committee member Guggenbickler doesn’t think Fish & Game’s population estimate is correct .

“The last hunt was in 2006 — there were six bulls taken. They closed the hunt, thinking that there really weren’t a lot of bulls left on the island,” Guggenbickler says, “And then the proposal came off of the books. It’s been 17 years since we’ve had a hunt, so they’ve had that long to rebuild.”

There’s already a federal subsistence elk hunt in the area, but it excludes Zarembo and Etolin Islands and some of the smaller neighboring islets.

The Board of Game rejected three other elk hunt proposals, including a different proposed hunt on Zarembo and nearby islands, as well as two proposals to modify the current elk hunt on Etolin Island, south of Zarembo. But they unanimously supported Guggenbickler’s and Buness’s proposal at their January meeting.

Hunters from around the region wrote letters and spoke to the board about how they’ve seen increasing numbers of elk on Zarembo Island. And Guggenbickler says he believes the strong show of public support for the proposal helped swing the board’s favor.

Burnett said his opinion on the hunt was also somewhat swayed by the fact that elk aren’t a native species.

“Maybe elk just don’t belong there, and maybe it’s just not an appropriate place for elk,” Burnett said.

Robbins, the biologist, referenced a research project in the 90s which found significant overlap — about 64% — in the diets of elk and deer, especially when resources are strained after a heavy snow.

Guggenbickler says he explained to the board that deer are a major meat source in Wrangell, and hunting elk could reduce the deer’s competition for food.

“We were worried that if there was a hard winter, the deer were gonna end up on the beach, the elk would have ate all the food, the deer would have been compromised,” he said.

The newly approved elk hunt will take place in October. Hunters can apply for one of up to 25 tags to take one bull, but the actual number available will be up to Robbins, the area biologist.

Guggenbickler expects the department to be cautious in how they issue tags.

“The department is going to be conservative because they feel there’s going to be a higher success rate,” he said. “Etolin has a very low success rate; there are actually quite a few tags that go out but the success rates are only two or three percent.”

Guggenbiclker says he and colleagues on the Wrangell Advisory Committee may try to add a residency priority to the hunt.

“We were concerned that the entire proposal might fail based on that,” he said. “So the idea was just to kind of get the whole thing in the books – let’s baby-step this thing, and then hopefully we can get a resident priority later on.”

For now, they’re just glad it passed.

“Elk are kind of one of those species we don’t get a shot at much around here, and there’s some huge animals,” Guggenbickler says, “And I think everybody’s just hoping they might draw that tag and kill that great big bull.”

If the new Zarembo elk hunt makes it on the official regulation books in time, hunters may be able to submit their names for an elk tag on Zarembo this fall, with the first season in October of 2024.