In case you missed it …

The meeting I mentioned last week, the special Board of Game (BOG) session in Anchorage to address aspects of the Nelchina caribou hunt and black bear trapping/snaring, is over. I think it would be fair to say a final resolution to these issues has yet to be found.

Regarding the black bear issue, the BOG decided to delay taking any action until its spring 2012 meeting. This particular topic, as you might imagine, is attached to a hot button in the outdoor politics arena. A lot of the problem here was the timing for consideration of the issue. The general public had little notice this issue was coming up and most of the advisory committees across the state had not yet had a meeting to discuss the issue and formulate recommendations to the BOG.

Fish and Game asked the board to delay action on the bear trapping/snaring proposals until its November meeting; however, had the board done so, the public would have been unable to submit proposals on this issue. It’s my understanding that the small numbers of bear trapping proposals under consideration at this past meeting were holdovers from previous meetings. The only new proposal was submitted by Fish and Game.

To the board’s credit, it decided to address this issue at a meeting far enough into the future that the public will have plenty of time to make themselves heard on this topic by submitting proposals. The advisory committees had complained that they were being shut out of the process if the board took action now, or even at the upcoming November meeting, because no public proposals were up for consideration.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with allowing black bear snaring as long as it is controlled similar to bear baiting and enforcement is on top of the situation. I lived in Maine for a few years pursuing my master’s degree in wildlife management. Maine is the only other state that allows trapping or snaring of bears. It also has a very healthy black bear population, and a bear hunt in Maine is considered to be the best bear hunting opportunity short of Canada for most eastern big game hunters.

Perhaps a word on the trapping/snaring reference is also in order. The only practical method to trap a bear involves catching a leg in a heavy duty wire snare. The huge longspring bear traps we’ve all seen in movies and, occasionally, on display in someone’s home, would not be legal or practical.

Can you imagine carrying six or eight of those nearly hundred pound traps around in the bush for a trap line? Considering that they would probably cost several hundreds of dollars apiece, who could afford enough just to try to trap a bear? Just setting the springs on that size trap would probably take two men and a lot of effort. See what I mean about being “practical?” By comparison, snares are easy to carry, easy to set and more discriminating in what they catch.

The Nelchina caribou situation is easily as controversial as the bear snaring issue. The BOG was hearing this caribou issue again because of a court ruling holding that the community harvest provisions of the hunt were unconstitutional. My understanding is that the Department of Law advised the board to drop the community harvest idea altogether and find a different approach to dealing with the “subsistence verses recreational hunting” issue.

Again, the board chose to ignore the state’s advice and instead broadened the concept of community harvest to be more inclusive of the “average” caribou hunter. Here’s what the BOG did.

The BOG has allocated the caribou harvest to two different classes of subsistence users and one group of drawing permit hunters, all of whom must be Alaska residents. The first class of subsistence users is comprised of the current residents living within the Nelchina Basin. Provision has been made to form other community harvest groups made up of at least 25 members from outside the area who also wish to participate as community harvest users. A person who subscribes to this group can only hunt moose in the community harvest area and caribou in Unit 13. Any animals taken must be reported within five days.

The second class of subsistence user would be Tier I. Only one permit per household would be issued and all moose and caribou hunting must be done only in Unit 13. Any animals taken must be reported within two days.

The drawing hunt group can hunt moose and caribou anywhere in the state. If you draw a permit, you cannot apply the next year. Any animal harvested must be reported within five days. Depending on the herd’s status, the number of permits to be issued will be determined each year with the possibility no permits will be issued if animal numbers are down.

There are more provisions governing each of these groups. I would suggest you get a copy of RC 52 from the BOG website with the documents from this past meeting to read exactly what is being proposed.

I applaud the BOG for their efforts. However, I think the only final resolution to this issue will be reclassifying the entire Nelchina caribou area as non-subsistence and turning the hunt exclusively into a drawing permit hunt. Anything less will always be subject to court action and judicial second-guessing.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.