Representing the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission

This past weekend saw the Mat-Su Sportsmen’s Show in a three-day run at Raven Hall on the state fairgrounds south of Palmer. I attended on Friday afternoon to represent the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission at a table we shared with the Kenai River Sportsfishing Association at their invitation.

The intent was to give the commission some public exposure since a lot of folks here in the valley don’t know we even exist. As it turned out on Friday afternoon, we didn’t have very many folks stop by to visit since we were set up in an outdoor location and the wind was blowing fairly hard. The temperatures didn’t help things either. Instead of being in the high thirty to low forty range, the temps were more like high teens, at best. The wind chill was nasty!

Andy Couch, another member of MSBFWC, was present to help man the booth and talk with those willing to talk with us.

Ben Mohr, the executive director of KRSA, was there and he had towed up a nice drift boat KRSA is raffling off as a fund raiser. He said only 1500 tickets will be sold and, through the course of the afternoon, several of the people walking by did, in fact, buy one or more raffle tickets for the August drawing.

One other thing KRSA was doing was signing people up as members, either renewing or becoming new members. The thing that caught the public’s attention here was that KRSA, only the day before, had decided to change their membership policy. A person could still sign up as a paid member and be placed in a “more exclusive” category or they could sign up as a “regular” member for free – that’s right, free membership!

I had worked with the KRSA folks a fair amount over the years on fisheries proposals for the Board of Fisheries, but I had never joined the organization because, quite frankly, I didn’t have the extra money to do so. Needless to say, I’m a regular member now!

Andy and I probably spent more time promoting KRSA than we did talking about the MSBFWC. One lady passing by the table responded with a very quick “No” when I asked her if she wanted to learn about the commission. Most of the other folks didn’t seem interested in the commission once they learned about KRSA’s free membership and a boat raffle. What can I say?

I did explain to a couple of folks willing to listen that, while we worked together with KRSA to conserve the fisheries resources in the Northern District, the two organizations were structured very differently.

KRSA is a private organization dedicated to conserving natural resources (fisheries) statewide and does a lot of educational work with the public. The MSBFWC is a government agency of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough which functions as an advisory group to the Assembly and other government regulatory boards like the Boards of Fisheries and Game on matters of fish, wildlife, and habitat affecting residents of the borough.

The two organizations tend to agree on a very large number of issues and we work together to try to achieve a solution to those issues, but we don’t always see eye-to eye on some things. That’s to be expected. When we do have a common agreement, we support each other’s positions and this works well when dealing with BOF proposals and other natural resource concerns.

One of the guys who knew Andy stopped by the table to chat. Andy introduced me to Eric (I believe that is his name) and explained that Eric worked for a company called Great Holiday Campgrounds. This company has been operating the state campgrounds at Big Lake North, Big Lake South, Rocky Lake, Matanuska Lakes, and King Mountain under contract with the state’s Parks and Outdoor Recreation Division of the Department of Natural Resources.

Eric further explained that his employer had assumed operational responsibilities for Fish and Game’s boat launch facilities at Susitna Landing and the Little Susitna last October. I had written a column last fall complaining about the poor condition of Susitna Landing’s boat launch facilities. They were severely silted in and no effort had been made to clean them out. After the new contracts were signed, Great Holiday Campgrounds immediately began dredging out both the actual boat launch and the boat parking lagoon at Susitna Landing.

Eric said they took 62 dump truck loads of dredge material (wow) out to make the launch and parking areas usable once more.