Spring and the upcoming fish and wildlife meeting

We are officially into the spring season, and the weather is even acting like spring too with sunshine and above freezing temperatures during the day. At this point, I’m wondering if Mother Nature is as sick of winter as most of us are. With this welcome change of seasons comes a change in activity levels as well. We’re moving from the slow times of winter into the active times of spring and summer, when there never seems to be enough hours in the day for everything we want to do.

One of these upcoming activities has become almost a tradition for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Fish and Wildlife Commission (MSBFWC) – their annual meeting with the ADF&G Game Division staff to discuss the status and trends of our animal populations here in the Valley. A similar meeting occurs with the ADF&G Sport Fish staff every fall/early winter to discuss the status of our fish populations and how the recently concluded open water fishing season has fared.

The game meeting is scheduled for April 9, a Thursday, beginning around 4 pm, at the Borough building in Palmer. The meeting is open to the public. I’m hoping to sit in and listen to what the biologists have to say about critters here in GMUs (Game Management Units) 13, 14, and 16. They’ll probably touch on situations in some of the surrounding GMUs as well.

When I was a member of the commission, the meeting format followed the following structure. A date for the meeting was established with ADF&G. The commission members were asked to develop a series of questions about the various animals commonly found in the area, and to rank their questions in order of priority. These questions could be about population status, hunting or trapping regulations changes, condition of the habitat, upcoming development of roads or habitat changes, or anything having a potential effect on the health and well-being of the particular game population being discussed.

At a later meeting, the commission would discuss the questions submitted and vote on which ones would be submitted to ADF&G for a written answer and further discussion at the formal meeting. Commission members oftentimes would submit a total of 25 to 30 questions for selection and would sift the final number down to 10 or 12 questions for submission to ADF&G.

Sometimes, questions would be combined during the commission discussion if they were similar enough or contained a follow-up to the original point and were chosen as a priority. During the actual ADF&G meeting, these same questions often sparked a series of follow-ups for discussion. It wasn’t unusual for a question and follow-up discussion to branch off into a related topic for a different population of animals.

The questions not originally selected were still available for discussion at the formal meeting if time allowed. However, the normal situation with time was that not all questions could be discussed during the time allotted for the meeting. Also, if time allowed, questions from the public attending the meeting could be asked and discussed.

Obviously, the topics of hunting and trapping appeal to most outdoors types here in the Valley and lively discussions often occurred regarding certain questions. One such topic in recent years has been the harvesting of antlerless moose and the effect this has on moose populations. Another topic has been the conflicts between “community harvest” hunters and the general season moose hunters.

I always figured other commission members would develop questions about moose, caribou, bears, sheep, and other big game populations, and they usually did. I tried to center my questions around small game like waterfowl and “upland” birds like grouse and ptarmigan. The status of snowshoe hare populations was another topic I would ask about since I’m a small game hunter at heart. Trapping and predator hunting were also topics I was curious to learn about too.

If you have the time and interest to learn what ADF&G is doing with our game populations, I would highly recommend attending this meeting. If you can’t attend personally, the commission usually has an on-line meeting link where you can listen and sometimes ask questions. Go to the Mat-Su Borough webpage and under committees and commissions, look up the Fish and Wildlife Commission. Go there and find the necessary links to log-in and listen. You may have to “explore” the webpage to find the necessary information, but if I can find it, you can too!

I’ve been involved in this stuff for a long time and I’m still learning!