Tier II permit system revised

More hunters from the Mat-Su Valley could get permits for the Nelchina caribou herd Tier II subsistence hunt in 2002, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game spokesman Bruce Bartley.

The increase is expected as a result of changes to the Tier II scoring system adopted last week by the Alaska Board of Game.

The department did test runs of the new scoring

system using information from hunter applications in previous years.

"The net result from our computer modeling is that there will be a few more permits in Anchorage, and a few more in Willow, in Mat-Su and in Fairbanks," Bartley said. Both Willow and Fairbanks have been shut-out in recent years as the number of available permits shrank, according to Bartley.

The Tier II subsistence rules came into being as the number of Alaskan hunters competing for big game permits increased and Fish and Game managers needed a way to limit the number of permits in certain hunts. A Tier I hunt is a hunt in which permits are doled out to Alaskans only. In a Tier II hunt, the department tries to distinguish between Alaskan hunters by using a point system heavily weighted in favor of hunters who have applied for the same hunt many years in a row.

Assistant Attorney General Kevin Saxby advises the Board of Game on matters such as the legality of changes to the Tier II process. Saxby said Tier II was designed to comply with the state's constitutional requirement of treating all Alaskans on equal footing when it comes to natural resource management -- which can be difficult whenever the number of Alaskans wanting the resource outgrows the capacity of the resource itself.

"The law also requires [Fish and Game] to exclude some [Alaskans] when there's not enough to go around," Saxby said.

The new Tier II applications will be available by the end of April, according to Bartley. There are 23 Tier II hunts statewide, most of them moose hunts.

The Nelchina caribou hunt -- in which the state issues about 2,000 permits and rejects about 7,000 -- is the hunt that drives discussions about Tier II and the application process. Sixty-two percent of all Tier II applications are for caribou, and 90 percent of those are for the Nelchina herd, according to Bartley.

"Nelchina is the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to Tier II," Bartley said.

The new Tier II application will change the language and scoring methods on parts of the application that ask about a hunter's history.

Question No. 14 asks hunters how many years they have hunted or applied to hunt the population of animals they are filing for under Tier II.

The question is worth 50 of 100 points, and in the past hunters only received credit for as many as 30 years. The new system gives credit for as many as 50 years.

Another change adopted by the board is to a 20-point question -- No. 16 -- which asks what percentage of all the meat harvested by hunters' households comes from the hunt they are applying for. Under the old language, question 16 asked about the percentage of game harvested "within 150 miles of your home."

That phrase has been deleted so the question now refers to all game harvested anywhere. The new language should grant fewer points for hunters who travel farther afield and more points for hunters who rely heavily on the Tier II hunt they are applying for.

Bartley pointed out that while the changes might satisfy some hunters who gain points in the scoring system, they're not likely to make everyone happy.

"Obviously this is a zero-sum game -- if somebody gains a permit, then somebody else loses," he said.