OPINION: Alaska should discontinue its ‘intensive management’ of Mulchatna caribou

Most of the worst days of my career with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game were those when, as a professional wildlife biologist, I had to work on predator control programs. But according to Alaska intensive management statutes, it may sometimes be necessary, no matter how distasteful.

I’ve always had a deep love for animals and wild country, and I knew at a young age that I wanted to spend my life studying wildlife and traveling to exotic places to observe them in their natural habitats. I’ve done so over the past 50 years throughout most of Alaska and many countries abroad. My wife and I lived and raised our daughter in Dillingham for several years, where much of our nutrition came from moose, salmon and Mulchatna caribou. Moose were scarce throughout the northern Bristol Bay area, and the Mulchatna caribou herd numbered around 18,000, spending most of the year along the upper Mulchatna River, generally accessible to local residents only during winter months when they moved from the hills to their winter range closer to the Nushagak River.

In 1980, through a “handshake” partnership with the National Park Service, we put 20 radio collars on some adult female caribou, which were tracked monthly and used to complete more accurate photo censuses annually, giving us a much more accurate minimum estimate of the herd than we’d ever had in the past. For the next 10 years, the Mulchatna herd continued to grow, primarily in response to some excellent changes to the hunting regulations made by the Board of Game. These included closing the caribou season during the moose season, thus reducing the number of guides and outfitters that had previously offered “combination” hunts for both species. They eliminated all-terrain vehicle use for hunting throughout most of the Mulchatna caribou range, and, at the request of the village elders who served on the Nushagak/Mulchatna Advisory Committee, closed the caribou season for a few years west of the Nushagak to encourage their expansion into some relatively virgin winter range.

Over the next several years, the caribou population grew to more than 200,000, then began a steady decline in the mid-1990s to a low today around 12,000 — which, under the Intensive Management Act, triggered more aggressive regulatory actions to reduce predators, although predators were simply one of the many identified causes of the decline.

When I read that 94 brown bears were shot from helicopters in an effort to reduce predation on the Mulchatna caribou calves, I was truly shocked. The last time the department shot brown bears from the air was in the mid-1960s on Kodiak Island, to reduce predation on cattle. This quickly became a national scandal among environmental and sportsman’s groups alike and was abruptly discontinued.

What troubled me most, however, was the total exclusion of public testimony on implementing the current program, designed entirely by the Board of Game as a separate action that was not in any plan or proposal recommended by the department. This violates the right of all Alaskans to voice their opinion and suggest alternative solutions to existing problems, one of the very fundamental reasons the board was created.

This intensive management plan should be immediately discontinued and replaced by one that is based on sound scientific data, has been thoroughly vetted by Alaska’s public and is implemented in a socially sustainable manner.

Ken Taylor is a retired deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

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