Hunters in Alaska are once again clashing in the ongoing battle over whether rural residents and Alaska Natives have more need to access the state's resources than Alaskans living elsewhere within the state.
With less than two weeks before fall caribou and moose hunts are scheduled to begin, questions remain about whether Alaskans who were granted 2010 permits for the popular Nelchina Basin game management unit will have any hope of hunting anywhere within the state this year.
A Kasilof man's successful challenge to caribou hunt changes imposed by the Alaska Board of Game in 2009 could have huge implications. While the plaintiffs enjoy their victory lap, the state is in a scramble to make sure hundreds of villagers in the mountainous region aren't locked out of the opportunity to get meat for winter. Meanwhile, the hunts for another 850 hunters are also under threat of cancellation.
The Alaska Board of Game has scheduled an emergency meeting Wednesday to work on a fix. Meanwhile, a recent board decision and subsequent court challenge have inflamed the debate over whose needs, if anyone's, should matter more in a state that guarantees every resident equal access to the state's game resources -- a goal easier written than achieved. The ever-shifting interplay between animal abundance and diverse hunter demand makes for a complicated set of rules.
Now, an Alaska Native group representing an eight-village region within the hunting boundary is in a face-off with the Alaska Outdoor Council, which has a membership base of about 12,000. Thanks to a court ruling earlier this month, the AOC is enjoying the upper hand, but the dispute is far from over. As a temporary resolution looms, villagers are suspicious of how the terms were crafted -- and at least one of them suspects the State of Alaska, by way of the governor's office, is making decisions based on all the wrong reasons.
"I think backdoor deals are being made because it is an election year for the governor," said Linda Tyone, vice president of corporate affairs for AHTNA Inc. AHTNA is the regional corporation that serves the eight villages affected by the decision, and Tyone also serves as the hunt's administrator.
All one need do to support the deal-making theory, according to Tyone's account of recent events, is consider the fact that the governor's office has failed to return a call to AHTNA's president but has obviously been in touch with AOC. Late Monday, the Department of Law and the Department of Fish and Game had indeed inked a temporary agreement in which villagers will be allowed to chase caribou next month. But the governor's Juneau office said it had no record of an incoming call from AHTNA's president, and spokesperson Sharon Leighow declined to comment on Tyone's speculation about any motives the governor may have in trying to work with AOC.
"The only reason the state is talking to us now is because we won and they came to us," said AOC president Rod Arno.
Within two weeks of the ruling, the state sought to delay its implementation, which invalidated the fall and winter hunts for hundreds of families. Some families were expecting to hunt under the Community Harvest program. Others had registered under another permitting designation called Tier I, which is an open application process for subsistence users statewide. Ultimately, AOC wants both permitting options off of the table for the Nelchina Basin.
Particularly troubling was that by accepting an opportunity to hunt in the Nelchina Basin, "permit holders under the Community Harvest program and their family members are unable to hunt in any other area as a condition of receiving the permit," according to a Department of Law Department of Fish and Game press release issued nearly two weeks after the court's ruling on July 9.
"If we're not able to find a solution, that's going to make it much more difficult for 800 to1200 families to put food on their tables (this) winter," said Corey Rossi, director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation for ADF&G, according to the release.
"The state's first priority is to abide by the court's order. However, we are very concerned that, due to the timing of the order, the fall caribou and moose hunts will have to be shut down. We don't think that's in anyone's interest, so the state is working with the parties and the court to avoid a shutdown and bring some certainty to people who depend on this hunt," said Kevin Saxby with the attorney general's office, according to the same press release.
A clash of cultures
Controversy erupted last year when the Alaska Board of Game tried an experimental regulatory approach for the region in question, known as Game Management Unit 13. The area is a sweeping expanse of acreage that stretches from Cantwell, Talkeetna and Fairbanks all the way south to Valdez. Instead of requiring hunters to obtain individual permits for caribou and moose hunts, the Alaska Board of Game allowed for something called a Community Harvest Permit, which is rarely, if ever, put into use, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Community harvests allow a local group -- in this case AHTNA Inc. -- to group permits and decide on its own which people are eligible to hunt. Under the program, individual hunters do not need to apply for a permit but do need to record their harvest.
It used to be that hunters were awarded hunting opportunities in the Nelchina region based on a point system. Qualified subsistence hunters were evaluated based on their history of hunting in the area, proximity to the unit, and whether alternative food sources are available. Called Tier II, this type of designation in essence allowed for a system of seniority. But when the Board of Game tweaked the regulatory framework for the Nelchina-basin last year, it did away with Tier II, and instead went to a system that, in addition to the community-harvest permits, issued permits less discriminatory under Tier I -- which opens up the remaining permits to any subsistence user statewide.
A Kenai Peninsula man who lost seniority in the switch from Tier I to Tier II filed suit, an act which quickly became a rallying cry for hunters who have long felt the state's preferential determinations regarding hunting rights were more than just unfair, but also unconstitutional.
The Alaska Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fund "had no choice but to challenge" the "blatantly discriminatory" hunting scheme agreed to by the Board of Game, according to Mike Kramer, who represented AFWC and the main plaintiff -- hunter Kenneth Manning -- in the case. Kramer made the comments in an open letter posted on the website of AFWC's sister group, AOC.
At issue for AOC was the specific allocation of a certain number of caribou and moose to a narrowly defined group of people, in this case villagers in Cantwell, Chistochina, Chitina, Copper Center, Gakona, Gulkana, Mentasta and Tazlina.
Where AHTNA's Tyone suspected the state of being too cozy with AOC, AOC has its own concerns about the state's loyalties.
"Until policy makers in Juneau question whether the ADF&G Division of Subsistence, the Boards of Fish & Game, and especially the Attorney General's office who advises them, are protecting our fundamental rights, these entities will continue to pander to interest groups seeking discriminatory preferences to harvest our fish and game," Kramer wrote. "We need to let our elected officials know that it is unacceptable to conduct an illegal hunt for another year, and unacceptable to continue to legitimize an illegitimate hunt."
A year of uncertainty
Under the revised "experimental" rules, the 2009 hunt in the Nelchina basin was one of the most successful on record, according to Tyone. More younger people had a chance to hunt, more elders had meat in their freezers. "It was the best one in nearly 30 years," she said.
A year later, people are wondering if the permitting chaos resulting from the court challenge will clear in time to salvage the hunts.
People are wanting to know if they'll be able to still get out on a hunt with their school-aged children, who start classes in a few weeks, or if they'll be able to go before the herd wanders too far away, making the hunts cost more and take longer, said Bruce Dale, acting regional supervisor for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Palmer.
The Board of Game has always struggled with allocation in the Nelchina region, he said. It's a highly popular hunt and demand for permits always exceeds what the herds can withstand. Because the unit is largely accessible via the road system, many people from Fairbanks, Anchorage, the Matanuska Valley and even Valdez are eager to have a chance at a permit, as are the locals who live within the unit's boundaries. "It's one of those places that's easy to get to and it's really nice country for hunting," Dale said.
Under the new comprise signed by AOC and the state, AHTNA may select up to 500 people to participate in the fall caribou hunt. But no agreement is in place for moose or for the winter hunt for either species. What might happen by next year is, at this point, anybody's guess. Both sides say they'll push the fight as far as it needs to go to protect their hunts.
Arno says he saw this coming, and thinks tempers and tinkered regulations never should have gotten this far.
"It is precedent setting and it is inflammatory and the board should never have gone this direction," Arno said of the board's decision to implement changes last year.
The fact that the hunts are now in peril is deeply disappointing to Tyone, who accuses AOC of being little more than a bunch of sport hunters who have plenty of other places to go hunt where subsistence needs -- food for the table - aren't a priority.
According to Arno, defining "need" is another thorny proposition. Is it a nutritional need, spiritual need or cultural need? And if cultural, is it just the cultural needs of Native people or the cultural needs of all people?
"It's a tough one," he said.
For Tyone, the ties are clear. "We have grown up like and lived off the land for all our lives. For it not to happen will be devastating. It has gone on for tens of thousands of years," she said.
But what's good for Tyone and her people is a point of contention from which AOC will not back down.
"At its core the Board of Game did a bad thing. It created a Native preference," Arno said.
Contact Jill Burke at jill(at)alaskadispatch.com.