"It is the department's intent to use trapping as a management tool for black bears and grizzly bears where hunting is not sufficiently effective to achieve population management goals."
The above quote is taken from a proposal and recommendations from our very own Alaska Department of Fish & Game, submitted to the Alaska Board of Game, that will be heard and voted on at a special BOG meeting Oct. 8-12 in Anchorage at the Coast International Inn.
I wrote last spring about the overt politicization of the department at the leadership level by the Palin/Parnell administration and how that led to this coming down the pike in an ADN Compass piece you can read here: http://www.adn.com/2010/03/24/1197979/wildlife-conservation-director.html
But I certainly didn't think that the board and the department would arrange for such an important and controversial matter to be heard and decided upon at a short meeting out of the regular schedule that was only supposed to be about Nelchina caribou hunting permit allocation issues.
Shortly after the board announced this meeting and sent out a "call for proposals," the department put in an agenda change request so that new statewide bear trapping regulations, and changes to the current Bear Conservation and Management Policy that directs any board actions on bears, could be heard at this same meeting.
The hunting organization I co-chair then drafted our own proposal on changes to the bear policy and new bear trapping regulations. We sent the proposal in before the deadline but it was subsequently rejected by the board on the grounds that the call for proposals for this meeting was "specific" to only Nelchina caribou allocation issues, and any new proposals from the public on any other issues were not allowed.
We were frankly dismayed and greatly disappointed with what seemed like a subversion of the public process -- especially because the lawsuit that brought on this meeting in the first place was in part successful because the court determined that the board had not properly met the Alaska Administrative Procedures Act of public notice and comment period when they decided on Nelchina caribou permit allocations in 2009.
The gist of what is proposed by the board and the department centers on a revised bear management policy that will essentially allow bear "control" activities (the taking of sows with cubs, and cubs, and baiting and foot-snaring of bears) without ever having to go through a formal bear control implementation plan by which the department must first gather predator and prey population and other data, provide a "reasonable expectation" of efficacy in actually boosting moose or caribou densities, and then submit that plan to the board for authorization.
That is something our organization strongly opposes.
Of note is that during the last two administrations the board has had no problem whatsoever in directing the department to draft predation control implementation plans and in the board reviewing them and authorizing them. We fully support that long-standing process, and in fact our organization supported a recent wolf-control implementation plan in Unit 21E at the last scheduled meeting that went through that process.
We simply do not want to see the bear (or wolf) management policy changed to circumvent the very reason we have predation control implementation plan guidelines in statute in the first place.
Plus, the Legislature has allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the department for a predator control education campaign that specifically labels activities like this as only being about "control." We are concerned that now suddenly labeling bear snaring and the taking of sows with cubs, and cubs, as a "new management tool" contravenes that education effort and threatens public support of all control programs.
I urge anyone concerned about these changes to read the proposals and send in comments to the board before the Sept. 30 deadline, and to show up at the meeting in Anchorage on Oct. 8 to testify.
You can read more about this and get links to proposals and how to send in comments on our website at http://www.alaskabackcountryhunters.org.
Mark Richards is an avid longtime hunter and trapper and co-chair of the Alaska chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, www.alaskabackcountryhunters.org.
By MARK RICHARDS