In Nelchina Basin, village caribou hunts face shutdown

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.