In Nelchina Basin, village caribou hunts face shutdown
| Jul 27, 2010Hunters 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.
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Jill,
Great report - thanks!
I'm a big supporter of the whole general concept of Subsistence.
I think I understand correctly, that the Federal enactment of Subsistence allows a Rural over Urban preference, while not making a distinction between Native and non-Native rural usage.
And, of course, that the Alaska Constitution says that all citizens - City and Country alike - should have the same shot at what's available.
So I'm a bit perplexed to see:
"... hunters who have long felt the state's preferential determinations regarding hunting rights were more than just unfair, but also unconstitutional."
Isn't that actually a cut-and-dried legal question? That - no "felt" about it - this kind of preference does "blatantly" violate the Constitution? Am I following this right?
If we are really going to have subsistence, and not just 'pretend' to support traditional land-based lifestyles for a few decades, until it becomes obvious that the rural base cannot out-compete the growing cities and non-subsistence towns for limited resources ... then it looks to me like the Fed called it correctly in the first place ... and the State basically has it's head up it's butt, with its Equal Access clause in the Constitution.
'Giving' AHTNA the block of game-permits, appears again to 'knowingly' 'walk' on the basic Federal Subsistence provision ... and isn't this how the State lost big chunks of resource control & administration to the Fed, here in recent years?
Since the 'rules of the game' actually seem well-spelled-out and easily-grasped, it's a little hard for me not to see the State as 'up to something', and then wanted to scowl & act all hurt in the face, when they get slapped.
I want to see Subsistence protected. City folks are not qualified for preference ... or equality. It should also not be a Native-preference practice, and the Corporations should not be effectively administering it.
You use the perfect ending, Jill:
" "At its core the Board of Game did a bad thing. It created a Native preference," Arno said."
I am highly sympathetic to Natives, but to have Subsistence long-term, it can't be Native-preference. The consequences of going that way are too easy to see, and too unacceptable.
Ted