Subsistence RAC backs proposal to restrict caribou harvest
The Seward Peninsula Subsistence Regional Advisory Council, an advisory body to the Federal Subsistence Board, decided last week in Nome to back a proposal aimed at helping the population of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd to recover as it’s been in decline over the last two decades. The measure would restrict the federal subsistence harvest of the animals in Unit 23 to four per year.
The Western Arctic Caribou Herd, or WACH, is the largest in Alaska, but according to the October 2022 census of the herd, the current population is estimated to be 164,000, down about 24,000 animals from the year before. The population is now about a third of what it was 20 years ago, when its size was estimated at 475,000 animals.
Changing conditions due to climate change and impacts from development could be contributing to the decline, according to recent research. But scientific observations from the 1870s to the present also suggest the population goes through a natural cycle of rising and falling numbers. This cycle takes about 50 years to complete and appears to be at a low, Charlie Lean told the council during their two-day meeting at Old St. Joe’s last week.
“When the population gets really low, that’s when all the conservation flags get raised and hunting is poor, just because there aren’t many animals,” Lean said. Lean gave a report on behalf of the WACH working group. He explained that if the numbers drop below 130,000 animals, the herd would be considered in need of “critical” management according to the group’s own management plan.
When the working group met in 2021, they had discussed the worrying decline of the population and mulled taking conservation actions, but chose not to, Lean said. When the group met this past December, they decided to set the management level to “preservative.” They also passed a resolution that declared the amount reasonably needed for subsistence, or ANS, threshold had been crossed and urged state regulators to enact restrictions on non-Alaska resident hunters.
The working group also voted to submit a proposal to the Board of Game and the Federal Subsistence
Board to restrict harvest of caribou. This measure would reduce the harvest limit to four caribou per year, only one of which may be a cow, in all management units that contain the herd.
“There was a lot of discussion, a lot of concern, but even the people that lived in the Kobuk, Shungnak, Ambler area where the bulk of the caribou herd overwintered in 20212022 agreed that it was a serious problem,” Lean said. “I know this is bad news, but for those of us that believe that we own the resource, we need to take care of it and make sure it’s still here.”
The subsistence harvest restrictions wouldn’t come into effect until 2024 if they are eventually passed. But the Seward Peninsula RAC also voted to support more immediate restrictions on the caribou harvest until those new regulations are in place.
The Northwest Arctic RAC met earlier this month and submitted a special request to the Seward Peninsula RAC. The members of the Northwest Arctic RAC want the Federal Subsistence Board to reduce the harvest limit in Unit 23 to four caribou per year, only one of which may be a cow, for the remainder of the 2022 to 2024 regulatory cycle, which ends on June 30, 2024.
Unit 23 includes a piece of the Bering Land Bridge National Preserve in the northern Seward Peninsula and extends north to Point Hope and east beyond Kobuk and Ambler.
Hannah Voorhees with the Office of Subsistence Management in Anchorage presented the special request during the meeting in Nome. She explained that residents of Unit 22 are federally qualified hunters for caribou in Unit 23 because they have a traditional use determination to hunt further north.
Voorhees said that there is no set timeline for a special action request, but guessed these new restrictions could be in effect for the fall hunting season. She confirmed that this would only apply to federally qualified subsistence users hunting on federal lands. Some council members expressed frustration at the discrepancies between the federal and state harvest rules. Even if the new restrictions come into effect, those with a state permit could still harvest up to five caribou per day on state land in Unit 23 under the current regulations.
“You would think there would be some uniformity on this thing and people working together to do the management of this with the intent that the Western Arctic caribou working group was trying to set up,” said Tom Gray, vice chair of the Seward Peninsula RAC. “There was a big push from the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group that we want to start conserving, we want to come in line and make this work. And yet, you guys need to be working together with the state.”
Council member Martin Aukongak of Golovin also commented earlier during a discussion about the caribou herd that the availability of one subsistence resource affects how people harvest other resources.
“If you can’t get any salmon, what do you do? You go after caribou or vice versa,” Aukongak said. “If you don’t have caribou, you need to put something else in your freezers.”
The RAC voted unanimously in favor of the proposal restricting the federal hunt in Unit 23 through the end of the regulatory cycle.