Just saw that Biden’s admin wants to close these two units to non-resident hunting. Any truth to that and if so, why?

Because the dem's want to turn Alaska into one big national park.

Yes, it is in the works.

It's the Natives living there who want it closed. Dem. admin. will rubber stamp anything the Natives want, as it's a block vote for them. Has nothing to do with actual game management in those areas, on a scientific basis. NR have virtually NO impact in those units, except to piss off the locals.

Which, by the way, is a violation of Alaska's StateHood Act, which guaranteed the State management over fish and game. Then the Feds decided THEY had jurisdiction over said resources on Federally administered lands within the state (see above). Buncha Indian Givers, so to speak.

I expect that sometime in the future, it will be proposed to close 23 and 26, and perhaps others, to everyone not actually living in those units, except for Natives from those areas, living outside those areas.

Anchorage actually is the largest Native community in Alaska, but they will want to go "home" for "subsistence" hunting and fishing. And do.

I personally miss those 8 years of "subsistence hunting" I did while living in Kotzebue (GMU23)......... but I'm white, so.....

And consider our Senator Murkowski as one of those Democrats even though she ran as a Republican. She is indebted to the native community for her reelection. GMU 13 in the AHTNA area will follow.

Gentlemen,
Thank you for your thoughtful responses. I had guessed that was the goings-on but hoped for better.

Kind of a switch- Natives putting themselves on "reservations". So to speak. Ironic, but they aren't being shipped off to some badlands hellhole hundreds of miles away - it's their homeland, and they (preferably without white-eyes) like it.

So do I.

That’s a good way to look at it. I grew up going to an “Indian School” so I know what you mean. I’ve also seen what hellholes Can be created on reservations…very large reservations. Drugs, booze and politics are the real enemies of us all.

I lived in 26a for the past 3 years(I’m in Nome now). Many of the smaller villages depend on the caribou migrations for their food.

Hunting outfits fly (mostly non resident)hunters in to hunt caribou. The natives don’t like it because they believe that it disrupts the migration patterns, and also goes against some of their hunting traditions(letting the first herd pass unmolested, etc).

The natives don’t feel that the outfitters listen to their concerns. So they have been lobbying the game t
Department to keep the outsiders out. They have been able to enact “no fly zones” near the villages, but when the migration bypasses the village for a year the villages pled for more safeguards.

And now their concerns are being heard in Washington.

I have my own opinions on the whole thing. But I’ll keep them to myself. What I posted is the facts as I see them. I did live in a small village and I can tell you that when the caribou don’t come, the village is an unhappy place.

Ballot box biology

So they developed a code of ethics way back before white men came... when caribou migration patterns were fickle... and now they want to blame the fickle patterns on us. Got it...

Had a native gal out of kotzebue arguing with me on Facebook say ever since they built the pipeline yes the pipeline from prudhoe to Valdez the caribou no longer migrate through korzebue. Lol I cannot make this chit up. I said that pipeline is hundreds of miles from
Kotzebue and that herd is the central arctic herd, the herd in kotzebue was the western arctic herd. She pretty much said (insert native accent) I don’t care what herd it is we don’t need anwr open to oil drilling. At the point I realized talking to my labs would be better..

Click general season you will see how big an impact those outsiders are having on the caribou herds up north

http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=caribouhunting.harvest

Spot on, Jason

And they will probably get it, as I've said, for political reasons.

I just talked to my former landlord(ess) in Kotz. I probably would not have, except she was using her land line to find her cell phone , which is one digit off from mine. BTDT!

She says the herd is still far north in the Brooks Range, so the up-river villages, who are normally hammering the caribou as they pass by the villages at this time, often as the animals attempt to cross rivers, are getting nothing, as yet. Caribou go where and when caribou feel like, but no doubt this will be blamed on the outfitters and NR. Again.

Somehow the caribou remember from year to year a few NRs picking off a few selected bulls far from the villages or river crossings, but can't remember getting hammered while swimming, by fast-moving gunboats in the fall, and run all winter via snow machine.

Must be Democrats. Selective memory.

79S.

Nope, the caribou never get near Kotz anymore. In 2018, the last year I was there, I shot my first caribou below and on the village side of the radar? dome 2 miles west, the 2nd one a mile farther out, the third one about 5 miles out., on successive weekends. All pregnant cows, as I was helping stabilize the declining herd by regulation, as mandated by Native cultural influences.

Any way I can help.......

Don't forget climate change.

Well, that is real - has been for 4 billion years and three different atmospheres. Don't be a hater....

We got our first hard frost night before last. 50 years ago, it would have been 2-3 weeks earlier, and this is not an anomaly. Ditto leaves changing color and dropping.

Problem is we had a cool spring and early summer, with a hot spell in mid summer. My strawberries produced an early ho-hum crop, and are now just loaded with a bumper crop of green berries tfrom he second blooming. I covered them with plastic to try to get a few more ripe ones, but mostly they they are likely to freeze green in a few days. Too bad they aren't tomatoes (also covered nights), which will soon have to come in to ripen on the counter, both the passive green house and outdoors ones.

Must be NR fault. Somehow. All that damned summer traffic for the fishing.

I hate to say it natives will be natives. The Rez I grew up on they always blamed the white eyes for their declining deer and elk herds. Not the known native poachers who shoot 8-10 deer and leave them lay. I can hear them now (insert native accent) them white guys shooting all our deer and elk.

Where I'm from we've always referred to climate change as weather.

As in, "How's your weather today?" ...or, "What's the weather supposed to be like next week?"

They didn't have a good argument at the hearing. They're will always be airplanes due to rafters, hikers, park employees... hunters not the only ones who fly. Doubt they'll get their wishes next year either

squeeky wheel usually gets the greesw

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/rur...ssion-about-future-hunting-restrictions/

Blocked

Yes, they have a "Pay Wall".

Copy/Paste....

Shrinking Western Arctic Caribou Herd prompts discussion about future hunting restrictions
By Alena Naiden

One of the largest caribou herds in Alaska is shrinking, prompting hunters and conservationists to consider recommending hunting restrictions.

The Western Arctic Caribou Herd population is down to an estimated 188,000 animals, reflecting a 23% decrease over the past two years, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The estimate dropped from 259,000 caribou in 2017 and 244,000 in 2019.

“To go even further, It’s around 60 animals per day that died,” said Tom Gray, a member of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group. “This decrease is huge. If this happens again two years from now, we’re going to be really panicking.”

While caribou populations oscillate up and down, “it is always challenging to watch the numbers decrease,” said Fish and Game wildlife biologist Alex Hansen, who presented the new photo census data to the working group this week.

The working group members on Wednesday unanimously decided to change herd management status from “conservative declining” to “preservative declining” to reflect the shrinking population — a decision that could lead to more hunting restrictions in the future.

Under current restrictions, in parts of the Northwest Arctic — specifically, Game Management Unit 23 — Alaska residents are allowed to harvest five bulls or calves at any time of year, while cows’ harvest is limited to a seven-month-long season. Nonresident hunters can harvest one bull per year from August to the end of September.

The new management status could lead to a prohibition on the harvest of calves, further limits on the cow harvest for residents and the closure of hunting for nonresidents. None of the restrictions come into effect automatically, but interested groups can recommend the changes to the Federal Subsistence Board and Alaska Board of Game.


Herd declining
Impacts from changes to the herd are felt across Northwest Alaska, where residents have harvested caribou for thousands of years and continue to rely on the animals to meet subsistence needs.

Crystal Johnson from Kiana said that her youngest son wanted to catch his first caribou last year, and her family “spent a lot of time” on the river hunting, but with no luck.

“We didn’t see one caribou,” she said during a Federal Subsistence Board meeting in November. “We had a really, really tough winter because we didn’t fill our freezer with caribou meat.”

The Western Arctic Caribou Herd population started declining in early 2003 and, with the exception of a slight increase in 2017, has been shrinking ever since. In addition, game managers reported adult female survival being low: The percentage of cows that survived on average over the 2017-2020 time period was 73%, which is below a long-term average of 81%.

Some possible factors contributing to the population decline include increased predation, hunting pressures and changing weather patterns.

“In my opinion, it seems to be the classic death by a thousand cuts,” Hansen said at Wednesday’s Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group meeting. “We have a lot of things going against us and we are working to understand it all.”

Deeper snow and shifting weather patterns can lead to animals dying, Hansen added.

“We’re not currently seeing anything drastic, as far as mass mortality events,” he said, “but we are seeing changes in migrations that put the caribou in different locations.”


Late migration
In Buckland, caribou usually arrive by mid-September, but this year, the herd was late again.

“It is now Nov. 17, and caribou still have not arrived in our area,” Sherry Swan said during the subsistence board meeting last month. “Caribou is our main source of food — we rely on it to survive. My main concern is that our people will begin to go hungry if no action is taken.”

In 2020, the first GPS-collared caribou did not cross the Kobuk River until November, which was the latest first crossing since 2010, according to Fish and Game and the National Park Service. That fall, the only Northwest Alaska community that harvested caribou was Noatak, the Northwest Arctic Subsistence Regional Advisory Council reported.

In the span of 10 years, the first animal crossing has been delayed by two months, “which is just an incredible change,” Kyle Joly, a Park Service wildlife biologist, said this week.

Late migration might also affect cow mortality.

Johnson said last month that resident hunters always try to let cows and calves pass to protect the health of the herd, but when caribou come to their area in late October, the bulls are already in a rut, which gives their meat a strong odor and flavor.

Joly agreed this week: “Those people who all wanted to take big bulls are now going to be faced with animals that are in a rut and stinky and they’re going to want to switch over to cows. ... The timing of migration is a really important component when we think about what to do about harvest management.”

One of the biggest factors slowing down herd migration by almost a month is the Red Dog Mine road, Joly said.

Caribou “have a really difficult time trying to get by the road,” Joly said, showing animated movement patterns recorded by the National Park Service. “One of the most obvious impacts that we see on the caribou migration is this road.”

Following food availability, escaping predators or looking for better terrain or weather conditions can also prompt caribou to change their migration patterns, Joly said.

“A drop in temperature and a dump of snow really drives caribou and they can go really, really far really fast during those episodes,” he said. “If they come across better terrain, less snow, better forage, they’ll slow down. These are important implications related to climate change because we’re seeing much warmer temperatures and much later snowfall in the fall.”

This year, biologists saw caribou slowing down because “they didn’t want to cross with all that volume and power of ice coming down the river,” Joly said.

Northwest Arctic subsistence hunters also expressed concerns to the subsistence board last month that visiting hunters flying small planes close to the ground might affect caribou movement.

“Fly-in hunters are diverting the migration before they reach here,” Kivalina subsistence fisherman and hunter Eugene Wesley said. “They fly miles ahead of where the migration reaches us, and it diverts the route.”

Several sport hunters argued to the board that the correlation between planes and herds’ behavior is not proven and various factors can affect the time and patterns of the caribou migration, including climate change and local hunters’ activity.

“There is no scientific study that supports that aircraft impact caribou migration,” said Adam Owen from Fairbanks.

Joly said this week that biologists don’t see long-term effects of sport hunting on migration patterns, but for hunters, even a small unrecorded deflection that “lasted eight or 16 hours and went a couple of miles” would be enough to ruin their hunt.


Herd management
The earliest opportunity for new management recommendations to go before the Board of Game would be to submit them before Nov. 1, 2022, for the Agenda Change Request. Regular cycle proposals submitted to the board would be due at the end of April 2023.

Hansen said that state game managers might find it difficult to make a decision on harvest restrictions because harvest reporting in the area is limited: Fish and Game only captures a small percentage of harvest because the majority of hunters don’t have a permit, he explained.

“We realize that the permit requirement is fairly new and we will continue to work with hunters and communities to improve compliance,” he said. “The people of Northwest Alaska depend heavily on caribou, and reporting their catch each year is a simple way they can ensure the viability of the herd for their children and grandchildren.”

Meanwhile, the Federal Subsistence Board has a wildlife regulatory meeting scheduled for April. The board already plans to consider caribou hunting closures for people living outside of the range.

Hansen said that hunt closures for nonresidents would target strictly bulls and won’t be enough to bring meaningful change. He added that a reduction in cows’ harvest might be necessary for the future because cows are the drivers of the population.

The working group members discussed a suggestion to further limit the cow harvest for residents, but no recommendations came out of the meeting.

Caroline Cannon urged the working group to spend more time observing the herd and formulating their recommendations. She said it’s important to remember that subsistence users off the road system rely on harvest, especially during the pandemic.

William Bernhardt agreed: “I think we’re jumping into this a little too fast. I think by putting something like this on the floor — trying to put this recommendation out — you’re taking away from the food on the local people’s table.”

Other working group members asked for a more urgent response.

“We’re getting to the point where we got to pay attention,” Gray said. “What’s the reality of that herd surviving if we’re losing 40,000 animals a year now? Be careful, folks. This herd has been here for thousands of years. Let’s not kill it in a few.”

always amazing when residents can kill huge numbers but NR can kill one, they block the NR. And the money it brings.

That said the other things are nature always changes. Used to be "natives" understood and dealt with it, moved with it etc... now they rely on the govt to figure it out.

It won't work well that way but I suppose since the natives don't really do the native thing anymore for the most part, but rely on .gov a lot, thats who they look to for the solutions.

We have come a long ways. Not all of it good. Not all of it bad.

I sure hope they look at all angles. And I"m sure that many animals deaths is not human related but natures changes. How you stop that can be awful tough

There hasn't been much success in stalling these herd declines in the past but we can be hopeful.
The 40 Mile Herd is declining but this year broke out of usual migration areas and went West to the Elliot Highway area where caribou are rare.
Hopefully that change of habitat will have a positive affect.

I hadn't herd ( ) that tho they did seem fewer on the Steese We took 3 bulls in 5 days big, medium and yearling.

Plenty habitat over west

The two larger bulls had fat, the yearling as is usual little or none

Working on it, pictures are too big....