Yesterday I attended the Nushagak Fish and Game Advisory committee meeting in Dillingham. Our caribou herd peaked at over 250,000 then crashed to about 30,000. After numerous years of calling for wolf control, it comes to the area this spring. The actions that allow it were adopted last spring too late for implementation. Yesterday the local wildlife biologist presented the plan while his two immediate supervisors stood by on a teleconference - they tried to fly down but the airline cancelled their plane. We had a very good and informative meeting. The plan is to focus wolf elimination around the two most recently used calving areas. They say the time to get the wolves is in a short time before calving starts so new wolves don't have time to move in. The other focus is on the harvest goal not a caribou population goal, and a program review in six years. All seem good to me. I sure miss having caribou in the freezer. At calving time the department will collar a bunch of calves so their survival can be studied and the wolf control efforts evaluated. They also pointed out that a small study last spring showed about 39% of caribou calves in one area were taken by wolves and they believe with the focused aerial hunting, that percentage could be reduced, hopefully to 15% or so. If that can be done for a few years the hope is the herd will get large enough that it can then grow on its own.
I have been getting less and less comfortable with the predator control activities statewide, but I have to say, I was really impressed by all three state biologists for this meeting. I know two of them and have a high regard for their knowledge and professionalism but I hadn't sat through a wolf control plan with them before. And the top guy, Bruce Dale is new to me - he made a lot of sense and was able to put words onto some concerns I had much better than I could. Some folks wanted to expand the area and lengthen the hunt period for aerial shooting. ADFG had suggested mid March to the end of April for aerial gunning. In the end we kept to the plan recommended by ADFG for the shooting area. Darn, I didn't write it down whether we increased the gunning time or not. At one point we wanted it opened from Nov 10 to the end of April. Some trappers were concerned about competition for their hides and such. Then on ADFG suggestions we backed off from that and switched to Jan 1- May 1 in part to accommodate the trappers and more so to prevent conflicts and potential violations during our winter moose hunt.
We also voted to support proposal 157 that would expand predator control efforts just north of our area and likely benefit our game populations, especially the caribou. That proposal is being addressed in the big meetings going on it Fairbanks next week.
One other thing I learned was that our State Senator Hoffman had helped get special funding for these information meetings and other support for the program. I think that will go a long way to help the public get the complete story without all the rukus that always comes up at wolf control discussions. Sure is nice to have some legislators supporting the department in this way.
I know a lot of people around here support the program. We could really benefit by having more caribou to eat, and it would take pressure off our moose a little too. Come to think of it, thinning the wolves will probably help the moose a bit too. With gas over $6 / gallon and going higher, modest salmon runs predicted, meat to hunt will be even more important than ever.
