Wrangell's advisory committee for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game met last Thursday evening, Jan. 16, to cover several important topics. The first of which was the election of new officers to lead the committee. The committee is made up of six seats, along with two alternates. Bruce Eagle, the vice-chair of the committee, had opted to not seek re-election. Nominations for the seats, otherwise, were completely open. Many people were nominated, with Wrangell resident Mike Lockabey nominating all of the current committee members as a group, at least those of whom wanted to serve on the committee again. Other nominations included Susan Wis Eagle, Jordan Buness, and Janice Churchill. Votes were tallied, and the new makeup of the advisory committee was decided as follows:
Chris Guggenbickler, Chair, Tom Sims, Vice-Chair, Dave Brown, Secretary, Jason Rooney, Otto Florchutz, and Jordan Buness. Janice Churchill and Brett Stillwaugh were appointed to the committee, as well, by Guggenbickler.
Once elections were out of the way, guest speaker Frank Robbins was invited to give a presentation on the recent moose harvest in the area. Robbins is the area biologist for Petersburg, and his presentation covered the moose hunt in RM038, an area that extends east to west from the mainland to Kuiu Island, and north to south from Point Hobart to Meyers Chuck. This region covers three hunting "units," Unit 3, Unit 1B, and a portion of Unit 1C in the north. According to Robbins, 127 moose were harvested in the 2019 season, the highest in the past 24 years. The previous record was in 2017, with 119 moose harvested. The majority of these moose were killed in Unit 3, mainly consisting of Wrangell, Mitkof, Kupreanof, and Kuiu islands. Over 90 moose were harvested in this unit, Robbins reported, continuing an upward trend of harvest numbers. Over 30 moose were harvested in Unit 1B, largely consisting of mainland area. This number is higher than last season, about 25, but this is continuing a general flatline trend for harvest numbers. Unit 1C numbers were very low, less than 10 moose harvested, but Robbins said that this is the norm.
Another interesting bit of information from Robbins' report is that there were only 12 illegal moose killed this season, or about 9.5 percent of the harvest. This is following along trends for the past five seasons, according to Robbins, with illegal moose harvests generally staying around the 10 percent range.
"I gotta tell you, to be honest with you, this isn't bad," Robbins said. "There's registration hunts in other parts of the state where they have 40 or 50 percent illegal harvests."
In Alaska any illegal moose that are killed are confiscated and donated to charities and those in need. Guggenbickler as on the committee that helped decide how best to divide up the confiscated moose meat this past season. In an email to the Sentinel in December, he said that Wrangell ended up with 136 packages of roasts, and 296 packages of moose meat burger to divvy up among the community. Guggenbickler said that they made up a list of about 120 people to deliver meat to, as well as several organizations around Wrangell.
"We set some moose aside for Head Start, we set some meat aside for the community potluck, we set 8 or 10 roasts aside for a hat dedication that the natives are going to put on this spring," Guggenbickler said, naming some of the groups that received moose meat. "We ended up giving two packages of burger and a roast to about 120, for the most part, elderly or disabled people in this community."
Another big topic during the committee meeting was the potential to reopen Zarembo Island for an elk hunt. Elk hunting has not been allowed on Zarembo Island since 2005, according to Robbins. The general consensus among the committee, and those attending the meeting, was that there were plenty of elk on the island and they wanted to hunt them. Robbins said that the main issue with getting an elk hunt reopened was the lack of information about the island's elk population. He flew over the island a few days ago, and said he managed to count about 23 elk. Many other people attending the meeting attested to seeing elk on the island, as well, but the question remained of how many there actually were. Robbins added that to have an elk harvest, it had to be sustainable. Before anything could be done, they needed as much information on the elk population and their habitat as they could gather. This could involve flying more surveys over the island, setting up cameras, and putting tracking collars on some of the elk.
After the meeting, Guggenbickler said that they had set up an email address, where people can start sending pictures and videos of elk they see on Zarembo. These can be sent to zaremboelk@aol.com. This will help them start a database to put together information on the elk population and their habitat, he said.
During the meeting, the advisory committee also decided to oppose a proposal by NOAA to establish critical humpback whale habitats in the Southeast Alaska area. They are also drafting a letter in support of keeping Wrangell's Fish and Game office open, as proposed budget cuts by the department threaten its closure.
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