Wildlife

Alaska Congressman Don Young has added an amendment to a bill that would block the federal government from spending any money on a plan that calls for more wilderness in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Young’s amendment to the Interior Department spending bill passed the House Tuesday by voice vote after a brief debate.

President Obama announced the update to the comprehensive plan for the Arctic refuge in January, with great fanfare. The planning document calls for designating more than half of the refuge wilderness – the highest level of protection in federal law. Including the areas that are already wilderness, there’d hardly be any part of the refuge that’s not under the designation.

Alaska’s congressional delegation and the governor hit the roof, and they’ve stayed mad. They, like a majority of Alaskans in many polls, want the coastal plain of the refuge opened to oil and gas exploration.

Young says the president’s actions are illegal, because only Congress can declare a wilderness area. He also referred to the “no more” clause in ANILCA, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980.

“This is an example of what I think of the whole Department of Interior. Between the EPA and Department of Interior, they’re trying to cripple this nation and cripple my state,” Young said.

The president’s defenders say he’s not breaking the law because he’s only asking Congress to declare the new wilderness areas. Congresswoman Betty McCollum, a Minnesota Democrat, stood to oppose Young’s amendment on the House floor.

“ I understand there’s differences of opinion how to manage this land, and that legislation designated in this area as wilderness — may not get very far in this Congress, but I want to commend the president for his leadership on this issue and I would hope that the legislative process could play out,” McCollum said.

The House is expected to vote on the full bill this week. The Fish and Wildlife Service says it’s concerned about Young’s amendment, but they haven’t done a thorough review. The service has repeatedly acknowledged it can’t fully carry out its new comprehensive plan anyway, unless Congress passes a bill declaring the new wilderness areas.

The planning document itself says it would take an act of Congress to implement. And the Arctic Refuge manager has said he’s still treating the areas in question as they’ve been treated since 1988, under a management regime called “minimal management.” The differences between that and actual wilderness management are administrative and subtle.

 

Every summer, a team of federal exterminators set up shop in the southwest corner of the state. Their job is to root out non-native animals that might disturb the Alaska Maritime Wildlife Refuge.

In addition to the usual rats and foxes, the refuge managers decided to target a new pest this season.

It’s no mystery how caribou wound up on Adak Island. They were imported in the late 1950s so Navy personnel would have something to hunt.

Nowadays, the Navy is gone and the island is a prime spot for big game hunters. But not enough of them, says Steve Ebbert.

He’s a wildlife biologist for the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. As he stands on the deck of their research vessel, sailing less than a half mile from the rocky shores of Adak, Ebbert says the caribou herd is now seven times its former size. And it’s starting to spread.

Ebbert points to a gently sloping beach just across the way on Kagalaska Island.

It’s not clear when the caribou started to swim across the channel to Kagalaska. But Ebbert thinks he knows why. The island is still covered in thick, white lichen — the same plant that used to grow naturally on Adak.

If the caribou are willing to travel for food, Ebbert says they probably won’t stop at Kagalaska when there even more islands to graze on nearby — all federally protected, refuge land.

After an environmental assessment, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decided the best way to prevent that outcome was to organize a hunt on Kagalaska.

The team bagged nine male caribou. But Sen. Lisa Murkowski isn’t impressed with their haul.

The hunt cost $58,000, plus another $13,000 to butcher and salvage the meat. That part was specifically requested by Murkowski and other officials. But going forward, the senator wants to see a different approach.

The Senate Appropriations committee recently (on June 18) approved a new rule that would keep the refuge from using federal money to sponsor more caribou hunts at Kagalaska.

A similar ban would apply to two other islands, where wild cows have escaped from old ranches. Murkowski and her colleagues also suggest a $2 million cut in funding the Fish and Wildlife Service but a million-dollar bump for the refuge system’s budget. The entire package has been sent to the full Senate for consideration.

Elaine Smiloff has lived and hunted on Adak Island for years. She had her own doubts about trying to control the spread of caribou.

But Smiloff also says that this year, it got harder for local hunters to track down caribou in their own backyard. Without a boat — which most residents don’t have — their options seemed to shrink.

Usually, Kagalaska wouldn’t be one of them.

That’s one reason why Smiloff jumped at the chance to help federal hunters move huge slabs of meat off that island. More than a half-ton was distributed to local families.

Smiloff would be glad to help get more. But wildlife managers haven’t decided if they’ll try to conduct another hunt before the Senate takes action on the proposal to shut it down.

For now, the Alaska Maritime refuge is more focused on finding out if the first big control effort was a success.

They may have a chance to investigate in August, when refuge staff are scheduled to sail past Kagalaska aboard their research vessel.

Eventually, Steve Ebbert says he wants to find a method for tracking the number of caribou that reach the island. First, he’d have to mark them — with paintballs, or by branding.

But then again:

“You’re capturing the animals, drugging the animals in the case of branding, and marking them permanently — and just releasing them? It doesn’t seem as efficient. If you can shoot them with a dart, you can shoot them with a rifle,” Ebbert says.

The biologist says he wouldn’t call that hunting — more like counting. By elimination.

For the last week and a half, the military has been conducting Northern Edge, the largest training exercise regularly held in Alaska.

About 6,000 troops from all four branches of the military are in Anchorage and the Gulf of Alaska. Lt. Col. Tim Bobinski says the price tag, around $11 million, goes towards getting soldiers experience with vital equipment in unfamiliar terrain.

“It sounds like a lot of people and a lot of assets to make that effort, but it’s truly worthwhile. And in a lot of ways it’s a bargain to make sure we’re prepared for anything we’re called upon to do,” Bobinski says.

The exercise normally happens every two years, but was canceled in 2013 due to budget sequestration. That time gap is part of the reason critics say communication from the military has been inadequate, leading to protests in several Southcentral communities last month.

Conservation biologist Rick Steiner says he started requesting information about the exercise in April, but didn’t get it until going through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“The miscommunication on Northern Edge has been extraordinary. And it’s caused a lot of concerns, unnecessary and some necessary, in coastal communities. So I think things just slip through the cracks. But my first query was to the Navy and they were not extremely forthcoming with exactly what was planned–which we finally determined through the FOIA process,” Steiner says.

Part of the controversy stemmed from confusion over environmental documents from 2011, which allow the Navy to use large amounts of ordinance in the Gulf of Alaska. After the protests, Capt. Anastasia Wasem says officials visited Homer, Kodiak and Cordova to explain the actual exercises would involve only a small amount of the munitions allowed.

“I think most people, once they heard what we were actually doing in Northern Edge verses what it stated was allowable in the EIS I think it did lessen their concerns a lot, it definitely did help, and especially having someone there in person,” Wasem says.

Wasem says community dialogues will begin earlier for Northern Edge 2017.