As the National Park Service approaches 100 years of service it is seeking input from the public on ways it can protect special places and how it can better engage and educate park uses.
To this end the Park Service held a two-hour public discussion at Centennial Hall Tuesday afternoon. About a half dozen Juneau residents attended the question and answer.
National Park Service Alaska Regional Director Sue Masica and John Quinley of Park Service Public Relations came to Juneau for the event.
Tina Brown, executive director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, said she looks to the National Park Service to protect federal lands from state Board of Game interests.
“We have taken some actions in respect to Board of Game,” Masica said. “Not over play our hand, but not underplay our hand.”
Masica said the Park Service has to pick its battles. It took up the issue of extending a Denali National Park wolf trapping and hunting buffer zone with the Board of Game and instead lost the buffer completely, she said.
“We know we’re going to have policy differences and you have to duke those out,” Masica said. “But at the same time maintain a good effective working relationship. We’ll continue to do that as well. Not let places were we have differences stand in the way.”
Attendees recommended the park service increase its entrance fees and run the parks more like a business model. They also recommended a trail and visitors center out at Indian Point.
Juneau Resident and owner of Weather Permitting whale-watching tours Greg Brown recommended the Park Service talk about Alaska wildlife in respect to its value to wildlife viewers, not just its value to hunters or trappers.
Wildlife viewing is “growing at incredible rates,” Brown said, in total around $200 million a year in the state. Depending on the species and location, an animal can have a viewing value of over $100,000, he said.
“If you go out and shoot it, it’s gone,” Brown said.
He offered the Park Service the idea of allowing school-aged youth the option to “adopt” a bear or wolf.
A recent survey counted the lowest number of wolves in Denali National Park in a quarter century.
The Park Service has found in previous discussions in Anchorage, Fairbanks and other larger Alaska cities that “climate change, access to parks, predator control, subsistence, a lack of diversity among our employees and visitors and using technology to a greater advantage are important to Alaskans.”
Trail work is a great way to get young people to care about the Park Service for the rest of their life, National Parks Masica said.
The service is also soliciting ideas for bringing national parks into the classroom through social media.
• Contact reporter Russell Stigall at 523-2276 or at russell.stigall@juneauempire.com.
Comments (14)
Add commentHow about allowing normal
How about allowing normal people to use the parks. Want to go to Glacier Bay? Better book passage on a cruise ship other wise it will be a huge hassle. Even simple things like a group of guys who biked/packrafted from Yakutat to Gustavus, were given a ticket when they reached Gustavus, and I dont remember what it was for, but it was something silly like not having a permit to put a boat in the park. Everyone I know who has had any interaction with the Park Service walked away feeling like they had just been interrogated by the SS and had barely missed the gas chamber...
These federal employees
These federal employees are useless meeting-attenders; over 40% of their salaries is borrowed and nothing is produced yet they all consume gasoline, jet fuel, paper products, etc. exactly as if they were producing something of value. They travel by jet to meetings so they can accumulate airline miles for personal use yet no doubt almost all of them believe in global warming climate change (now postponed until next year in Alaska apparently). They worry about your carbon footprint but they are above all that for their own consumption and so-called footprint. It's almost poetic.
Agree with KP
Park Service law enforcement has been some of the most heavy-handed and arrogant that I've dealt with.
People pay huge amounts of money to come to Alaska. Often it's a trip of a lifetime. Seeing a wolf in Denali is often the pinnacle of that experience. The Board of Game's decision has taken that experience away from thousands of visitors, who spend a great deal of money here.
Sean Parnell appoints the members of the BOG. He has consistently appointed members who represent the sport hunting and trapping industries, as did Palin before him, and Murkowski before that. These appointees don't care about visitor experiences, unless it involves shooting a moose. Time to add some balance to the BOG.
Latitude
Your bias is showing. There is no sport trapping, all trapping is subsistence. And since the law requires all game to be utilized there is no real, honest difference between a bear or moose harvested for subsistence and for something you would call sport; same rifle, same frying pan.
Federal law has divided Alaskans by this arbitrary distinction. For instance, someone who lives on Shelter Island cannot qualify for subsistence but someone nearby on Colt Island does qualify, as does someone who lives in an apartment over a gift shop in Sitka while someone who lives in an apartment over a gift shop in Ketchikan does not.
The only way to manage wildlife is for sustainability exactly as required by the Alaska Constitution. Leave it to the federal government to try to screw it up.
If most people had they're
If most people had they're way without someone looking out for the overall picture, they would have destroyed glacier bay. I'd rather lock an area down then take a chance and destroying something that can never come back.
Nothing needs to be run like a business. Businesses only concern is profit. Everything goes by the wayside when that mentality is used. For example American jobs and environmental impact.
Bloated bureaucracy with
Bloated bureaucracy with nothing to do but go around and talk about the obvious. Maybe they wouldn't have to raise fees if some people worked for a living? The states should manage their own land.
A slice of our thoughts.
6 people showed huh.
"Latitude"
glacierdogs....
I'm not sure what part of Alaska you actually inhabit but you might want to join the rest of us here in reality.
There is, indeed, quite a large segment of trapping known as "recreational trapping." In fact, if you check with F&G you will find it far outnumbers the subsistence trapping population. A good example is Coke Wallace of Healy. He derives most of his income guiding hunts (he seems to have to kill our wildlife in one way or another) but also traps occasionally. His last effort in spring of this year resulted in the death of the only reproducing female wolf in the Denali Nat. Park Grant Creek Pack. Because of that loss, the pack has broken up which means the most widely-viewed pack by visitors is now no longer together. At least one group, Wolfwatchers, has cancelled its plans to visit the park with an estimated loss of $170,000 in revenue to Alaska. That's a mighty expensive wolf.
Also contrary to your claim of total utilization, Alaska trapping regs do not require a trapper check his set at any particular interval. Because Wallace waited at least a week to check his traps, the wolf died and was scavenged by a wolverine rendering the pelt (which was probably blown anyway, this being the end of the season) useless. In other words, the wolf was completely wasted in economic terms. This is not the first time Wallace has done something like this.
The Alaska Trappers Assoc. has been running radio ads praising themselves for promoting trapping, both subsistence and recreational. The ADF&G uses the term "recreational trapping" quite often. So your claim it is all subsistence is quite wrong.
I have spoken to two trappers who say with the cost of gasoline and attendant equipment, running a trapline as a main source of income is very hard to do anymore.
If you go to: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/despite-upswing-prices-trapping-de... you will find even Randy Zarnke, treasurer of the ATA and a longtime trapper himself, referring directly to recreational trapping, explaining it as a sideline rather than a main source of income. The article also explores why subsistence trapping is declining in Alaska.
How
About returning to pre ANILCA staffing levels?
Exclusive Uses
The National Parks in Alaska already prohibit hunting and trapping. Millions of acres dedicated to nothing but non-consumptive uses. Oh, but that's not enough! Those users need buffer zones and ever-increasing limitations on the other user groups. On the other hand, there are no lands in Alaska dedicated to consumptive uses. In the name of equity for all user groups, maybe there should be federal lands set aside where if you are not going to hunt or trap, you are prohibited from access! Why should non-consumptive users be given exclusive rights to federal lands that belong to all of us?
The Park Service enforcement posture in Alaska is shameful. If the Park Service wanted to make a real improvement, they would stop sending Park Rangers to Quantico for enforcement training and eliminate the issuance of side arms (they should only have rifles to protect visitors from marauding wildlife). If someone is found in minor violation of some park rule, like not having a permit, the first goal should be to issue a warning to correct and reach compliance without using guns or citations. Only in severe cases, like illegally poaching a wild game animal, should the Park Service resort to criminal sanctions. Roughing up and arresting a 70- year old man for refusing to stop his boat in the middle of the Yukon River should be cause for immediate termination!
dobie
I don't know what your point is but your bias is also showing. If someone who traps occasionally according to the information you have can only be a sport trapper then is a hunter who sometimes shops in grocery stores a sport hunter? If so then why are urban areas like the Kenai Peninsula, Sitka, Bethel, etc. considered completely subsistence by the federal government? Does anyone in Alaska meet your test for subsistence qualification?
Again, my point is that the distinctions between subsistence and sport are arbitrary ones devised by a government that is 3,000 miles away, and intended to divide and screw over Alaskans. My second point is that the only way to manage wildlife is for sustainability; if the wolf population in an area is too low to meet goals reached by the department and the board then the board is very likely to approve remedial actions recommended by the department. Moreover, if this Wolfwatchers is an eponymous outfit that would come here to tell Alaskans how to live then I applaud anything anyone did that makes them stay home; they can take their $170,000 and do something inventive with it. Let them manage wolves in their own cities.
Glacier You said in your last
Glacier
You said in your last post the people in power would restrict harvesting of animals with low numbers. That's what the extended buff zone was implemented for. Soon as it was take away the fate of that wolf pack was hit hard with its only reproducing female being trapped. Not sure why your against that buffer when it's sole purpose was in fact for the reasoning you just stated..
glacierdogs' comments
So you choose to ignore the usage of the term "recreational trapping" by Randy Zarnke, a longtime trapper and treasurer of the ATA? And you choose to ignore its use by ADF&G?
Interesting.
You also seem to choose to ignore the fact that as a NATIONAL park Denali belongs to all Americans, whether they live in Alaska or Hoboken or Miami or Los Angeles. Those members of the Wolfwatchers, in this instance, have just as much say in the matters of the park as do you.
But we digress. For if you want to insist on trapping being primarily a subsistence issue then what about the loss of revenue to Alaskans operating tourism-dependent businesses? As the article states, hundreds of thousands of tourism dollars are being lost to small business operators within the state due to a few trappers. Is this sound economics? And as to your misplaced statement that these outsiders should just mind their own business (a national park IS their business) what of the petition submitted in 2010 by local residents in the Healy area to continue the buffer zone? There were 500 signatures on it. Contrast this to the proposal put forth by 5 (that's a factor of 1/100th) trappers to end the buffer zone. Who did the Board of Game favor? That 1/100th, the recreational trappers. The result? A very significant loss of earnings to local businesses as a few trappers get to kill more wildlife.
In all respects...economic, residents' rights, majority rule..your arguments fail, glacier. Demonstrably and logically, you have no solid grounds on which to base your reasoning. But....as someone arguing to support trapping no matter what the cost, no matter the brutality, no matter the ethics...oddly there your arguments find life. Maybe you should just admit to an extremist bias in favor of trapping for it is clear to anyone that is your hidden agenda.
And the hide wasnt even
And the hide wasnt even salvageable. Sad all the way around.