A large number of unfilled seats on councils that manage Alaska’s subsistence hunting and fishing has left advocates worried their voices won’t be heard and confused about the process of filling those seats.
The decisions for opening and closing hunting grounds and setting harvest limits are decided by more than 100 Alaskans who sit on 10 regional advisory councils (RAC) that inform the Federal Subsistence Board.
“They’re the ones that are on the ground and making these observations based upon a lifetime of experience,” said Jim Fall, who until recently was the state’s head of subsistence research.
He retired from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game after 39 years of service. And he’s been to a lot of these council meetings, where wide-ranging groups from across regions have frank and full discussions about the state of wildlife populations, fish stocks, and observations about what’s happening in their communities.
“The broader representation you have at a regional council, the better those ideas are,” Fall said.
But this year there will be fewer voices at the table: More than half of advisory council seats are unfilled.
It’s not due to lack of interest. The federal Office of Subsistence Management said it dutifully forwarded names last fall to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.
“We still have 35 open seats on all RACs, which means that 56% of 2020 open seats were not filled,” wrote Office of Subsistence Management Acting Policy Coordinator Katya Wessels in a recent briefing to the Federal Subsistence Board. “Some RACs now have as many as eight open seats.”
Many of those whose appointments are stalled are long-serving members.
Until the end of last year, Don Hernandez chaired the Southeast RAC. His reappointment was inexplicably held up and he’s gotten no explanation.
“Either they’re not telling us or they don’t know,” Hernandez said from his home in Point Baker on the northern tip of Prince of Wales Island. “So we don’t even know who to call.”
That leaves the Southeast’s 13-seat regional advisory council with five members.
“That’s just not a real good representation for all of the different issues that we have here in Southeast Alaska,” he said. “So it’s going to be really tough to get anything done at this next meeting, I’m afraid.”
It’s not just Southeast that’s struggling to fill seats. The Western Interior council oversees a chunk of landlocked territory stretching from Aniak on the Kuskokwim River to the Brooks Range.
“It’s a huge area, it’s like multiple states,” said Jack Reakoff, who lives in remote Wiseman, a former mining camp halfway between Fairbanks and Prudhoe Bay. He’s been on the board since its inception in 1993. But not anymore: His reappointment was inexplicably held up on the eve of the spring meeting later this month.
“They’re going to be completely overwhelmed for this meeting,” he said.
It’s not clear who or what is responsible for the breakdown in appointments.
A Trump administration executive order signed in mid-2019 did direct federal agencies to reduce or eliminate advisory boards considered obsolete, duplicative or expensive. And it’s clear the Trump administration’s Interior Secretary chose not to fill 35 RAC seats late last year. But the recent change in presidential administrations has added yet another layer of uncertainty, leaving people in federal agencies scrambling for answers.
The Interior Department headquarters in Washington D.C. declined to comment.
The Office of Subsistence Management is soliciting nominations now, but it’s a year-long process. Applicants who file by the February 15 deadline likely won’t be seated until 2022.
There has long been tension between rural subsistence hunters and the state over their priority use rights. Some of those conflicts have recently wound up in court.
Reakoff said there are political actors who’ve long been hostile to subsistence rights and would cheer dismantled regional advisory councils.
“Rural subsistence priorities have never been palatable to the state of Alaska,” Reakoff said.
Rick Green, an assistant in the Alaska Department of Fish & Game Commissioner’s Office, said the state is neutral on the stalled nomination process.
“That is their process to carry out,” Green wrote in a statement to CoastAlaska. “As for their public meetings, yes, there is value to state managers as they bring parties interested in conservation of our resources together for public comments and suggestions and any group that brings the public together for the shared goal of conservation of our trust properties is useful.”
Subsistence priorities are enshrined by ANILCA, landmark legislation signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1980 that expanded national parks and monuments in Alaska, but also guaranteed Alaskans had some decision-making authority over subsistence rights on federal lands.
“The regional advisory councils are kind of the linchpin of the whole system,” Hernandez said. “Having good functioning, well-qualified advisory councils is the key to make the whole subsistence system work in Alaska.”
Whether the lack of appointments is due to bureaucratic inefficiency or political wrangling, the outcome will be the same: Less input on federal wildlife management decisions by the people whose lifestyle and livelihood depend on them.
Jacob Resneck is CoastAlaska's regional news director in Juneau.
