Author Archives: McNeilBears

(02/08/07)

According to the Department of Fish and Game, the McNeil River bears range throughout the region, using both the Katmai National Preserve to the west and areas north of the sanctuary, both of which allow hunting. AP file photo

<img border=”0″ alt=”According to the Department of Fish and Game, the McNeil River bears range throughout the region, using both the Katmai National Preserve to the west and areas north of the sanctuary, both of which allow hunting.” src=”9/mcneilbears.jpg” width=”472″ height=”238″>

By Mary Pemberton, Associated Press

ANCHORAGE – For decades, Larry Aumiller led small groups of people into the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary to watch as the largest congregation of brown bears in the world feast on salmon in the summer.

The former sanctuary manager said he emotionally couldn’t do it any longer after a decision by the Alaska Board of Game increased opportunities to hunt the bears. Aumiller moved to Montana.

“To be honest, it was so heartbreaking I just couldn’t be around it,” Aumiller said.

If nothing changes, state lands used by the bears near the 114,400-acre sanctuary in southwest Alaska will be open to hunting as of July 1, clearing the way for a fall hunt. Opponents say it’s not sporting to hunt the McNeil River bears, which are accustomed to humans and routinely come to within 10 or 15 feet of small groups of bear viewers allowed into the sanctuary each summer. Supporters say the bears are fair game when they wander outside the sanctuary. The game board, which is appointed by the governor to regulate hunting in Alaska, voted to open the state lands to brown bear hunting at the request of hunters.

McNeil, created by the state 40 years ago, is arguably the best place in the world to view brown bears. That’s because two things make McNeil exceptional; how close the bears will safely come to humans and how many there are at the sanctuary.

As many as 144 individual bears have been observed at McNeil River with as many as 72 bears observed at one time at the falls, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, a state agency separate from the game board. However, numbers have declined significantly since 1998, with 78 individual bears spotted at McNeil River in 2004 and 87 in 2005 well below the average of 104 going back to 1983.

The Department of Fish and Game says numbers now are dipping below the threshold where quality bear viewing may be affected.

Critics say if hunting increases it is just a matter of time before one of the recognizable bears the ones that have been named by staff members over the years is killed.

There’s Teddy. She is so tolerant of humans she will nurse her cubs just 10 feet from the sanctuary’s viewing platform next to the falls.

“A bear like Teddy is invaluable,” Aumiller said. “She is so good, so tolerant. In a way, she’s worth 10 other bears.”

The seven-member game board is being asked to consider 10 proposals to either reverse its decision or reduce hunting pressure on the bears when they wander outside the sanctuary 250 miles southwest of Anchorage. The board is expected to take up the proposals in March. Game Board Chairman Ron Somerville can’t speak for other board members, but offered some of his views on the sanctuary bears.

While he can understand people getting emotional over the issue, the sanctuary was created to protect bear viewing, not individual bears, he said.

“It was never designed to protect the bears wherever they wandered,” said Somerville, a retired wildlife biologist and administrator with the Department of Fish and Game. Besides, the state constitution requires that game be managed for the maximum benefit of Alaskans, he said. If the McNeil River sanctuary bears were allowed to undermine that, it would be inexcusable, he said.

The sanctuary was created four decades ago to protect bear viewing at the falls. In 1993, the McNeil River State Game Refuge was established to the north, providing the bears with another buffer of protection. To the south is Katmai National Park, where no hunting is allowed.

According to the Department of Fish and Game, the McNeil River bears range throughout the region, using both the Katmai National Preserve to the west and areas north of the sanctuary, both of which allow hunting.

Brown bear harvests in the area have been well above average since 1998. From July 2002-June 2004, 111 bears were killed, about twice the two-year harvest average since the sanctuary was created, according to Fish and Game.

Alaska has an estimated 35,000-45,000 brown bears.

The Alaska Professional Hunters Association Inc. proposes keeping the 95,000 acres of state land closed because of the bad publicity that could result by opening them, said executive director Bobby Fithian. As it is, the sanctuary bears get great publicity worldwide, he said.

“From our point of view, the allocation or opportunity to harvest a minimum number of bears is not worth the negative feedback,” Fithian said.

Another proposal by bear viewing guide Dave Bachrach in Homer would keep the state lands closed and restrict the game board from considering reopening them for at least 10 years.

“Alaska has plenty of places where brown bears can be hunted without involving lands surrounding the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary,” his proposal says.

Bachrach said when he flies he can see bear trails leading from the sanctuary to the state land along the coast. It is where some of the bears den for the winter.

“Those bears are world famous. Their numbers appear to be in decline,” Bachrach said. “Until they know why, how can we open the back door and allow hunters in to kill some more?”.

Rod Arno, executive director of the Alaska Outdoor Council, said his group favors the board’s decision to open the lands to brown bear hunting.

“As long as these are state lands and a harvest of surplus of brown bears in the area, the Alaska Outdoor Council would support a regulated harvest of brown bears,” he said. But Arno said there is more to it than that. There are other reasons besides increased hunting for why there are fewer bears at McNeil. The bears are going to two other nearby creeks where there are more salmon and more bears have moved into the preserve, he said.

Arno disputes the theory that the McNeil River bears are so used to humans it would be unsporting to hunt them. Once the bears leave the falls and venture outside the sanctuary, they are as wily as other bears, he said. “Having guided there personally, I know that those bears that frequent the McNeil Falls, once they are away from that site they are just as leery as any bear that I have guided,” he said.

No so, said Aumiller.”We are exposing those bears to a danger that they have not been allowed to learn exists,” he said. “I think that is wrong.”

(02/02/07)

Big Appointees reject Palin’s advice

Published: February 2, 2007
Two controversial holdover appointees from the Murkowski administration have ignored Gov. Sarah Palin’s advice that they step down. They should listen to her advice. She’s right and they are wrong.

University of Alaska Regent Jim Hayes is under federal indictment for theft and money laundering. He is accused of diverting federal grant funds for personal use. The governor told Mr. Hayes she thought he should resign from the Board of Regents, for the good of the university. He declined.

And the governor also asked Ron Somerville, controversial chair of the state Game Board, to resign from the board, or at least to step aside as chair. Gov. Palin tried twice to convince Mr. Somerville to resign, according to her press secretary, and twice Mr. Somerville said no. She asked him to step down as chair. He said no.

Mr. Somerville last October had the extremely poor judgment to make hurtful and insensitive comments about Natives and beer while chairing a board meeting. He later said he didn’t mean to offend anyone, and was merely trying to break the tension at the meeting.

Mr. Somerville’s comments showed he lacks the judgment to serve on or chair the Game Board. Mr. Hayes’ 92-count indictment shows he lacks the judgment and the public’s confidence to serve on the university Board of Regents. The governor’s advice that they step down shows she has better judgment than both of them. Too bad they declined.

BOTTOM LINE: We hope the governor perseveres.

— Matt Zencey

http://www.adn.com/opinion/view/story/8608983p-8501554c.html

(11/09/06)
The editorial first appeared in the Anchorage Daily News:

Why is Ron Somerville still on the Alaska Board of Game? Yes, he has apologized for his offensive comment at the expense of Alaska Natives – he said it was meant as a joke. But no one is laughing. And joke or not, the insulting comment will forever reinforce the fact that Mr. Somerville is a divisive personality in state game management. No way he can do his job as state Game Board chairman under that cloud.
Mr. Somerville blurted it out at a Game Board meeting last month. After a third Copper River-area Native scheduled to testify before the board failed to appear during the public comment period, the board chairman said: “There must have been a run on free beer or something.”
Mr. Somerville made it even worse when he called the next person to testify. He greeted her arrival by wondering aloud why she wasn’t missing like the others. “Don’t like beer, Donna?” he asked the Copper Center resident, who had come to speak on proposed subsistence hunting regulations.

Alcoholism among Alaska Natives is no joke, and anyone who treats it like it is has no place in government.
If the comment were out of character – if it were just a botched attempt to “break the tension” during a long board meeting, as Mr. Somerville said – a sincere apology might be enough.
But Mr. Somerville doesn’t seem to fully comprehend why people are offended. His apology was conditional: “If I offended somebody …” And even at that, he made it sound like the apology wasn’t really needed: “I don’t think I have to, to be honest with you, but if that’s what happened and someone took it wrong …”

This isn’t the first time Mr. Somerville’s disrespect toward Natives has been on display. Mr. Somerville is a hard-core advocate for urban sportsmen in Alaska’s long-running debate over subsistence hunting and fishing rights. Natives, whose ancestors have inhabited Alaska for centuries, see subsistence as the keystone of their culture and have embraced the rural subsistence priority as a critical protection. Mr. Somerville sees the priority as undeserved special treatment that discriminates against urban hunters.

In 1982, he led a failed ballot measure to repeal the state’s rural subsistence priority. He appealed to the same vein of resentment among urban hunters when he ran for governor in 1986, claiming he alone had the courage to bring up “racially sensitive issues others won’t touch.” Natives were just another “special-interest group,” he said. Mr. Somerville also said that letting Natives set up Lower 48-style tribal governments would lead to a “South African style of apartheid.”
When critics of his 2003 appointment to the Game Board noted his long record of opposing rural subsistence, Mr. Somerville made himself out to be a victim of racial politics.
Truth is, he is a victim of his own racial insensitivity.

Ron Somerville is a disruptive figure who didn’t belong on the Board of Game when Gov. Frank Murkowski appointed him. And now, in thinking that beer and Natives are material for a joke – and offering a less than full apology – he has irreversibly compromised his standing to help decide statewide game management policy.
He should resign.

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/110906/opi_20061109001.shtml

(07/18/06)
FISHING: Brown bears hunt for salmon all day on multi-agency webcam.

By KATIE PESZNECKER
Anchorage Daily News
Published: July 18, 2006
Last Modified: July 18, 2006 at 09:23 AM
Smile, bears: You’re live on camera. The National Geographic Society has turned a webcam on Alaska’s McNeil River Falls, where nearly 50 salmon-grubbing brown bears gather at a time between late June and early September.

The 200-square-mile McNeil River State Game Sanctuary protects the world’s largest concentration of brown bears, but it’s a sight few can enjoy each year because access to bruin-viewing at the sanctuary is limited and decided by lottery.

Now, the so-called BearCam is available to anyone with a computer and the latest version of the free RealPlayer plugin. Showtime is 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily.

From 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., an interpreter at Homer’s Pratt Museum narrates and controls the solar-powered BearCam, which is hidden in a fake boulder.

Other times, it cycles through preset positions, showing the bears as they lumber over river rocks and trudge through rushing white water. Their heads drop low, eyes scanning the churning river for salmon as hopeful gulls swoop overhead.

National Geographic hosts the footage but the webcam’s creation came from a team of agencies, including the Pratt Musuem, Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Alaska Wildlife Alliance, Friends of McNeil River, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, the Alaska Conservation Foundation and the Giles and Elise G. Mead Foundation.

ADN Article(this link may expire)

(03/29/05)
COMPASS: Points of view from the community

By LARRY AUMILLER
Published: March 29th, 2005
Last Modified: March 29th, 2005 at 12:48 AM
Remember the bear baiting initiative a few months ago? Opponents of the initiative told us that we should trust the Board of Game process to represent all users of wildlife. The board just met in Anchorage and on a variety of issues failed to represent any users but “hard-core” hunters.

Let’s use the proposals dealing with McNeil River, for example. There were four proposals either to continue to protect or to provide more protection for bears using McNeil River. While the board delayed opening brown bear hunting on two proposals to avoid controversy, it made it clear that it favored more hunting of viewable bears and voted down two proposals to increase protection of these bears.

All but two of the board members dismissed and even derided overwhelming public testimony. Over 7,500 letters favored the continuation of protection for McNeil River bears. Less than 15 letters favored more trophy hunting, and over 85 percent of the oral testimony favored protection of these famous bears. Organized groups, businesses, Fish and Game advisory committees and community leaders joined the professional biologists at the Department of Fish and Game in favoring status quo protection of bears in this unique area. Their reasons for supporting protection were both ethical and practical: between $5 million and $7 million is made by Kenai and Kodiak businesses who guide people for the express purpose of viewing bears. In addition, a recent Dittman poll revealed that 88 percent of respondents in Alaska favored the status quo or more protection for bears in the McNeil/Katmai ecosystem.

Despite what is clearly the public will, the majority of the board made it clear that it would open trophy bear hunting on state land between McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Katmai Park and will likely open bear hunting in McNeil River State Game Refuge in 2007. The public testimony and letters didn’t even get a polite mention in board deliberations. Wildlife belongs to all Alaskans. The recent board actions represented only trophy hunters without consideration for any other type of use. Their inability to represent the public is precisely what is broken and needs to be fixed.

McNeil River State Game Sanctuary is home to the world’s largest concentration of brown bears. But the number of bears using the sanctuary has dropped in recent years. There is evidence that low returns of chum salmon and increasing harvest of bears in surrounding areas already open to bear hunting are contributing to the decline. Trophy hunters stand to gain only two to four bears per year in these soon-to-be-opened areas (out of a current statewide average of well over 1,000 bears). Let’s be clear about one issue: Bear viewing and hunting can and do coexist, but when they overlap, both are compromised. No ethical hunter wants to shoot a bear with no natural wariness, and viewers can’t view a bear after a successful hunter has visited because the bear is … well, dead. Worse yet, the very bears most valuable for viewing are the least wary ones, those most likely to be taken by hunters. There is one, only one ecosystem the state is involved in managing where bear viewing has priority. That is the McNeil/Katmai ecosystem.

If Alaskans are able to elect politicians who represent their needs and their businesses, perhaps we can get the Board of Wildlife we deserve by 2007. Ask your legislators and the governor to revamp the board to include the interests of all wildlife users. For a more permanent fix for McNeil River bears, ask your politicians to legislatively close bear hunting in the lands adjacent to the sanctuary or enlarge the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary to include the refuge and the state lands between the sanctuary and Katmai National Park. The last resort for a permanent fix is to trade the best bear viewing site in the world to Katmai National Park, where the bears can make the living they deserve and Alaskans can provide opportunities for the world to view them.

Larry Aumiller has been an employee of the Department of Fish and Game for 33 years, the last 29 at McNeil River. He wrote this piece as an individual, not as a spokesman for the department.

ADN Article (this link may expire)

(10/15/05)
Anchorage Daily News, Published: October 15, 2005

McNeil bears need governor’s support

Larry Aumiller

By LARRY AUMILLER

I recently returned from the world’s greatest summer job at one of the world’s premiere wildlife viewing sites. For the last three decades I’ve been unbelievably fortunate to work at McNeil River State Game Sanctuary. I know it’s extraordinary because of my own travels around the world and because thousands of visitors have told me that experiencing the bears of McNeil River was one of the absolute best outdoor experiences they have ever had. But what makes McNeil most special is the fact that it supported the world’s largest seasonal concentration of brown bears. The world’s largest. I’ve seen 72 bears at once!
The state agrees it’s special. There are only three state game sanctuaries, the highest level of protection, in all of Alaska.

But since 1999, bear numbers have fallen to less than half of what they were at the peak. Possible causes include continued low salmon runs into McNeil River and increased bear hunting in adjacent areas.
The salmon issue is currently being addressed by two research projects. But rather than adding protections for the diminishing McNeil River population, the Board of Game is seeking to increase the hunting of McNeil River bears on the sanctuary boundaries. Last spring, the Board of Game voted down all four proposals that would have maintained the status quo or added protection for McNeil River bears. This action was taken despite oral and written testimony that was hundreds to one in favor of protection. So I expect bear numbers to drop even further when seasons open immediately to the north and the south in 2007. The Board of Game has shown it cannot be influenced by the public on this issue.

The only way to reverse this is to ask the governor to intercede on behalf of McNeil bears. The governor has spoken repeatedly of the importance of developing our economy. Tourism, the second biggest money maker in the state, is dependent on tourists’ belief that there will be wildlife available to enjoy when they visit. If the state fails to protect its premiere wildlife viewing site it will become apparent to tourists that we are offering leftovers.

More than any other single person, I am responsible for habituating McNeil bears to humans. That means that through every single interaction for over 30 years, we have done everything humanly possible to get bears to accept our benign presence. And guess what? It has worked incredibly well. McNeil River bears allow us to see them fish, graze, mate, mother, play, fight and grow old. Because we have cultivated their confidence, we have more responsibility to protect them. The very bears that trust us the most are the most vulnerable to hunting, which will be occurring literally a one-hour walk away from McNeil Falls.

To purposely and knowingly kill these habituated animals for trophies is beyond any definition of reasonable ethics or fair chase and, I believe, is morally wrong. I’ve always envisioned that I’d be at McNeil River until I couldn’t physically do it anymore. But I can’t continue to remove the bears’ only protection — their natural wariness — knowing that even more of them will soon be exposed to hunting. Sadly I decided to give up the world’s greatest job and have retired.
We still have the equivalent of a 10-karat diamond in McNeil River but we once had the Hope diamond. The Department of Fish and Game has been an excellent manager all these years; it’s now the Board of Game that is currently threatening the reputation and integrity of the sanctuary. My parting wish is that the people of Alaska are able to convince the governor of the value of the bears and the viewing program and give them the recognition and protection they deserve.

Larry Aumiller retired in 2007 after 34 years with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, including 30 at McNeil River.

(03/11/05)
Panel says hunting could be allowed on nearby state lands by 2007.

By DOUG O’HARRA | Anchorage Daily News (Published: March 11, 2005)
The Alaska Board of Game decided Thursday that brown bears won’t be hunted during the next two years on state lands adjacent to the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, temporarily settling a grizzly-sized controversy that drew thousands of impassioned comments from across the country.

But the board took several steps that could allow people to kill the salmon-eating bruins on nearby lands as soon as 2007, including one decision that cocked a bear hunt and aimed it at the National Park Service.

As in: Do a land trade or the bear gets it.

The board approved a proposal by Naknek area hunters to open chunks of state land south and southeast of the sanctuary to bear hunting, effective July 1, 2007. Board member Ron Somerville of Juneau said it would be a way to push the federal agency to start talking again with the state about trading the land for certain Katmai National Park parcels closer to Naknek, a request important to hunters in that community.

Board member Ted Spraker of Soldotna challenged the many people who oppose bear hunting around the famous McNeil bear sanctuary to “put pressure on the Park Service” to approve the land trade.

The move surprised the Park Service and the state Department of Natural Resources — the two agencies that would negotiate such a trade.

The state has no active proposals to trade that land, and staff is already swamped with other issues, such as the natural gas pipeline corridor, said DNR spokeswoman Nancy Welch.

The Park Service has talked with the state about the land between Katmai park and the McNeil sanctuary for two decades, and would be willing to talk again, Park Service spokesman John Quinley said.

But the Game Board didn’t have to threaten a bear kill to get things rolling, he added.

“It’s an interesting action to come from the game management board, to apparently take a high level of interest in how land exchanges are pursued,” Quinley said. “We would have been willing to go back to the table with the state if the state had approached us and said, ‘Let’s see if we can make a deal.’ ”

The action came during seventh day of the board’s spring meeting, which continues through Sunday with discussions about predator control, changes in hunting regulations and a proposal to hold a moose hunt in Chugach State Park above the Anchorage Hillside.

The McNeil River sanctuary, located across Cook Inlet from Homer, next to Katmai National Park and Preserve, is one of the best places in the world to watch brown bears. Photographs of big brownies standing in swirling rapids as they snatch chum salmon have become icons for Alaska’s wildlife. Proposals that might have allowed people to hunt these bears on state land generated a huge controversy.

State biologists presented information that showed that the same brown bears wander all over that area, including areas now open to hunting in the Katmai preserve and the land the board said it may open to hunting.

On Thursday morning, the board decided to leave the state game refuge north of the sanctuary closed to brown bear hunting. But the panel asked the Department of Fish and Game to work up a proposal that would allow bear hunting there and bring it to the board in March 2007.

Both Somerville and Spraker said they wanted the new proposal to be part of an overview of state management and conservation of those bears, and the clash of philosophies that’s developed between bear viewing and bear harvest.

“There is no mutually exclusive conflict between viewing bears and hunting them — if you view them as a population,” Somerville said. Killing bears in a well-managed harvest is no “mortal sin.”

Sport hunting advocate and guide Rod Arno said the board’s move will give biologists time to show that the Katmai-McNeil bears remain healthy in number and can sustain a harvest on state land. “It’s not going to hurt a bit,” he said.

The board also rejected proposals to close or delay bear hunting in the Katmai preserve west of the sanctuary, saying conflicts between viewers and hunters could be tackled during the review in 2007.

Then the panel voted 5 to 2 to open state land south and southeast of the sanctuary to pressure the Park Service to trade.

Whether the board has the legal authority to participate in land trade negotiations was raised by board chairman Mike Fleagle, formerly of McGrath and now of Anchorage. And board member Ben Grussendorf of Sitka questioned whether the board was wise in appearing to endorse this particular trade.

Fleagle, a staunch supporter of hunting rights, also said that he thought the board should not be opening these areas to bear hunting.

“I’m fairly adamantly opposed to new closures,” he said. But “I think we’ve established a longtime closure here that is depended upon by people who enjoy the bears. … It’s going to anger a lot of people for very little benefit, in my opinion.”

Opponents of bear hunting openings in the area said they were relieved by the board’s decision to keep the refuge closed, and floored by the vote to open areas to the south.

“We’re happy that they didn’t open the refuge and the sanctuary to hunting, but we’re back to the same issue,” said Karen Deatherage, with the local office of Defenders of Wildlife. “Why are they trying to fix something that’s not broken?”

Wildlife activist Paul Joslin, a biologist for the conservation group Friends of McNeil River, said he’s upset the board continued to pursue the issue.

“The public voice has been very clear on this issue,” he said. “And now they’re trading bears’ lives to get the Park Service to do things.”

Daily News reporter Doug O’Harra can be reached at do’harra@adn.com.

For more on the Board of Game, visit its Web site.

(02/11/07)
Humans step onto bears’ turf as they nurse, play — and battle ferociously for food Those who’ve done it say bear viewing, on the rise in Alaska, just can’t be topped

Story by PAULA DOBBYN Photos by BOB HALLINEN Graphics by RON ENGSTROM Story by PAULA DOBBYN Photos by BOB HALLINEN
Longtime Alaskan Bud Rice has had ample face time with bears. But even the former Katmai backcountry ranger was awestruck by McNeil River, home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of brown bears.

A visit to the state bear sanctuary two summers ago etched such an impression into Rice’s psyche that the Eagle River resident vividly recalls details.

“This bear with no ears walked by us and my heart nearly stopped,” said Rice, a National Park Service environmental specialist.

A 29-year-old bear, nicknamed Earl, who had lost his ears in a fight ambled within a few feet of Rice and his wife, Lulie Williams, and stared them down with steely eyes and a snarl. They stared back at the half-ton hulk from a gravel pad nearby.
The couple then witnessed another massive male rip into a fellow boar in a bloody ruckus over who got the preferred fishing hole. The bear that started the paw-to-paw combat bore scars from earlier feuds, Rice said.
“He looked like Frankenstein. He had scars all over his body,” he said.

The bear vented his frustration by charging toward the humans watching from the gravel pad. Thankfully, former McNeil refuge manager Larry Aumiller stood his ground and chased the bear away, he said.

Like most others who visit the place, Rice described his four-day trip as the experience of a lifetime. “It represents the ultimate we have in bear viewing,” said wildlife biologist Paul Joslin, a board member with the nonprofit Friends of McNeil River.

Bear viewing has grown exponentially in Alaska in recent years, with new venues and guides to choose from every year. Permits for commercial bear viewing in Katmai and Lake Clark national parks have nearly doubled from 58 in 2000 to 106 last year, according to the National Park Service.

But McNeil, 250 air miles southwest of Anchorage on Cook Inlet’s western shore, still stands out as the premier spot for tourists, photographers, scientists and regular Alaskans to see bears.

Unlike in other locations, only 10 people a day are allowed at McNeil, a limit the state strictly enforces. The visitors are chosen by a computerized lottery each March.

Visitors who go in June typically see more bears at Mikfik Creek, close to McNeil River, because of a sockeye salmon run that peaks in the second to third week of the month. In July and August, when chum salmon flood into McNeil, the bears and the tourists migrate over there.

While declining, the number of brown bears that gather to fish for salmon at the McNeil sanctuary is still the largest anywhere, said Joe Meehan, manager of lands and refuges for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. In its heyday back in the late 1990s, as many as 60 or 70 bears could typically be viewed at the same time. Now, because of a weaker chum run and, possibly, increased hunting pressure in areas surrounding the sanctuary, 30 to 40 bears is more the norm, Meehan said.

That’s still a lot of bears, and because they’re habituated to humans, the animals generally just go about their business — in other words, fishing, cavorting and occasionally fighting.

The combination of small group size and the big gathering of bears makes for “a high-quality visitor experience,” as tourism industry people say.

Throw in the detailed, scientific commentary provided by state Fish and Game staffers who guide the tourists and most people say the McNeil experience just can’t be topped.

But McNeil is rustic and not for everyone. There are no catered meals, cozy beds or hot showers. It’s a flat-out camping experience. Most people stay for the maximum four days that Fish and Game allows. Expect to bring enough food for that time, sleep in your own tent and hang out by the campfire. If the weather is lousy, some might find it miserable.

There are plenty of other ways to view bears that don’t involve tent camping. Consider an all-day bus ride into Denali National Park or a half-day excursion to Wolverine Creek in Redoubt Bay Critical Habitat Area on the west side of Cook Inlet.

In Southcentral, most bear-viewing trips start in Anchorage or Homer. There are numerous companies and packages from which to choose.

For a high-end experience, many people stay at lodges inside Katmai National Park, home of the famed Brooks Falls. Brooks is about as world-class a bear-viewing spot as McNeil, although the numbers of bears is generally not as high, Meehan said.

If McNeil is where you want to go, apply for a Fish and Game permit early and often. The deadline is March 1. Some people try for years and never get picked. Others get lucky their first time.

If you don’t get selected the first time around, don’t get discouraged, state officials say. There are some tips for boosting one’s odds.

“I encourage people to keep applying and don’t pick the peak season,” Meehan said.

Peak season for McNeil River is the second and third week in July. The chances of getting picked for that period are slim, because that’s when most people want to go. Applicants get to pick two time periods, and Meehan suggests choosing peak and off-peak dates. The season runs June 7 to Aug. 25.

Because more bear-viewing opportunities have sprung up in recent years, the odds of getting a McNeil River permit are improving. Last year, 960 people applied and 195 got to go — 1 in 5 odds. In 1993, 225 people went out of a pool of 2,150 applicants, or about 1 in 10, according to Fish and Game statistics.

The cost of applying is $25 per person, and three people’s names can appear on each permit. The permits cost $150 for each Alaska resident and $350 for each non-Alaskan. The information is on Fish and Game’s Web site at www.wildlife.alaska.gov/mcneil/index.cfm.

At 128,000 acres, McNeil has been a state game sanctuary since 1967. Hunting is permanently barred in the sanctuary. Although closed to hunting now, the neighboring 120,000-acre McNeil River refuge could be opened to bear hunting if the state Board of Game approved.

Some McNeil watchers expect the issue to arise at the board’s next meeting in March.
“There’s a lot of worry about what might happen with this area,” Joslin said.

As far as the sanctuary is concerned, nothing is likely to change anytime soon, Meehan said. That includes the 10-person limit and the lottery system.

“The public has directed us to keep McNeil remote, to protect the bears, keep impacts down and maintain a high-quality viewing experience,” he said.

Daily News photographer Bob Hallinen can be reached at bhallinen@adn.com or 257-4331.

(03/07/05)
State land around the Douglas River was closed to hunting 20 years ago because a land trade with the National Park Service was under discussion. But the trade never took place, and now the state Board of Game, which begins its spring meeting today, is considering opening the area again.

By TOM KIZZIA | Anchorage Daily News (Published: March 4, 2005)

HOMER — Rod Arno remembers guiding bear hunters in the country south of Kamishak Bay. It was the only place in his career where he led a client to a coastal brown bear and then, the next day, returned with another client to shoot a second trophy feeding on the unsalvaged remains of the first one.

That state land around the Douglas River was closed to hunting 20 years ago because a land trade with the National Park Service was under discussion. But the trade never took place, and now the state Board of Game, which begins its spring meeting today, is considering opening the area again.

Arno, a hunting activist for the Alaska Outdoor Council, likes that idea. He’s even more enthusiastic about reopening a state game refuge farther north, where bear hunting was closed in 1995. One reason for that particular closure was an enhanced salmon run on the Paint River was expected to create a magnet for bears. But the salmon project flopped.

“That threat is null and void now,” says Arno. “So if there’s ever an area to be looked at again, this would be a dandy.”

It may sound routine to review closed areas where conditions have changed — especially with bear populations in the area looking healthy. But as the Game Board prepares to take a broad look at areas closed to hunting and trapping, a push by hunters for change in the two Kamishak Bay areas is drawing thousands of public comments. The reason: Sandwiched between those two areas is the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, Alaska’s world-famous bear viewing destination.

In 1995, the last time the McNeil River bears were a full-blown issue in front of the board, bear viewing advocates exerted tremendous national pressure to close the refuge to the north, arguing it would be unethical to hunt “tame” bears that had grown used to humans.

Today, the forces against hunting in the area appear even stronger. Bear viewing flights have become a big and fast-growing part of Alaska’s tourism industry, with brown bears between Katmai and Lake Clark national parks providing the biggest growth.

MCNEIL RIVER BEARS DECLINE
What’s more, the number of bears fishing at the crown jewel — McNeil River falls — has plunged in recent years, with declining runs of chum salmon suspected as the main culprit. At the same time, bear hunters in the 2003-’04 season killed twice as many bears in the national preserve west of McNeil as they had in previous seasons. If anything, bear viewing advocates say, it’s time for more hunting restrictions in the area, not fewer.

“Why are the hunters doing it?” asks Chris Day, who flies about 1,000 tourists every summer with her Homer-based bear viewing company, Emerald Air. “It just seems ludicrous to me. It’s like sticking a stick in a hornet’s nest.”

The answer, which should play out in public testimony before the board beginning today, has a lot to do with statewide concerns and trends. Hunting advocates say it’s time to take a stand at McNeil River on the philosophical position that the same bear population can be ogled by tourists in one valley and shot by hunters in the next.

“Even though it’s controversial, I find it a healthy debate as we look around the state,” says Ron Somerville, a hunting community leader finishing a two-year term on the Game Board.

An important factor may be political timing. Game Board members appointed by Gov. Frank Murkowski have been highly sympathetic to predator control and other hunting priorities. Putting that political clout to the test at the 10-day meeting is likely to mean plenty of lunging, ear-flattening and other dominance displays familiar to past visitors to the McNeil River falls.

The bear-viewing industry is getting to be big business and will press for more hunting closures elsewhere, predicted board member Ted Spraker, a former state game biologist. He said the state’s job is to keep bear populations healthy and often to separate viewers and hunters by seasons and areas. But it’s not to ensure that old, large male bears sought by hunters are available for viewing, he said.

“What the viewing folks want is to go to where animals are not hunted at all,” Spraker said.

Somerville said it’s becoming a clash of two philosophies.

“The sanctuary was never intended to encompass the entire range of the bears. That’s what it’s become for some people,” he said.

The McNeil River Sanctuary, where access is limited to state permit holders, is closed to hunting by law and will not be affected by the Game Board’s deliberations. But the bears range 50 miles or more from the sanctuary’s protection.

Arno sees another philosophical divide coming into play: between hunters who want to see healthy populations and viewers who become attached to individual bears.

“When I think of wildlife, I don’t think of them in my anthropomorphic views of how they relate to my world,” Arno said. “When I hunt, I think of relating to their world.”

A COMPLICATED PICTURE

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game doesn’t have information about how many hunters use the area now. Because the region is relatively accessible by plane from Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula, it attracts both nonresidents hunting with guides and residents getting dropped off.

The two areas in question historically produced only a few brown bear kills every hunting season — fewer than three on average around the Douglas River and three to six in the refuge around Paint River.

Not all hunters favor reopening the areas. Some, like guide Rob Hardy, say it would create unsporting opportunities. Hardy said the McNeil River effort is being pushed by “consumptive-use groups and the Second Amendment rights lobby” to regain some of the ground lost to hunting ever since the 1980 law created new national parks closed to hunters.

“For them, it’s a no-brainer because the bear population is healthy,” Hardy said.

Harvest numbers and other data — such as the age of bears shot and the number of males — suggest that the region’s overall bear population is stable, said Lem Butler, the state’s wildlife biologist in King Salmon.

Even so, there are problems that complicate the picture for hunting advocates.

On Katmai National Preserve west of McNeil River, where hunting is allowed, bear harvest numbers spiked from 19 to 34 in the last of the every-other-year hunting cycles.

State biologists attribute the rise to a longer season, more hunting pressure and unusually large salmon runs into the lake’s tributaries. Even though fewer bears are being shot elsewhere in the game management subunit, the sharp local increase is a concern, said Butler.

The Kukaklek Lake area in the preserve was also the scene last summer of suspected poaching, with seven bears found dead in the brushy tundra.

At the same time, the numbers of bears seen fishing at the McNeil River falls has plummeted. Only 78 recognizable bears stopped at the falls last year, the lowest number in 20 years and barely half the number from 1997, according to a new state report.

“It’s time to sound the alarm,” said Fish and Game’s official 2004 McNeil River field report, noting that bear numbers have fallen below the threshold called for under the state’s management plan.

Hunting outside the sanctuary may have contributed to the decline, along with poor chum runs, the state report said. The report said loss of wary bears would have little impact, but killing particular stars of the sanctuary, such as the cub-suckling “Teddy,” would be “catastrophic.”

BEAR WATCHERS TO TESTIFY
Public testimony, which begins Saturday in Anchorage, will include plenty of bear watchers. Karen Deatherage, the Defenders of Wildlife Alaska associate, said she has already turned in 6,000 written comments to the state. Opposition to expanded hunting has also been registered by several Fish and Game advisory committees and the Homer City Council.

Deatherage said a controversial idea like opening the McNeil River Game Refuge should come as a separate proposal from the public with advance notice, not as part of a general review of closed areas.

Fish and Game is taking a cautious approach. It is recommending that the board cut back October hunting in the Katmai Preserve, either with a shorter season or creation of a permit-only hunt. Elsewhere, the department supports the status quo, which would keep the state game refuge and other state-owned land in the area, including the inholding around Douglas River in Katmai National Park, closed to hunting.

Katmai National Park also supports shortening the state-managed hunting season on its preserve and keeping the other state areas closed to hunting. Park superintendent Joe Fowler said hunting in the small reopened areas would have a significant impact on “unrivaled” bear-viewing uses in the surrounding closed areas.

Reporter Tom Kizzia can be reached at tkizzia@adn.com or in Homer at 907-235-4244.

Testimony before Alaska Board of Game begins today

THE MEETING: The Alaska Board of Game will meet on Southcentral and Southwestern Alaska issues today through March 13 at the Coast International Inn, 3333 W. International Airport Road, Anchorage.
HOW TO TESTIFY: Public testimony will begin today, following staff reports and run through the weekend. You can sign up to testify beginning at 8 a.m. today. The deadline to sign up won’t be announced until this morning by board chairman Mike Fleagle. Call 1-800-764-8901 for updates.
THE AGENDA: The board will consider a wide array of hunting and trapping proposals affecting the region. In addition to a review of all closed areas in the region, the board will face several high-profile issues,
including:

Expanding (or cutting back) predator control programs aimed at reducing wolf populations;

Hunting moose in the Anchorage Bowl;

Developing a new system for allocating subsistence permits for the popular Nelchina caribou hunt; and

Reopening areas adjacent to the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary for brown bear hunting or cutting back hunting on the nearby Katmai National Preserve.
FURTHER INFORMATION: The tentative meeting agenda, details on proposals and Department of Fish and Game recommendations are available on the state Web site at www.boards.adfg.state.ak.us/gameinfo/index.php

(02/17/05)
The McNeil River near Katmai National Park is world-famous for pictures of grizzly bears catching salmon in their teeth. But in recent years the number of bears seen at the famed site has been down.

KTUU Channel 2 News – The McNeil River near Katmai National Park is world-famous for pictures of grizzly bears catching salmon in their teeth. But in recent years the number of bears seen at the famed site has been down.

The advisory committee to the Alaska Board of Game is meeting this week in Anchorage to discuss a controversial proposal whether to limit the brown bear hunt near the viewing site.

In public testimony Tuesday evening, the early comments were very one-sided.

The main issue was whether to limit the hunting of brown bears near the McNeil River, a favorite spot for bear-viewing, which draws visitors from around the globe. Virtually everyone who testified early in the evening said the bear hunts have to remain limited, that the brown bear population cannot take a higher hunt.

?We?re looking at areas that have been closed for decades,? said biologist Paul Joslin. ?Bear numbers at McNeil, we know, are down significantly. That in itself ought to be reason for caution. Bear numbers are also down in the Katmai National Preserve, just next door to the refuge. The aerial counts have been considerably coming down, and in that particular case, there?s a high amount of hunting take that occurs in there.?

But some members of the advisory board challenged the assertion that bear populations near McNeil River have declined. They didn?t dispute that bear sightings are down, just that fewer sightings necessarily mean there are fewer bears in the area.

The advisory committee will make a recommendation Wednesday, then the Board of Game will have to rule next month on whether or not to put limits on the brown bear hunt near McNeil River.

As for another recent hot issue — a proposed moose hunt to reduce the population of ungulates on the Anchorage Hillside — the advisory board also will make a recommendation to the Board of Game for consideration next month.