The Kenai Peninsula is breeding plenty of hot-button subsistence issues this year and to hold a public meeting that focuses on just one is difficult at best. But on Thursday, a room full of passionate fishermen, hunters, federal and state employees and natives managed, for the most part, to corral their testimony within the boundaries of a meeting addressing a subsistence proposal to create a Kenai Peninsula Regional Advisory Committee.
Members of the Kenai Peninsula Borough, Safari Club, Ninilchik Tribal Council, United Cook Inlet Drift Association and many others filled a Kenai River Center conference room to weigh in on the Alaska Federal Subsistence Board proposal, in a testimony that seesawed between support and opposition.
The board contends separating the peninsula from the current Southcentral RAC to form a Kenai RAC will give the peninsula better representation on subsistence issues. The current Southcentral RAC, which extends as far east as Canada and as far West as Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, covers too large of an area for one council to cover, the board says.
Currently, 10 RACs guide Alaska Federal Subsistence Board decisions addressing subsistence uses of fish and wildlife on federal public land and water.
Kenai Borough Mayor John Williams, Kenai River Sportfishing Association Executive Director Ricky Gease and others supporting the proposal seemed to agree a Kenai RAC would give the peninsula a stronger voice in local subsistence issues.
But while as many people testified in opposition of the proposal as did in support of the proposal, those who spoke against the proposal were more fractured than their counterparts.
Kasilof resident Larry Lewis, for example, disagreed that a Kenai RAC would advance the interests of the peninsula. Lewis called subsistence on the peninsula a sham, and said creating a Kenai RAC would only give it more credibility.
“My family and I have lived on game meat. We don’t buy beef from the store, we never have,” said Lewis, who works for the department of Alaska Fish and Game, but said he was not speaking as a private citizen, not on behalf of the department. “I would say we are as traditional in our use of resources as anyone else É and I was just flabbergasted recently when I heard that subsistence users were going to be coming past my home to utilize a resource on a river that I live on when I wouldn’t be able to participate in that program because I’m not designated rural. It doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever.”
Ninilchik Traditional Council member Michelle Steik also opposed the formation of a Kenai RAC, but she attacked the proposal based on its lack of support from the Southcentral RAC, which has said that it can handle Kenai subsistence issues without breaking apart.
According to the Office of Subsistence Management, the board is supposed to follow the advice of its RACs and can only reject RAC recommendation if “it is not supported by substantial evidence, violates recognizable principles of fish and wildlife conservation, or would be detrimental to the satisfaction of subsistence needs.”
Steik said the board’s continued push to pass a proposal to create a Kenai RAC, even after the Southcentral RAC unanimously voted against it, is part of a larger trend in which the board has wrongfully ignored RAC advice.
“It seems that the (Federal Subsistence Board) is intent on going against the wishes of its own RAC which has become all too familiar as of late,” she said. “The FSB went against recommendation on Ninilchik’s original moose proposal for a late hunt, the FSB went against recommendation regarding formation of a new RAC, the FSB went against recommendation to have a Ninilchik fishery in the Kenai, the FSB went against unanimous recommendation for a special action request for a few silvers ... .”
Generally those in favor of a Kenai RAC strongly supported the board’s proposal, but a few said they would like to see the boundaries of the proposed RAC redrawn.
The current proposed Kenai RAC boundaries encircle game hunt Units 7, 15 and 14C, which includes all of the peninsula and Anchorage.
Those opposed to the boundaries said they don’t want a Kenai RAC to include Anchorage.
Patrice Kohl can be reached at patrice.kohl@peninsulaclarion.com
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