Alaska won't hold a Nelchina caribou hunt next year, weeks after proposing one

Alaska won't hold a state Nelchina caribou hunt next season, the state's new subsistence hunting booklet says, weeks after state wildlife managers proposed reopening one on the growing herd.

"There will be no Unit 13 Nelchina Caribou hunts held in Regulatory Year 2027-2028," the booklet says. It doesn't say why.

That extends a closure that began in 2023. The Department of Fish and Game shut down every state caribou hunt in Unit 13, the region around Glennallen, in June of that year. That fall, federal analysts put the herd at 6,983, the lowest estimate since 2003. The department now estimates it at 18,750.

In September, the department signaled that might change. It proposed a limited hunt for 2027: up to 335 bulls in all, with 150 for state hunters through Tier II permits. Tier II is the system Alaska uses when there isn't enough game to go around, and it gives priority to the households that depend on it most. The department credited the herd's growth partly to the closure and to mild winters and said the hunt would appear in the booklet as "May be Announced."

Instead, the booklet for this year's application period, which opened Nov. 1, says it will not be held.

The herd is still below the state's goal of 35,000 to 40,000 caribou. In the Copper Basin, the local Fish and Game advisory committee voted 9-2 in September against a motion to support the hunt, chair Mark Somerville said on the meeting recording.

The department was still asking for opinions after that. In October, the department's Heidi Hatcher told the Mat-Su Borough's fish and wildlife commission that it wanted comments on the proposal through the end of December, according to the commission's minutes.

Hatcher is scheduled to give the Copper Basin committee a Nelchina update in Glennallen on Dec. 9.

Federal subsistence hunts on the herd are run separately and aren't covered by the state booklet.