DNR proposes requiring permits for most shooting in the Matanuska Valley Moose Range

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources on Wednesday proposed requiring a permit for gunfire, except lawful hunting and trapping, in high-use areas of the Jonesville Public Use Area near Sutton. Those areas include land near Slipper Lake, Eska Falls and Wishbone Lake, and any spot within a quarter mile of residential or other private property. A second section would require a permit to fire a weapon on state land anywhere in the surrounding Matanuska Valley Moose Range, outside hunting, trapping or a lawfully designated shooting area. Jonesville's 14,614 acres, reached by Jonesville Mine Road off the Glenn Highway near Mile 61, lie almost entirely within the range.

Comments on the Notice of Proposed Changes on Public Use Areas, published Oct. 7, are due by 5 pm Nov. 9, in writing only. No hearing is scheduled. DNR may then adopt the rules, adopt different language on the same subject without further notice, or drop them.

The draft would also require permits to shoot at steel targets or trees, set off fireworks, cut live trees 5 inches or more in diameter, burn pallets or cars, dump waste, or build roads and trails. From May 1 to Sept. 30, vehicles would be held to 10 mph in designated public use sites and within 100 feet of Slipper and Wishbone lakes. Boat motors over 10 horsepower would be barred on Slipper Lake. Jonesville would take on Knik River Public Use Area rules. Those include bans on leaving a vehicle more than 72 hours, disturbing wetlands or the organic mat more than six inches deep, or camping more than 14 days in one spot. The citation clause, with a court-set bail schedule that lets someone pay a ticket without a court appearance, covers only the Jonesville portion of the range. The rules would not apply to private land inside the range.

The proposal follows the management plan DNR and the Department of Fish and Game adopted July 2, 2024. That plan found unorganized shooting incompatible near Slipper Lake, Eska Falls, Wishbone Lake and homes "at all times of the day and year," and said there were no designated target shooting areas at Jonesville. The Mat-Su Borough said in an April grant application there still are none. The borough hired PND Engineers last year to design a shooting park there. Its grant schedule runs through September 2028, leaving construction to later funding.

The 2018 law creating Jonesville bars DNR from restricting weapons there "except in locations where the commissioner determines that the use of weapons constitutes a threat to public safety." The 2024 plan made that finding for the high-use area. Among the steps it said would require regulations, the plan also listed prohibiting gunfire in the Moose Range and Jonesville except for lawful hunting and trapping. The Moose Range statute contains no limit like Jonesville's.

The Mat-Su Borough Assembly backed creating the public use area in 2017 with a resolution citing one shooting death, several near misses and shots fired at houses.

In May, DNR's Division of Mining, Land and Water closed part of the Slipper Lake site to gunfire for one day during a community cleanup.