Fairbanks Fish and Game Advisory Committee will elect seven members Nov. 11

The Fairbanks Fish and Game Advisory Committee will elect seven members Wednesday, Nov. 11, at 6 pm at the JP Jones Community Development Center. The seats are expired or vacant.

The committee is one of the local groups that advise the Alaska Board of Game and the Alaska Board of Fisheries on fish and wildlife rules.

Voters must be voting-age residents of Game Management Units 12, 20, 21, 24, 25 and 26 or the Tanana River. They must attend in person and give a name and address on the election sign-in sheet to get a ballot, according to the committee's public notice. People can join the meeting online but cannot vote remotely.

Five seats carry three-year terms, one carries a two-year term and one carries a one-year term. Nominees with the most votes get the longest terms.

The election comes five days before comments are due Nov. 16 for the Board of Game's special meeting on the Ambler Road on Nov. 20. As Alaska News reported Oct. 13, the board moved its vote on a proposed hunting closure along the road to a Nov. 20 web conference with no testimony taken.

On June 24, the Fairbanks committee voted unanimously to oppose the proposed two-mile-wide hunting and trapping corridor closure along the road, according to its meeting minutes. Its letter to the board said developers could control employee behavior through internal policies.

Ryan Scott, the Department of Fish and Game's wildlife conservation director, told that meeting the proposal was tied to the administration's priority to move the area toward development and would create a "level playing field" so road users would not have an advantage, the minutes show.

At the Nov. 11 meeting, Tok Area Biologist Jeff Gross is scheduled to report on the Fortymile Caribou Herd, and Dr. Erik Schoen of the University of Alaska Fairbanks will present on Tanana River food webs.