Park Service restores local hearings before Alaska park harvest closures

The National Park Service must hold a public hearing near the affected area before it closes Alaska park lands to hunting, fishing or trapping, under a final rule published Monday, Oct. 19. The rule takes effect Nov. 18.

The agency dropped the hearing requirement in 2015. It now applies again to temporary and emergency closures that affect fish and wildlife harvest. Permanent closures require at least 60 days of public comment and public hearings in the affected area.

Every closure must also run in at least one newspaper of general circulation in the state and one local paper where available. It must be posted at community post offices, offered to local radio, marked on a public map and posted with signs. The 2015 changes had made the newspaper, radio and post office notices optional.

The final version goes further than the March proposal. It replaces an "or" with an "and" so every listed notice method is required where available, and an area cannot be closed to harvest by posting signs alone.

The agency said the changes respond to concerns from rural Alaska residents and communities that relying on website postings and discretionary notice after 2015 did not reach people in remote areas.

Emergency closures will be capped at 30 days and temporary closures at 12 months, with no extensions. Under the 2015 rules, emergency closures affecting fish and wildlife could run 60 days, and other emergency and temporary closures had no maximum.

The proposal opened for public comment March 10. After requests for more time, the agency extended the window to April 24, 46 days in all. It received 5,172 comments.

Federal Subsistence Regional Advisory Councils formally asked for more time, according to the rule, saying the first 30-day window was too short to analyze changes spanning four rulemakings in a decade. Alaska has 10 such councils. "Only four of the RACs met in the time frame to allow them to comment on this proposed rule," the Southcentral Alaska Subsistence Regional Advisory Council wrote in its comments on the proposed rule.

The Southcentral council also wrote that it "must view the Proposed Rule overall as detrimental to subsistence users and therefore cannot support it," saying it would increase competition for resources and that the state system cannot provide a rural priority. The Park Service responded in the rule that the changes do not alter the federal subsistence priority in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act or the rural preference for qualified users on federal public lands.

Consultation with the state and the Federal Subsistence Board before temporary subsistence closures stays in place. The same rule also lifts limits on bear baiting in national preserves, which Alaska News reported Oct. 16.