Park Service will again hold local hearings before Alaska park hunting closures

The National Park Service will again have to hold a public hearing near the affected area before closing Alaska park lands to hunting, fishing or trapping, under a final rule published Monday. It takes effect Nov. 18.

The agency dropped that requirement in 2015, along with notice rules aimed at people in remote places. Rural residents and communities raised concerns that the 2015 approach, relying on website postings and notice at the agency's discretion, was inadequate to inform people in remote areas, according to the rule.

Under the new rule, every closure must run in at least one newspaper of general circulation in Alaska and a local paper where there is one, go up at post offices in the area, be offered to local radio stations and be marked on a public map. The agency revised the March proposal slightly, changing an "or" to an "and" to confirm that all of those notices are required in addition to posted signs.

Emergency closures affecting harvest will again be capped at 30 days, down from 60 under the 2015 rules, and can't be extended.

The closure changes are part of a broader rule that undoes most of the agency's 2015, 2017 and 2024 changes to its Alaska regulations, including limits on bear baiting in national preserves, Alaska News reported Oct. 16. The agency received 5,172 comments on its March proposal.

Federal subsistence regional advisory councils, which advise on subsistence management in rural regions, asked for more time to comment, saying 30 days was too short to analyze changes spanning four rulemakings over a decade, according to the rule. The agency extended the window to 46 days. "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. Alaska has 10 such councils.

The Park Service acknowledged in the rule that some rural communities "may have had less opportunity to engage" and said it tried to account for that by giving particular weight to comments from groups that represent rural communities.

The Southcentral council opposed the proposal overall, writing that it would increase competition for "already diminishing resources" and that the state system "does not and cannot provide a rural priority." The Park Service says the rule does not change the federal subsistence priority for rural residents under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.