Tanana Chiefs plans advocacy workshop as Board of Game takes up Ambler Road hunting

Tanana Chiefs Conference will hold a virtual hunting and fishing advocacy workshop Nov. 20, the same day the Alaska Board of Game takes up whether to close a strip along the proposed Ambler Road to hunting and trapping.

TCC opposes the road. But when the board first took up the closure in July, TCC told the board that if the road is built, it supports a closure. It recommended five miles on each side of the road instead of one.

Twyla Krueger, TCC's tribal court manager, announced the workshop Monday on the organization's TCC Weekly program. "Alaska's wildlife and subsistence way of life are at a turning point," she said. "The health of our salmon, our lands, and our communities depend on what we do now."

The proposed closure would cover a mile on each side of the 211-mile industrial road from the Dalton Highway to the Ambler Mining District, from July 1, 2029, through Jan. 1, 2036, unless the board extends it. The road hasn't been built.

The Department of Fish and Game wrote the proposal. A confidential memorandum calls for proposing such a closure. Its parties are the state agency developing the road, Fish and Game, NANA Regional Corporation, Doyon, K'oyitl'ots'ina, mining company Ambler Metals and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Ambler Metals, Doyon and NANA wrote in support this summer, citing safety. NANA also asked the board to consider a narrower corridor to limit the effect on hunters and trappers from Kobuk, Shungnak and Ambler. The Fairbanks and Matanuska Valley fish and game advisory committees, the Alaska Outdoor Council and two conservation groups opposed it.

The board will take written comments until 8 am Nov. 16 but no testimony at the meeting.

Salmon is also on the workshop's agenda. The Yukon River subsistence harvest of Chinook salmon was 1,564 fish in 2023, the lowest on record, according to a Fish and Game report to the Board of Fisheries. Fishing aimed at Chinook was closed from 2021 through 2024, the report says, and about 30% of that 2023 harvest came from a state test fishery whose catch was given to communities. The 2010 to 2019 average was 27,874 fish.