Unit 13 moose closure on BLM land takes effect Tuesday, six months after the vote

Federal Bureau of Land Management land in Unit 13 closes Tuesday to moose hunting by anyone who isn't a federally qualified subsistence user. The Federal Subsistence Board voted for the closure in April, but it couldn't take effect until the rule was published in the Federal Register, and that left the land open to all moose hunters this fall.

The closure covers about 1,468 square miles, roughly 6% of the Unit 13 hunt area, including federal hunt areas along the Richardson Highway near Paxson and the Delta and Gulkana river corridors, according to an Interior Department fact sheet. Other hunters can still travel and camp there and hunt or trap other species. The board adopted it to continue subsistence uses of moose, citing declines in other subsistence resources, low harvests and heavy competition from other hunters, the fact sheet says.

This year's federal season ended Sept. 30, so the first season under the closure opens in August 2027.

The Ahtna Intertribal Resource Commission in Glennallen asked the board Sept. 9 to start the closure right away. Federally qualified users "continue to face intense competition from non-federally qualified users," commission board chair Donna Renard wrote. The board said no in mid-September, 8 to 2, saying the request came too late in the season to carry out or enforce, with the state hunt closing Sept. 20. Earlier that month, at the request of Tanana Chiefs Conference, it had started a similar closure in Unit 25D early.

Board chair Anthony Christianson and public member Rhonda Pitka voted to start it early. "The Board fully intended for the closure, but it was never published in the Federal Register," Pitka wrote. BLM State Director Kevin Pendergast wrote that "there is no conservation concern for moose in Unit 13" and that past closures hadn't raised federally qualified users' harvest rates.

The same rule puts into effect the rest of the hunting and trapping changes the board adopted in April for the next two years, including a brown bear hunt for Kodiak road-system residents and new deer limits on Prince of Wales Island.