This ought to stir up some emotions

[tlingitwarrior]

http://www.adn.com/2011/03/29/178141...-interior.html

[Hunt&FishAK]

seems like a good idea....it would help increase overall bison numbers....im not sure how it would be a bad thing....

[tailwind]

seems like a good idea....it would help increase overall bison numbers....im not sure how it would be a bad thing....

Agreed. I'd love some bison wandering around my back yard. Is this a free range herd or are they fenced?

[Hunt&FishAK]

right now they are fenced up in a 3-400 acre apread on the portage creek flats.....they would be free ranging after there were transferred to the lower innoko.....who knows where they could spread to....

[tccak71]

Read the article, they're on the ESA. That will just limit human activity. Bad idea. More meddling by the Center for Bio-bs.

Tim

[tlingitwarrior]

Read the article, they're on the ESA. That will just limit human activity. Bad idea. More meddling by the Center for Bio-bs.

Tim

Bingo, that's what I was getting at.

[Mike Echo]

Was this subspecies of buff native to Alaska? The ESA is what will ruin this dream of getting them back. Maybe we should start them in the middle of Denali, I don't think they have room for any more restrictions anyway! :-)
I can definitely see the Representative's point and concern.
Mike

[Dr.No]

Read the article, they're on the ESA. That will just limit human activity. Bad idea. More meddling by the Center for Bio-bs.

Tim

Please re-read the article (or let me help you out):

"Randy Rogers, a wildlife planner for the state Department of Fish and Game, said the organization will not move the bison until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and locals negotiate an exemption to the Endangered Species Act"

This seems to boil down to "what does Representative Dick want..."

[SkinnyD]

turn them loose only if the Holy Cross residents get to shoot a couple of them a year for food to make up for the lost berries and whatever else they tear up... one or two are going to get shot anyway

[bushrat]

The reintroduction of wood bison has been a decades long project already, spearheaded by "Buffalo Bob" Stephenson at ADFG. It's something that Alaska Backcountry Hunters has long supported, and it's a shame all the fear-mongering about the ESA has so influenced the outcome. Not that we shouldn't have concerns about the ESA, but in this case (as in others like it), when we designate them an "experimental" population we don't have the same rules and regs that govern mining, exploration, and even hunting.

Also a shame that the two best primary places chosen to release these bison so as to have future sustainable (and huntable) herds (Yukon Flats and Minto areas) have already been nixed by those who claim the ESA will affect mining or gas exploration or whatever.

The state has spent a lot of money already researching this, getting the bison from Canada, making sure they are disease free...it should have been a done deal to release them from the conservation center. If we can't release them by next year, we may have to nix the whole shebang and euthanize them.

Enough already. We have rules and regs in place to designate these bison as an experimental population in which the ESA regs that would curtail mining or development can't take place.

The people are not going to be locked out. Neither is development.

[tccak71]

Please re-read the article (or let me help you out):

"Randy Rogers, a wildlife planner for the state Department of Fish and Game, said the organization will not move the bison until the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and locals negotiate an exemption to the Endangered Species Act"

This seems to boil down to "what does Representative Dick want..."

Exemptions for LOCALS. That mean's subsistence users. You and I won't be hunting there. We won't be hunting them and we won't be allowed to hunt there.

Tim

[tccak71]

The ESA is what will ruin this dream of getting them back. Maybe we should start them in the middle of Denali, I don't think they have room for any more restrictions anyway! :-)
Mike

I'm sure you're being facetious, but that's a heck of an idea.

Bushrat, with the recent assault on ANY development in this state I cringe when ESA is even mentioned. Its a three-headed monster subjectively applied and implemented by judges after the center for bio exacts its agenda.


Tim

[Hunt&FishAK]

I agree with bushrat......he has a strong point on this subject

[LuJon]

Just start up a non-profit organization to run a free range bison ranch in the area. Sign ownership of the bison from the state to the new non-prof and give them a 50 year $1 permit for the whole basin. Now they are "farm animals" for the next 50 years and can be "sold" to hunters for a price just like the ones down on Kodiak. Heck link the non-prof project to UAF and they could easily get grant money to do tons of Bio work without costing the state a fortune in direct funding.

[fullbush]

Why don't they just let us shoot em at Portage? I say turn em lose in Bear Valley hell w/ the bush, I don't have a plane. Why do the interior people get all the buff?