What's to be done about the depressed moose population west of Whitehorse should be a lot clearer six months from now, says the new chair of the committee examining the issue.

Norm MacLean said the Southern Lakes Wildlife Coordinating Committee is finalizing plans to go public with its effort to share what it knows about the situation, gather input and develop recommendations by next March or April.

The committee is obligated to work through a transparent process that includes engaging public discussion, he said.

"So we are going through the steps," MacLean said in an interview this week.

"There could be information out there that could be very helpful in recommending the steps that need to be taken."

The job of the committee, he added, is to report its findings and recommendations to the governments that are party to the process, which include several first nation governments, Ottawa, the Yukon, and B.C.

The co-ordinating committee is taking over where the Southern Lakes Caribou Recovery Program left off, but with an expanded mandate that includes management of moose and predators, habitat and other wildlife.

Evidence suggests the population of moose west of Whitehorse has declined from a high of about 1,800 to 2,000 in the early 1980s to somewhere around 800 today.

The population density in the area west to Kusawa Lake, north to the Alaska Highway and south to the B.C. border is well below half of what is typical in other areas in southern Yukon, government moose biologist Rick Ward said this week.

Ward and fellow management biologist Rob Florkiewicz agree over-harvesting in the early 1980s , by both aboriginal and non-aboriginal hunters, played a significant part in the decline.

"People would go out on a Friday night, get their moose and be back the same night," Florkiewicz said.

"We were living in abundance."

Records show that in 1979, non-aboriginal resident hunters harvested just short of 120 moose in the area, along with about 25 moose taken by the big game outfitting industry.

While there are no records for the aboriginal harvest, Florkiewicz believe it too was significant.

In 1980, just over 100 moose were shot west of Whitehorse by local licensed hunters, and slightly fewer than 20 were shot by guided big game hunters.

Harvest levels tailed off gradually for a couple of years until 1984, when locals took 40 moose and five or so went to the outfitting industry.

In 1985, the number of moose shot by licensed hunters fell sharply, and the days of an abundance of moose west of Whitehorse were gone.

A permit system for non-aboriginal hunters was implemented in 1989, and in the last few years, one or two moose are taken on average. There's been no harvest by outfitters since 1999.

Whitehorse-area resident Peter Percival was one of 11 resident hunters whose name was drawn this year for a permit to hunt moose in the east side of zone seven.

Percival turned back his permit last month, believing that in all good consciousness, he couldn't shoot a moose knowing what he knows about the state of the population.

The resident of Cowley Lake along the Carcross Road remembers his hunting days in the 1970s, when moose were abundant.

"Three of us would hike into the bush, find a spot and set up a tent," Percival recalled. "We'd see two or three moose, shoot one, and pack it out.

"We wouldn't go back in and shoot another one."

The disappearing abundance, he suspects, is due in part to better access, and hunters on their all-terrain vehicles that go where no man could go before.

It's nothing now for a couple of hunters on ATVs to pack out two moose, he pointed out.

Percival said the level of aboriginal harvest in the area is unknown, though he suspects it's a key factor.

Aboriginal hunters, he said, will absolutely need to buy into the exercise of helping re-establish the population.

But that's good, because aboriginal hunters have already demonstrated the effectiveness of their resolve to help the Southern Lakes caribou population recover with a voluntary hunting ban going all the way back to 1993.

It was estimated the total population of the caribou herd was hitting rock-bottom in the early 1990s, numbering around 400 animals.

An aerial census last year shows the population had climbed back up to 1,500, still shy of the 2,000 the recovery program established as its goal.

The recovery of moose, Percival said, can be the same success story.

"We need to build on the positive."

He pointed out that restricting access by off-road vehicles isn't unheard of. Indeed, it was put into practice back in the 1970s, when the government shortened the moose hunting season by a month to counter the expanding use of snowmachines.

An information poster to emphasize the seriousness of the declining moose population was developed by the Yukon government back in 2004, though it was never distributed publicly.

The poster notes that if nothing was done, the decline would continue, and the moose population would fall from about 800 in 2004 to somewhere around 300 by 2023.

Cutting the harvest by licensed hunters, and reducing the wolf population would see a return to the 2,000-level between 2004 and 2023, according to the information poster.

The poster says that permitting only a small aboriginal harvest and reducing the wolf population would see a sharp rebound to the 2,000-level in eight years.

Florkiewicz believes part of the reason the government decided not to circulate the poster four years ago was because it was sensitive material at a sensitive time.

Both the Carcross-Tagish First Nation and the Kwanlin Dun First Nation were in the midst of preparing their memberships for historic votes on proposed land claim settlements. The government didn't want to put something on the table that might take away from the focus on the ratification process, he said.

Besides, the first nations just didn't have the capacity back then to handle any new initiatives, with all the emphasis being placed on the land claim process, Dave Sembsmoen, Kwanlin Dun's manager of fish and wildlife, said this week.

The creation of the new Southern Lakes Wildlife Coordinating Committee is, in fact, mandated in the Carcross-Tagish and Kwanlin Dun settlements.

As a member of the committee, Sembsmoen said his job now is to go through the public process to formulate the recommendations for a recovery plan.

It's not to address specifics, he said, after declining to indicate whether mandatory harvest reporting by aboriginal hunters is needed to help understand the complete picture west of Whitehorse.

"I feel the communities are key," Sembsmoen said. "If we have a resource problem, if we have a moose problem, then it is the responsibility of everyone to make sure what needs to be done is done."

Sembsmoen also suggested the aboriginal harvest by Kwanlin Dun members isn't as large as some people think. Times have changed, he said. Illegal hunting - poaching - may be a factor, acknowledges Tony Grabowski, the chief conservation officer for the Department of Environment.

He recalled the cow moose that was shot and left off the Carcross Road a couple of years back, with not an ounce of meat taken.

"I think it is an issue, but I do not think is the single issue that is contributing to the demise of the moose population in the Southern Lakes."

The last intensive research on the moose population in the southwest was conducted from 1983 to 1985.

It showed that predation on caribou calves by grizzly bears was particularly heavy.

Of all the calves that died in a year, either from predation, falling through the ice or from other natural causes, grizzly bears accounted for 80 per cent of all mortality.

Wolf predation was responsible for most of the remaining 20 per cent.

The 2004 information poster doesn't mention specifically the notion of implementing a wolf-kill project to assist the recovery, but suggests working with local trappers may help to reduce the population.

Florkiewicz said the co-ordinating committee has already identified a wolf survey of the area as a priority, and it will be conducted this winter.

Whether a wolf-control program will be recommended as part of the solution, nobody knows, he suggested.

One thing is pretty certain, however: it's highly unlikely there will be any program to control the primary predator - the grizzly bears - given their national status as a species of concern, Florkiewicz said.

Ward said the management plan to rescue the moose population is likely to be molded by what is socially acceptable, what Yukoners are willing to accept to rebuild the population, and what resources are made available to implement the recovery.