The Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board has extended the period for input on three controversial government proposals regarding management of moose in the territory.

Board chair John Burdek made the announcement at Wednesday night’s public meeting to gather feedback on 14 proposed changes to wildlife regulations and management strategies.

Before the discussion even got started, Burdek announced the extension, a rare move on the board’s part.

Under routine practice, the board uses the public meeting as the last opportunity to gather input before finalizing its recommendations to the Environment minister on specific proposals.

Burdek told the standing-room-only audience the decision to extend the public input period was made earlier in the day in light of a substantial concern that the public needed more time to digest the proposed changes in moose management.

The additional three months are meant to provide more time for people to absorb the proposals, he said.

Such was the concern that a letter was sent last Friday to deputy minister John Bailey of Environment Yukon from a coalition of five major organizations requesting his department withdraw it’s proposals altogether.

Graham Van Tighem, the board’s executive director, said this morning the letter to Bailey was not a factor in the decision to provide the three-month extension. The letter, he pointed out, was not sent to the board.

Van Tighem said what the board did consider was more than 500 responses to the board’s online survey regarding this year’s proposed changes.

The number one comment was they needed more time to consider the government’s moose management proposals, he said.

Executive director Gord Zealand of the Yukon Fish and Game Association said this morning while the proposals were not withdrawn as requested, the extension does provide additional time people were looking for.

As evidenced at last night’s meeting, hunters and anglers have a lot of knowledge to bring to the table, knowledge that the board needs to hear, he said.

Zealand said he didn’t know if the letter to the deputy minister played into the board’s extension.

“I would suggest that it certainly didn’t hurt,” he said. “When you have that many organizations, all involved in the outdoors, all onside with the same concerns, you know you have an issue.”

The 14 proposed changes to regulations and policy before the board range from the controversial moose proposals to reducing the catch and possession limits for burbot in all Yukon lakes.

There’s a proposal to increase the requirements for trappers to report their fur harvest, and a recommendation to remove the slot limit for northern pike in Teslin Lake.

There are two proposals regarding roadside hunting of grizzly bears, proposals that have incited passionate public debate over several years. But last night, it was mostly about moose.

As is routine, the board released the 14 proposals in early November to gather public input before its December meeting to consider recommendations to the minister.

Environment Yukon is proposing to empower the Environment minister with a number of tools to restrict harvest levels without having to go through the management board review process each and every time.

It wants the minister to be able to vary the length of the hunting season in different management zones, impose restrictions on the use of off-road vehicles, cap the harvest levels or impose permit hunts.

It also wants the minister to have the ability to require that harvest of moose be based on the size antlers, so that hunters take the youngest or oldest moose, but not the prime breeders.

The department is also recommending a permit hunt or other means of reducing the harvest along the South Canol Road between Quiet Lake and Ross River.

It is recommending the Sifton-Miners Range north of Whitehorse be placed on a permit hunt, with other management options including a requirement to hunt by antler configuration.

As one member of the audience put it last night: if there was a prohibition against off-road vehicles in the Sifton-Miners Range, there would not be the concern over the dwindling moose population.

The Mayo Renewable Resource Council is also seeking a cap on the harvest of bulls in the Mayo area. It’s seeking a requirement that hunters report their harvest within 72 hours, so that when the threshold has been reached, the area can be closed, just like it is currently in the Faro area.

Currently, the minister has the authority to enact emergency measures, including complete closures without any discussion with the board, which is the primary instrument for wildlife management in the territory.

But if the department wants to modify the harvest level or impose a permit hunt in a particular game management subzone, it currently has to go through the management board review, each and every time.

Christine Cleghorn, the director of the fish and wildlife branch, told the audience it can take four years from start to finish to get a proposal into regulations.

Four years are a long time when you’re talking about vulnerable moose populations, Cleghorn suggested.

She said the department is not looking to implement all the additional tools it seeks for managing moose populations. What it wants is to have those tools available, without having to go through a four-year process, she explained.

She insisted the government seeks to enable those tools, not to enact them.

“In the proposal what we are saying is give us the ability to use more tools,” she said.

The adaptive management proposal does lay out a process where the local renewable resource councils and the wildlife management board would be consulted if Environment Yukon wanted to initiate further restrictions. On matters of local interest, the renewable resource council’s would be consulted, says the proposal. With their support, the department would forward its recommendation to the minister for approval. The proposal says if there was no support from the resource council, the government would go back to the drawing board. On matters affecting the entire territory, the wildlife management board would be consulted.

The audience heard last night there is evidence to suggest there are areas that are already at their sustainable harvest levels, or over.

The audience heard there is evidence to suggest there are areas that are already at their sustainable harvest levels, or over.

Southern Lakes regional biologist Lars Jessup explained to the audience the specific concerns with the South Canol and the Sifton-Miners Range.

On the South Canol, the harvest by licensed Yukon hunters and hunters with big game outfitters are already harvesting the maximum sustainable harvest of 15 bulls annually, before the harvest by Indigenous hunters is even factored in, he said.

As a rule of thumb, he explained, the department estimates the harvest by Indigenous hunters is the same as the harvest by licensed hunters.

The graph presented by the biologist showed that when combining the harvest by licensed, Indigenous and big game hunters, the annual harvest along the South Canol has been over the sustainable level in 22 of the 24 years up to and including 2018. (Stats for 2019 not included.)

In many years, it’s been more than double the sustainable level of 15, the graph shows.

In the Sifton-Miners Range north of Whitehorse, the sustainable annual harvest of 13 moose has been exceeded in four of the five years up to 2018, without factoring in the Indigenous harvest, Jessup pointed out.

Moose biologist Sophie Czetwertynski said when a harvest is at or above sustainable levels, it is time to restrict the harvest.

The thing is when a moose population in a particular area begins to decline and is in trouble, they are very difficult if not impossible to recover, she suggested.

Czetwertynski noted that part of the equation is the increasing ability of hunters to access areas with off-road vehicles, along with the increasing number of hunters that come with population growth.

The vast majority of moose harvested in the Yukon are taken south of Dawson City, and between 65 and 70 per cent are shot by hunters from Whitehorse, she explained.

There were many questions from the audience, and many observations.

The science Environment Yukon was basing its conclusions on was challenged. There were comments that the First Nations that are not making their harvest information available should be bringing more to the management.

There were questions about some of the new management tools being recommended, such as shortening the hunting season in some areas.

There were suggestions, such as considering issuing permits to groups of hunters, so that when four of five go out, they shoot one moose instead of five.