Environment Minister Elaine Taylor has dismissed some key recommendations from the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board.

Don Hutton, the board's outgoing chair, expressed some concern with the minister's rejections of a number of proposals.

The 12 board members, he pointed out in a letter last month, found that Taylor rejected more than half of the board's recommendations "largely for non-substantive reason."

Last Thursday, in her final response to the wildlife board's recommendation on 14 proposed changes to management regulations, the minister continued her rejection of an outright two-year ban on hunting Dall sheep in the Miners Range, located immediately northwest of Whitehorse.

Instead, the minister suggested, conservation objectives could be met with the implementation of a permit system to manage harvest levels.

Taylor also rejected the board's recommendation to accept the proposal that the use of ATVs by hunters be restricted above the treeline on Pilot Mountain, which lies within the Miners Range.

The proposals were forwarded to the board last year by the Lake Laberge Renewable Resource Council.

The council maintains there is a real concern the sheep population in the Miners Range is already in serious trouble, and its becoming more and more accessible by hunters on ATVs.

The management board agreed with the renewable resource council, and after conducting a public review of the proposal last fall, it recommended last January that Taylor accept the two-year ban and ATV restriction.

In her initial response in March, the minister rejected the recommendation.

The board wrote back that it was surprised by the minister's stance, given that the findings of serious concern by the Lake Laberge Renewable Resource Council were based on scientific research by renowned local biologist Manfred Hoefs.

One could only hope, Hutton wrote, that all wildlife management decisions were based on the type of indepth research Hoefs undertook in determining the Miners Range sheep are in trouble.

In her rejection of the ATV restriction, Taylor said Environment Yukon staff will monitor activity to measure its impact.

In public submissions last December, it was generally agreed Pilot Mountain is turning into a network of highways for off-road-vehicles.

The wildlife management board and its process were established by the Umbrella Final Agreement, the blueprint for land claims in the Yukon.

The board receives the proposed changes in June, either from individuals, renewable resource councils, the Yukon Fish and Game Association or territorial government staff.

Board members review the changes and advance those which present all the required information for further consideration. Those advanced are released in November for public review and comment, and subject to a public meeting in early December.

Whatever the board recommends, however, must remain confidential until the process is complete. The process involves the board's initial recommendations (Jan. 9 of this year), followed by the minister's initial response (March 6).

The board must then respond to the minister's response (April 6), and the minister then gets to respond to the board's response (May 14).

The board has asked the minister to use her discretion and relax the confidentiality provisions, so parties may learn what's been recommended once it's been recommended in January.

Taylor did accept the board recommendation to turn down the Yukon Fish and Game Association's request to allow special guide licences for mountain sheep.

Special guide licences allow Yukoners to guide Canadian friends and family from outside the Yukon on big game hunts – moose, caribou – but not sheep.

Sheep, it was argued during the public hearings, are in a whole different category, as sheep hunts are prized all over the world. Providing special guide permits for sheep would surely open the door to an underground commercial guiding system for the Yukon, big game outfitters insisted.

• The management board also rejected a proposal by the fish and game association to allow special guide permits for bison. Taylor agreed, at least until the bison management team comes up with a renewed approach to tackling the growing population.

• Taylor agreed with the board's support for an increase in the number of annual deer permits from 10 to 50, a proposal advanced by government staff.

• Accepted by both the board and the minister was the game association's proposal to add two deer permits specifically for youth.

• They agreed with the game association's recommendation to combine the permit hunt date for caribou in the Finlayson district.

• But both the board and the minister rejected the association's request to permit 12- and 13-year-olds to pull their own big game tags.Letting youth pull their own tags could result in less scrutiny by adult hunters about the shot place and other sound hunting techniques, that would otherwise be in play if a youth was hunting on their parent's tag.

• The minister rejected the board's support for the proposal by the Teslin Tlingit Council and the Teslin Renewable Resource Council to divide up game management subzones 10-21 and 10-23. The Teslin council recommended the proposal as a means of increasing moose management opportunities in the popular hunting area along the South Canol Road.

• The board rejected a proposal by wilderness fishing guide Bernard Stehelin to change the catch-and-release regulations to force anglers to release all game fish above a minimum size, instead of allowing them to keep one of trophy fish.

The board, however, noted that many first nation and renewable resource councils agreed with Stehelin in principle, but that more scrutiny of the science and local knowledge would be first of all be preferred.