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Ministry defends proposed hunting restrictions

Options intended to balance population and allocation to move forward with input by April or May
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Proposed regulations on moose hunting in the Skeena region are aimed at deterring resident hunters from overshooting their allocation in the south while protecting adolescent bull-moose populations in the north, says the Ministry of Forest, Lands and Natural Resources.

Last week the Northwest Fish & Wildlife Conservation Association (NFWCA) said these harvest regulation proposals will favour trophy hunting over the licensed B.C. sustenance hunt for bull moose.

READ MORE: Conservation group fears proposed regulations favour trophy hunt

But Conrad Thiessen, senior wildlife biologist with the ministry, said over the phone that one of the recommendations was to extend the general open season from seven days to 42 days to ensure ‘the opportunity for resident hunters is increased,’ while the accompanying proposed antler-restriction could help decrease the number of moose harvested and protect conservation goals.

The second option would not include antler-restrictions on bull moose but would decrease the general open season from seven days to three days. This has raised some concerns for resident hunters in the area who said they feel like this will put an unfair focus on hunting older, tougher-to-eat bull moose.

But Thiessen says the ministry’s objectives for the South Skeena region is to reduce the amount of moose killed by resident hunters because right now there is more demand than available moose for the region,” Thiessen said. “We do not want to go below our set calf-to-bull ratio threshold.”

The threshold maintained by the Ministry is 30 bulls to 100 cows, and according to a hunter management survey conducted last year in the Skeena region, calf ratios decreased from 38 calves per 100 cows in 2012, to 21 calves per 100 cows in 2017.

READ MORE: Hunting shift draws heat from residents

“When we’re making these recommendations we’re looking at a large number of factors, one of them being the opportunity to hunt,” Thiessen said. “With an antler restriction you would still end up with a reduced amount of harvest, likely by 40 to 60 per cent… but there would be an extended period for the general open season that is six times as long.”

Antler restrictions proposed in Skeena South would exclude licensed hunters from taking middle-aged moose in the region, saving those populations to ensure First Nations are able to fill their legal harvest of cow moose.

“The resident hunters are generally harvesting younger bulls, and the ‘soft 10’ antler regulations continue to let them hunt younger bulls,” Thiessen said. However, the restrictions could “result in taking more time likely to harvest the moose than it did previously” for resident hunters to make sure the bulls they are aiming for meet the proposed antler restrictions.

Thiessen also mentioned the Ministry is expecting an increased shift in demand from resident hunters travelling to the North to hunt as regulations in the South become more restrictive.

In the Northern part of the Skeena region, there isn’t a lot of road access for resident and non-resident hunters, which means both user groups and First Nations people are using the same roads to hunt. thiessen said this could lead to conflict between groups in the area.

The BC Wildlife Federation president Harvey Andrusak wrote to BC Premier John Horgan on Feb. 13, and suggested his staff revisit the moose allocation splits for Skeena South and Skeena North to ‘better reflect resident demand and under-utilization by guided hunters.’

“Many other southern areas in the province also have a spiked (or) forked antler-restriction season so it does create some consistency,” Thiessen said when speaking about how these regulations were considered.

Currently, the Peace region administered out of Fort St. John has had similar antler restrictions in place for the past 15 years, and Thiessen said the regulation has been functioning well and will not impact hunter ability to harvest moose.

Andrusak also cited data provided by a regional wildlife biologist in Smithers that showed guide outfitters in Skeena South harvested 706 moose of the 1529 moose allocated between 2012 and 2016, and asked the Minister why the unused allocation couldn’t be reassigned to resident hunters instead.

Currently, in the South Skeena, 25 per cent of moose are allocated to non-resident hunters by the Ministry while 75 per cent are allocated for resident and sustenance hunters. This allocation also applies to some areas in North Skeena.

“In the case that one user group is under-utilizing their allocation our primary objective would be to find ways of letting that user group meet their allocation,” Thiessen said.

“Similarly, if the resident hunters were under-utilizing their allocation, I’m sure they would prefer for us to find ways to make sure they are able to obtain their allocation rather than giving their allocation to non-resident hunters.”

Thiessen said there was a need to put mechanisms in place to keep the Southern region’s threshold for moose populations at a stable level, and prevent resident hunters in the area from being able to overshoot their allocations. If harvest numbers are reduced, Thiessen said the Ministry will then have the ability to give out more Limited Entry Hunting (LEH) permits that provide licensed hunters with unrestricted access to bull moose in the region.

However, Thiessen did mention that the process for negotiating new regulation options for North Skeena wasn’t “as fulsome as we originally planned.” During the roundtable discussions in Dec. 2017, the BC Wildlife Federation did not reach out for input from their regional branch to the Northwest Fish and Wildlife Conservation Association (NFWCA) or the Skeena Hunters Advisory Committee.

Yet Thiessen said “there were multiple opportunities for the stakeholders to voice their point of view” and that the input will be considered as decisions surrounding moose hunting regulations in the Skeena region move forward.

The regulation proposals are scheduled to be decided and implemented by April or May 2018.


 


brittany@terracestandard.com

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