Font ResizeALASKA - A battle over Alaska's biggest bison herd is brewing between hunters and farmers in Delta Junction, the latter of who contend the wild beasts are damaging agricultural crops and need to be reined in, whether it means building fences to keep them off crop lands or drastically reducing the size of the herd.
Hunters, meanwhile, are dead set against fencing the wild herd in and/or thinning it down. If anything, hunters want to grow the herd to create more opportunity for what is Alaska's most popular drawing permit hunt.
The result is a "confirmed stalemate" that will likely require action from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game or the Alaska Legislature to iron out, according to wildlife planner Randy Rogers with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
"The Delta Bison Working Group made recommendations on a number of things but didn't come to agreement on herd size or concepts of fencing," Rogers said of an advisory committee created to help the department make management decisions regarding the herd. "They agreed that fencing is a long-term solution but there's a big split in what kind of fencing option to use."
Some farmers want to fence the herd in on the 90,000-acre Delta Junction Bison Range, which sits south of the Alaska Highway, just a short romp from a number of farms in the Delta Agricultural Project. The range was created by the legislature in the early 1980s to keep bison off farm land but it hasn't been successful, for various
Some farmers would rather fence the bison out of their fields, assuming they could get considerable help paying for the fencing, because they, not the state, would be responsible for building and maintaining it.
Some farmers simply want to knock the size of the bison herd down.
"It's time to either cut the herd way back or solve the problem through fencing," Delta farmer Mike Schultz, a member of the bison working group and one of the farmers most effected by bison damage, said.
That's not necessarily the way hunters see it, however. The bison, introduced to the area in 1928, were there long before the farmers moved in, albeit at the encouragement of the state with the development of the Delta Agricultural Project.
"I sympathize with the farmers," Fairbanks hunter Lenny Jewkes, the statewide hunter representative on the bison working group, said. "The farmers do have a major problem that was created by selling the land where the buffalo roam."
But that doesn't mean hunters should be the one who pay for the formation of a penned herd and fewer hunting opportunities, he said. State law requires the herd to be free ranging, Jewkes noted
"Fencing the herd in is not an option and a drastic reduction in herd size is not an option as far as hunters are concerned," Jewkes said.
Popular hunt
At an estimated 435 animals this fall, the Delta Bison Herd is the biggest of three free-ranging bison herds in Alaska. The other two herds are located on the Farewell Burn west of the Alaska Range near McGrath and in the Wrangell Mountains near Chitina, both fairly isolated areas.
The management objective for the Delta herd is 360 bison before the spring calving season, according to Delta area biologist Steve DuBois with the Department of Fish and Game.
The state regulates the herd size through sport hunting. Each year, based on the most recent population estimate, the state issues a select number drawing permits for hunters to hunt the herd.
Given the relatively easy access, high success rates and large size of the animals, the Delta bison hunt is by far the most popular drawing permit hunt in the state. More than 10,000 hunters per year apply for an average of about 100 Delta bison permits.
"It's a very, very popular hunt," Don Quarberg, the Delta hunting representative on the bison working group, said.
If the department were to reduce the size of the herd to 300, which was one of the proposals considered by the working group, it would mean an initial increase in the number of permits issued but a reduction in permits down the road.
"We would probably go down to about 80 permits (per year) and those would be split between bull or cow permits," DuBois said.
Whether or not reducing the herd would solve the problem is unknown but it makes sense that fewer bison would cause less damage.
"We really don't know what the result of reducing the herd would be and whether or not it would reduce the agricultural damage or not," Rogers said.
Reducing the size of the herd and the number of permits to hunt it might help cut down on crop damage but it would also have an economic impact on Delta Junction, Jewkes said. Hunters bring in about $1 million a year to the Delta economy, he noted.
Jewkes feels that hunters and farmers have to work together to solve the problem. There needs to be compromises made on both sides, though he wasn't sure what those compromises are. Farmers will need the support of hunters if they're going to succeed, he said.
"There's 10,000 of us and 20 of them," Jewkes said.
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