(Fairbanks, Ak.) The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has taken a major step toward establishing a Wood Bison herd in the Minto Flats State Game Refuge west of Fairbanks.
Fish and Game imported the wood bison from Alberta Canada’s Elk Island National Park, which provides animals for restoration efforts like the one targeting Alaska’s Minto Flats State Game Refuge.
Fish and Game Wood Bison biologist Tom Seaton says the bison, most of which were trucked in from Canada this spring, were temporarily cared for at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Large Animal Research Station, and then barged down the Tanana River to the refuge at the end of July.
“Five containers full of bison with 36 yearlings and five adults.”
Seaton says the animals were offloaded into a one hundred acre fenced area.
“Some of them came off real slow. They just walked off kinda quietly and slow and some of them kinda jumped and ran off real quick, but they all did it safely.”
Seaton says the bison seem to be acclimating well, emphasizing that there’s plenty for them to eat.
“We’ve brought some hay out for supplemental feed and some pellets and things for them to eat, and they’re not eating much of what we have to offer because there’s such good food out there in the meadow that they’ve got available to them.”
Seaton says the plan is to transport another twenty Wood Bison to the refuge this month (Aug). He says Fish and Game staff will remain camped on site to oversee the herd through the winter.
“Kind of supervising that whole process of re-wilding them.”
Fish and Game plans to release the Wood Bison from the enclosure this spring after green up.
It’s the second effort to re-establish the animals in Alaska, where they were extirpated over a century ago. The first restoration project was initiated in the Lower Yukon-Innoko Rivers area in 2015, and the herd has struggled due to some heavy snow winters. Seaton says the Minto Flats Refuge has good forage and generally lesser snowpack, but some Interior Alaska Native tribes and organizations including the Nenana Native Association question the project.
Nenana Native Association First Chief Caroline Ketzler says her people do not have a history with bison, and they wanted more information about the Minto Flats project.
Ketzler notes that the Tanana Chiefs Conference unanimously passed a resolution opposing the project at its annual convention this spring, and she lists several issues.
“The environmental impact on our land and our animals. The treatment of the animals, as we know they may not survive. The location being so close to cultural sacred sites, we do not have and updated environmental assessment, allocation of the bison and then traditional ceremonial use, and then of course the lack of tribal consultation.”
Ketzler is part of a Fish and Game Wood Bison restoration planning team which she says did not decide on a location for the second project.
“There was a directive from the governor to move forward with the bison project before the planning team was done with our process.”
Division of Wildlife Conservation deputy director Darren Bruning says the department was notified by the Fish and Game commissioner that the planning team was to focus on a new population of wood bison in the Minto Flats Game Refuge.
But Bruning underscores that the directive followed thorough review and consideration.
“Arguably it is the most extensive outreach and planning process that Fish and Game has engaged in, at least in recent memory.”
Bruning says the department strived to include anyone who reached out and had interest in the project.
“But in addition, we did considerable, significant effort to visit communities and invited people to different functions, and specifically reached out to these groups over a long period of time.”
An email response from Division of Wildlife Conservation Interior and Northeast Arctic Regional Supervisor Lincoln Parrett adds that the department understands that the reintroduction of wood bison is not universally supported and that all input was QUOTE: “carefully considered”. Fish and Gomes’s Seaton says the whole project, bison included, will cost about two hundred thousand dollars, and is being paid for with federal Pittman-Robertson funds from a tax on the sale of firearms. ###