FAIRBANKS — The Alaska Board of Game voted to expand this fall’s Nelchina caribou hunt by nearly doubling the number of permits that will be issued for the popular hunt along the Denali Highway.

The seven-person game board held an emergency meeting Wednesday to iron out this season’s Nelchina hunt following a court ruling earlier this month that nullified a community hunt for eight Native villages in the Copper Basin.

After hearing testimony from state wildlife biologists that the size of the Nelchina Caribou Herd had increased significantly, the board voted to issue an additional 1,000 Tier I subsistence permits to hunters. That’s in addition to the 850 Tier I permits the state mailed out earlier this month before the court ruling, as well as 500 Tier I permits that will be distributed among the eight Native communities that participated in the community hunt last year.

“We’re hoping this will move to satisfy as much of the opportunity that was lost (with the community hunt gone) that we can,” said Bruce Dale, regional supervisor with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Palmer.

The state, along with the Alaska Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fund, a sister organization of the Alaska Outdoor Council, had requested a partial hold on the July 9 court ruling. The court ruled the Ahtna community hunt was unconstitutional because setting aside 300 Nelchina caribou permits and 100 any-moose permits for the eight Native villages in the community hunt amounted to a rural preference.

The ruling came as a result of a lawsuit filed by the Alaska Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fund and Alaska resident Ken Manning, who has been fighting the state over the Nelchina caribou hunt for several years.

With the fall Nelchina hunt scheduled to open on Aug. 10, the state was left scrambling to come up with a new hunt.

District Court Judge Carl Bauman, who made the original ruling, directed there be a stipulated partial stay to his ruling at the urging of the state and the Alaska Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fund. Neither Ahtna Inc., the regional Native corporation in the Copper Basin, or Manning, the other parties to the lawsuit, agreed to the stipulation.

Linda Tyone, who served as hunt administrator for last year’s Ahtna community hunt and is vice president of corporate affairs for Ahtna, said she was “very disappointed” with the modified Nelchina hunt. Issuing an additional 1,000 permits will create too much competition for a limited number of animals, she said. “It doesn’t give reasonable opportunity for subsistence users in the subsistence area,” Tyone said.

Putting another 1,000 hunters in the field also creates a safety issue, she said.

“We went through this before,” Tyone said, referring to hunts prior to last year’s community hunt. “The amount of hunters that are going to be out there, it’s going to be a nightmare. I hope nobody shoots each other.”

Ahtna will likely appeal the court’s approval of the partial stay, Tyone said, though she wasn’t sure when. “We’re just trying to digest what happened,” she said.

But Rod Arno, executive director for the Alaska Fish and Wildlife Conservation Fund, said the new hunt is an “acceptable arrangement.”

“We didn’t want the fall hunt to be stopped,” Arno said. “Agreeing to the stipulation (for a partial stay) was in the best interests of all hunters.”

The extra 1,000 Tier I permits will be awarded from the existing pool of applicants who put in for permits last winter, Dale said. No new applications will be accepted.

The department will post the names of new Tier I permit winners online on the evening of Aug. 6. Permits will be available at regional fish and game offices, probably by the opening day of the season on Aug. 10, Dale said.

Biologists suspected the Nelchina herd was bigger than estimated but didn’t have the evidence to back it up until a successful photo census of the herd completed this summer showed the herd to be around 45,000 animals. That was an increase of 11,000 caribou from the previous estimate.

“The last couple years, we thought the count should be up but we didn’t get the count numbers that supported that,” Dale said. “This year, we got a photo census done and it turned up the additional numbers.”

The reason for the big jump in the population is a banner calf crop this year, he said. Biologists estimated the number of calves in the herd this spring at 14,500.

As a result of the higher count, assistant area biologist Becky Schwanke with the Department of Fish and Game in Glennallen said a high harvest of Nelchina caribou is needed this year to bring the herd closer to the population objective of 35,000 to 40,000.

“It is imperative that we harvest a large number of caribou this regulatory year, otherwise we will be facing too many caribou on the range,” wrote in a report delivered to the Board of Game on Wednesday. “Too many caribou on the range could lead to overgrazing and reduced capability of the habitat to support caribou.”

The game board, in its Wednesday meeting, also changed some of the stipulations that come with a Tier I permit. Hunters who shoot a caribou must destroy the trophy value of antlers by cutting them in half or cutting the skull plate in half, which prevents them from being scored for record books, Dale said.

The season was also shortened by more than six months, with an ending date of Sept. 20 rather than March 31.

As was originally stipulated, the 850 hunters who already received Tier I permits cannot hunt moose or caribou anywhere outside game management unit 13.

However, hunters who receive one of the 500 permits issued in the eight villages or one of the extra 1,000 Tier I permits that have yet to be issued have the option of agreeing to the same hunt conditions or relinquishing their permits if they have already made plans to hunt elsewhere.

The department will close the fall hunt when the quota of 1,500 caribou are harvested. That will ensure a winter hunt. The winter hunt will be a Tier II permit hunt, restricted to people who demonstrate a greater dependence on the caribou and a lack of alternative meat sources. Dale wasn’t sure when the application period for the winter hunt would be but said it probably won’t happen for a couple months. The number of Tier II permits issued for the winter hunt will “probably be in the neighborhood of a couple thousand,” Dale said. Hunters who take a caribou in the Tier I fall hunt will not be allowed to apply for the winter hunt.

The game board also adopted a 10-day fall general moose hunt for residents to help compensate for the any-bull moose hunt that was part of the community subsistence hunt. The season will be Aug. 15-25. Only bull moose with spike-fork or 50-inch antlers or antlers with at least three brow tines on one side will be legal.

Eliminating the 100 any-bull moose permits will result in a much lower moose harvest for subsistence users, said Ahtna’s Tyone. The community moose hunt last year was hugely successful, she said. Hunters in the eight villages killed 128 bull caribou and 100 bull moose during the hunt.

“That was the best hunt that ever happened since we went into this Tier II system,” she said. “Almost every household had their freezer filled.”

The Alaska Outdoor Council, meanwhile, has argued that the Nelchina hunt should not be classified as subsistence.

“The truth of the matter is when you look at the game population, it’s so high above what the amount necessary for subsistence is that there doesn’t need to be any (subsistence) hunts by regulation,” Arno said. “If you made it a non-subsistence area there are a bunch of things the Board of Game could do (to accommodate subsistence users).”

For example, the game board could approve a hunt on Native corporation land only and the corporations could determine who would be allowed to trespass on its land, he said.

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587.