Newsletter 19 - November 2025

Alaska Constitutional Convention Hears Advice On Wildlife Management
By Mark Richards

During the Alaska constitutional convention in the winter of 1955/56, the delegates brought in Dr. Ira Gabrielson, an expert on wildlife and resource management from the lower-48, to give a presentation to the Resources Committee. Dr. Gabrielson had previously advised 26 other states on wildlife conservation and management issues and had traveled extensively in the Alaska Territory before statehood. I want to touch on some of what Dr. Gabrielson told the delegates, what advice we followed, what we didn’t, and how that may have led to where we see ourselves and our wildlife populations today. His entire speech is linked below. 

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Department of Fish & Game

Dr. Gabrielson outlined four basic tenets of what it takes to run a competent, professional Fish & Game resource management agency:

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1. Adequate authority to do the job of managing a resource that becomes more complicated over time due to human use of the resource and human activities.

2. Establish a program and stay with it. Wildlife populations can diminish very quickly but the efforts to build them back up are complicated and take time

3. The ability to attract and keep good people to work within a wildlife agency

4. Adequate financing to do the job

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As far as numbers 1 & 2, I believe the Department of Fish & Game (Department) has adequate authority to do the job and establishes programs that they – for the most part – stay with. But part of what we are continually up against is that we don’t have the ability to attract and hire the best and brightest people because the state doesn’t pay a competitive salary. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some of the best and brightest working for the Department right now; there are! But we do lose state biologists and managers who move to federal agencies that pay more, and it’s hard to retain staff and attract new hires with what we currently pay. 

Board of Game

One of the most important aspects of state wildlife management is the board or commission that decides who gets to hunt, when, where, and how. Dr. Gabrielson explained what he felt worked best in terms of the makeup of what today is the Board of Game: “To my surprise when they inaugurated the system of a small commission of equal numbers from both political parties, that has worked better in actual administration than any other system that I have studied. I assumed when they set up a commission of four or six people, half of them from each of the major political parties, that there would be a deadlock over very many issues. The very fact that they might deadlock over them soon convinced them that they had to forget any partisan politics and go to work at looking after the resource, and it has worked wonderfully well.”

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We did not follow his advice in forming our Game or Fisheries boards. Instead, the legislature decided that an odd-numbered panel of seven Alaskans with diverse interests and knowledge of the issues would make the decisions. (We have never really adhered to the “diverse interests” guideline.) At the same time, the legislature chose to take a mostly hands-off approach to fish and game issues that were complicated and often divisive and left those decisions strictly to the appropriate boards – with recommendations from the Department – with no real oversight of board decisions. 

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This is the main thing I believe we got wrong as a new state; we formed our fish and game boards in a way that allowed politics to overly influence decisions. We let Governor after Governor stack the boards to his or her liking to carry out certain agendas that weren’t based on what’s best for the resource and Alaskans. We allowed money and influence to excessively enmesh itself into our system of fish and game management.

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That’s not to say that economic considerations aren’t important. The mission statement of the Department includes mention of the economy: “To protect, maintain, and improve the fish, game, and aquatic plant resources of the state, and manage their use and development in the best interest of the economy and the well-being of the people of the state, consistent with the sustained yield principle.” But I don’t think the intention was to manage our wildlife based on who brings in the most money. That isn’t in the best interest of the well-being of Alaskans, nor is it consistent with the sustained yield principle. 

The Department of Fish & Game Cedes Authority

The other more recent thing that has happened is that the Department has continually ceded their authority to the boards that make the decisions, letting themselves get steamrolled and shut out. That’s how we ended up with a Department policy that they must remain “neutral” on all allocation decisions. It doesn’t matter if nonresidents are taking 90 percent of a declining sheep population, the Department simply will not weigh in on whether that is in the best interests overall for the sheep or resident hunters. We just get a stock answer that “under full-curl management unlimited sheep hunting poses no conservation concerns.” The absurd and hypocritical thing about this policy is that the Department is only neutral on allocation decisions that would limit nonresidents! The Department has submitted (and got passed) many proposals to increase nonresident bag limits and seasons when game populations are high, even if it causes more crowding and competition, but when populations are low they must somehow keep their mouth shut on proposals asking to limit nonresidents? 

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We need the Department to get back to being the manager and stand up to the boards and understand that our fish and game resources are supposed to be managed sustainably with an emphasis on protecting and enhancing hunting and fishing opportunities for Alaskans. 

Wildlife Management Tools

The last part of Dr. Gabrielson’s speech I want to highlight pertains to what wildlife agencies could do to improve or sustain game populations:

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1. Limit human harvest

2. Predator Control

3. Create Refuges or Sanctuaries

4. Transplant/Reintroduce game populations

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Historically, the primary tool wildlife managers have used to improve or sustain game populations is to limit the number of human hunters and harvests. Predator reductions can be efficacious in some cases, but the results are typically short lived and control programs are costly and controversial. Refuges and transplant programs predictably take place after game populations have been depleted. 

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When it’s all boiled down, Dr. Gabrielson said that wildlife management really comes down to one primary thing…and it isn’t the wildlife: “Wildlife management, if you could deal only with the wild populations and their problems, would be relatively simple, but in my opinion most wildlife management consists of five percent dealing with wildlife things and 95 percent dealing with wild people, and most of the problems and most of the headaches in wildlife administration come from human attitudes and human problems not from the wildlife problems.”

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How very true!

Conclusion

Certainly, no one could have known the changes that would come after we became a state. But I don’t think it was inevitable that politics and money would so influence how we manage and allocate our fish and wildlife. Dr. Gabrielson advised the delegates to ensure that wouldn’t happen, that consideration for the resource should always come first, and in turn the delegates drafted the most unique of state constitutions among them all in terms of our fish and game resources, even stated right there in Article 8 that the fish and game resources of the state belong to Alaskans for their common use. Somehow, though, what that really implies remains ambiguous to legislators, the Boards of Fisheries and Game, and the Department. 

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The sad irony of where we find ourselves today in terms of our fish and game management is that the primary motivation for Alaska statehood was to gain local control of our fisheries resources that were being exploited by Outside commercial interests under federal control. Those same commercial interests – both Outside and in-state – now dominate fish and game management and allocation decisions. 

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RHAK will continue to press for reforms so that our wildlife is managed sustainably with an emphasis on protecting and enhancing hunting opportunities for all Alaskans.

Dr. Gabrielson's speech https://www.akleg.gov/pdf/billfiles/ConstitutionalConvention/Proceedings/Proceedings%20-%20Day%2037%20-%20December%2014%201955%20-%20Pages%20847-865.pdf