Alaska Governor Dunleavy’s Plan To Import Sitka Deer To Mat-Su Valley

From the Anchorage Daily News: Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has proposed a plan for the Mat-Su Valley to import a population of Sitka black-tailed deer to the Mat-Su Valley for hunting purposes. But as this story suggests, there will be pushback:

Plenty of species have been relocated all over Alaska to advance hunting and food security: musk oxen, moose, wood bison, reindeer, elk and many of the Sitka black-tailed deer that have lived for decades on Kodiak Island and in Prince William Sound. Wildlife relocations are a normal enough management policy to have a lengthy bureaucratic review process within the Department of Fish and Game, one weighing ecological risks, community benefits and other factors.

As an initial step in that process, Fish and Game staff developed a scoping report this year laying out the feasibility of deer relocation. The Dunleavy administration denied a public records request for the proposal, deeming the documents “predecisional and deliberative,” and as such “protected from disclosure under the deliberative process privilege.”

But a copy of the report obtained by the Anchorage Daily News described bleak prospects for any deer moved into the Matanuska or Susitna valleys. What’s more, according to the report’s authors, even if millions of dollars in public money are spent and the deer come to thrive in a populous area crisscrossed with roads, farms and established wildlife populations, they may ultimately mean more problems than benefits.

The story is an interesting read that discusses the complications of such a bold plan.