This summer the Alaska Department of Fish and Game closed mountain goat hunting in the Takinsha Ridge and Kicking Horse areas near Haines due to a decline in the population. Now a local advisory committee is asking the Bureau of Land Management to consider restrictions on heliskiing until the goat population recovers.
Last month the Haines Borough’s heliski map committee requested that the borough give them more time to work on possible revisions to the borough’s heliski map. They wanted to spend more time working with heliski operators to address concerns about impacts to mountain goats. That request was denied by the borough assembly.
Assembly member Gabe Thomas and other members of the assembly said that the borough should not be so involved in regulating the heliski industry.
“One of the things I question all the time about this is, how many boroughs in the state have accepted this responsibility and limiting an industry like this?” Thomas told the Upper Lynn Canal Fish and Game Advisory Committee.
Derek Poinsette serves on the Haines borough’s heliski map committee, and the local Fish and Game advisory committee. He said based on the data he has seen, there is heliski activity adjacent to the Kicking Horse area.
“The map committee wanted to have a discussion with the [heliski] industry because we can see this is an area that is important to them, and now it is also an area that has an issue with goats potentially,” Poinsette said.
Poinsette suggested that the Fish and Game Advisory Committee appeal to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rather than the borough. That’s because BLM controls the vast majority of land used by heliskiers in Haines.
So the committee recommended that BLM and the State of Alaska consider restricting helicopter skiing near important winter goat habitats in the Takinsha Range and Kicking Horse areas until the population recovers.
“This is going to the entities that we’ve been told should be managing goats and heliskiing,” Poinsette said. “The idea is that this is addressing the concern that the borough shouldn’t have anything to do with this.”
Committee members Stuart Dewitt and Ryan Cook opposed the motion, saying that the heliski industry was being singled out without conclusive evidence.
There is evidence that there has been a sharp decline in the mountain goat population near areas where heliskiing takes place.
Fish and Game Biologist Carl Koch reviewed the data during the meeting last week.
“Basically the number has declined since 2016 by about 54% in the Takinsha area and around 40% in the [Kicking Horse area].”
Koch said the cause of the decline is not clear. He said only 1 goat had been harvested by hunters in the Takinsha area in the last 5 years, but there is more hunting in the Kicking Horse area.
Fish and Game Biologist Kevin White told the advisory committee that there is scientific consensus that helicopters can adversely affect mountain goat populations.
He said what is less clear is whether heliskiers have impacted the goat population of the Takinsha Range and the Kicking Horse area.
“We really would be challenged to try to understand the extent to which helicopter skiing could be involved or could not be involved because we just don’t know where and when that skiing was occurring.”
The Fish and Game Advisory committee made a request that the Haines Borough ask the heliski industry to provide GPS flight log data of landings and flight paths that can be compared to Fish and Game’s wildlife data.
