EMAIL ARTICLE LINK TO ARTICLE PRINT ARTICLE

Article Published: Wednesday, September 01, 2004



Hunters cry foul over Creamer's closure

By TIM MOWRY, Staff Writer

A flap between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game prompted state wildlife officials to close Creamer's Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge to waterfowl and crane hunting Tuesday, the eve of opening day.
While hunting is prohibited in the front viewing fields at Creamer's Field, waterfowl hunting has traditionally been allowed on several ponds in the back of the 1,900-acre refuge off College Road.

But Fish and Game officials were notified by enforcement agents with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Monday that hunters at Creamer's Field could be cited for hunting illegally over bait because of the farming activities the state uses to draw geese, ducks and cranes away from runways at Fairbanks International Airport and the Fort Wainwright Army Post, where they pose a hazard to aircraft. The state grows and cuts barley for the birds to eat.


"We were blindsided by this," said refuge manager John Wright at Fish and Game. "We're doing this to keep hunters from being cited by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service."

However, Wright said late Tuesday that a compromise between the two agencies could be reached today to allow hunting in traditional areas.

"It's looking like things are going in the right direction but we can't say anything until then," Wright said.

Fish and Game officials spent Tuesday calling the dozens of hunters who had registered to hunt on the refuge to tell them the season had been postponed to Sept. 16, the date the state's feeding program ends. There were more than 80 hunters who registered to hunt on Creamer's Field, though not all of them were waterfowl hunters, Wright said. The refuge offers one of the few places for duck and goose hunters without an airplane or boat to hunt waterfowl around Fairbanks.

"It's the best, most relied-upon spot in the Fairbanks area," Wright said.

According to David James, head of the state wildlife division in Fairbanks, the two agencies had come to an agreement about the state's feeding program and hunting on the refuge.

"I was under the impression that an agreement had been reached to allow hunting on the refuge this year while experimenting with farming practices that clearly would not fall under the federal definition of baiting," said James in a release announcing the closure.

Ducks Unlimited paid to put in a half dozen ponds in the back of the refuge in the 1980s and hunters were using a handful of natural ponds in the northern corner of the refuge long before that, Wright said. The closest hunting pond is about three-quarters of a mile from the closest farming field.

"I don't think we're setting up hunters by what we do in the front field," he said. "Our purpose is to keep birds away from the airport. That's the whole purpose of the refuge."

Hunter Lynn Levengood was livid when he was notified of the closure. Levengood said he has been hunting ducks and geese at Creamer's Field for more than 20 years and there are fewer birds in the hunting ponds now than there were when Fish and Game began it's farming practices in 1988 to attract birds to Creamer's.

"There is no baiting," Levengood said. "Now the birds are drawn away from the (ponds)."

Karen Boylan, a spokesperson for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the situation was brought to the agency's attention last year when Fairbanks agent Corky Roberts was investigating a case at Creamer's Field and determined the farm fields were an attractant "that altered the behavior of the birds," Boylan said.

Birds flying to a baited field may fly at lower altitudes and fly over areas they might not normally fly, Boylan said.

"If it makes it easier to hunt, that's the issue," she said.

The two agencies have been working for the past year to come up with an agreement to allow hunting on the refuge, Boylan said.

"We're confident we'll be able to work together to resolve it," she said.

Even if an agreement is reached and hunting is allowed, the state's feathers have been ruffled by having to postpone the opening day of the hunting season, Wright said.

"This might lead to a resolution but we're not happy to have to go to this extreme," he said.