March 19, 2016 Moose Management Open Meeting
Peace-Liard Moose Management Pan (PLMMP) – Raychl Lukie is the Project Manager of the PLMMP for FLNRO, but Chris Addison, Director of Resource Operations was at the club to do the presentation.
The PLMMP process started because there was a need to rethink moose management, which had been mostly lacking in recent times in the Peace-Liard. This fact, a request from Treaty 8 to talk about moose management, and the existence of a Wildlife Collaborative Management Agreement with several first nations got the process started. The initial process deliberately involved only government and First Nations with the exclusion of other stakeholders.
Chris Addison estimates that the annual moose harvest in the region is about 4000 and is split about equally between licensed hunters and First Nations. There is an estimate of 50,000 moose across the region, so a harvest of 4,000 is not seen as an issue. Most of the First Nations harvest occurs outside of the season set by the hunting regulations for licensed hunters. The tracking and reporting of First Nations harvest was brought up in the discussions, but there is no agreement to do that. We indicated that is was time for First Nations, Government and other stakeholders to be at the table at the same time. Chris Addison committed to approaching First Nations about that and suggested that an event at the club might be a good way to start things off.
The population target ratios for moose are 30 bulls/100 cows and 30 calves/100 cows.
First nations generally support predator management (especially wolves).
Main Components of the PLMMP
- Determine and population objective for moose by game management zones
- Habitat Management – there has been some maintenance and protection recently, but no focus on increasing suitable habitat. The goal is to also do the later.
- Moose Health Assessment – monitoring for winter ticks, other diseases, or conditions that might be association with industrial activity.
- Tracking moose movement and habitat use.
- Tracking interactions with caribou and predators
- Inventory, including investigating links to cumulative effects
- Predator Management
A question was asked if there was sufficient funding and staffing at this time to make all this happen and the answer was NO.
Timeline:
- April/May 2016 – Draft PLMMP
- May – consultation
- July – revised draft
- August – final draft
- September – plan approval and implementation
