The Alaska Department of Fish and Game presented its findings from a seven-year study on mountain goat habitat, and three-year study on brown bear denning habitat in the Chilkat Valley Sunday and Monday.
The new information will affect decision-making on heliski map revisions.
Biologists Kevin White and Anthony Crupi worked to create maps identifying critical winter habitats for mountain goats and bears, but did not conduct the studies to assess the effects of helicopter traffic.
Sunday’s presentation was for the general public, whereas Monday’s was geared toward stakeholders on borough committees and within the heliski industry.
Since 2010, 73 goats were captured and marked with GPS radio collars that monitored locations for their three-year lifespan. Using over 190,000 recorded locations, observations of preferred terrain and probability equations, Fish and Game biologists created maps of habitat where mountain goats are most likely to be.
Fish and Game discovered that because of Haines’ transitional climate, 25 percent of goats spend their winters at high elevation, 35 percent at medium elevation and 40 percent at low elevation. Heliskiiers often ski peaks at high elevation, sometimes on north-facing slopes.
Goats prefer rugged terrain, cliffs and steep slopes that get a lot of sunlight. White said mountain goats are habitat specialists that can be “particularly sensitive to disturbance.”
White said mountain goat behavior could be affected if the animals are being consistently disturbed within 1,500-2,000 meters, according to data from the Northern Wild Sheep and Goat Council and other studies.
“Sometimes there’s subtle effects that aren’t necessarily that obvious,” White said. “Any amount of disturbance may have an effect on reproduction or survival.”
White said the local goat population is healthy enough to allow for a hunting season, but severe winters could cause increased mortality.
Fish and Game will continue to monitor the remainder of the collared goats until at least 2020 and will then have even more complete map data, White said.
Biologist Anthony Crupi has spent the last three Aprils in Haines conducting aerial surveys to locate bear dens and predict preferred denning habitat. After observing 90 bear dens and creating a map similar to the mountain goat data, he predicted that about 15 percent of prime bear habitat overlaps areas where heliskiiers are permitted.
Bear physiology changes drastically while hibernating. Brown bears can lose up to half of their body mass and their body temperature, metabolism and heart rate drops. They enter the den between November and January and exit between February and May. Crupi said disturbances between 1 and 2 kilometers away can cause bears to burn through their reserves faster than intended and cause poor body condition, which in turn negatively impacts reproduction.
Southeast Alaska Backcountry Adventures owner Scott Sundberg said about 15 percent of the mountain goat and bear map, superimposed on one another, will continue to be a conflict between conservationists and the heliski industry.
“I think there’s probably 15 percent of the map that has been, and will continue to be, a discussion,” Sundberg said. “It’s all based on potentials. When an average person sees potential data points or even the real data points…and they see how much area that the potential takes up, I think it’s misleading. Not all potential areas will have goats in them.”
“What we wanted to see, and the committees should be concerned with getting this information, is where that 15 percent comes together in critical times both for the industry and the goats,” Sundberg said. “You can’t really take this information and just make a map. You still have to delineate for all those factors. It’s another tool that will at least get us all talking the same language a little bit.”
Lynn Canal Conservation president Eric Holle said LCC supports the work that Fish and Game has done, but had an opposing view to Sundberg.
“There could be goats in areas that aren’t even designated by Fish and Game, but you have to go with the best available science,” Holle said. “(The agency’s) validation is so high that it seems unlikely there will be a huge error.”
Holle said the Haines Borough will have to make a political choice as to the extent they want to impact local wildlife. He said the borough is in a somewhat unique situation having to make decisions about a huge area of land that is typically managed by a government agency.
“It should be relatively simple now to overlay the maps of critical winter goat habitat on the existing Haines heliski map and determine which areas have possible conflict with heliskiing and define the areas where there is no conflict,” Holle said. “We have good, objective, solid data to work from now. It’ll be up to the borough how they want to use this information. It should eliminate a lot of finger pointing and speculation at future assembly meetings.”
White said the Fish and Game data and maps will be provided to borough planner Holly Smith “within weeks or months” for use with the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee and the Tourism Advisory Board in evaluating heliski map amendments.
The three-year process of approving heliski map amendment proposals was delayed in December in anticipation of this study’s findings.
The studies were conducted on Bureau of Land Management, state, borough and private land. Five BLM employees and six Fish and Game employees traveled from out of town to attend both presentations.
A BLM wildlife biologist said the agency is in the planning process to possibly do additional mountain goat monitoring in the Haines area.