The Haines Huts board will consider moving the site of a permitted public use cabin in the Takshanuk Mountains after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Advisory Council voted 5-1 that it supported amending the permit and relocating it to an area out of mountain goat habitat.
The proposed hut location, near Chilly Ridge on the southern flanks of Mount Tukgahgo, was approved for a land lease permit by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) in 2019. Since then, some conservationists concerned about mountain goat impacts have raised objections to the site, which is located in mountain goat habitat, and want the location moved to an area outside goat habitat, roughly a mile away from the proposed location.
Haines Huts board chair Jess Kayser Forster told the advisory committee that the board took due diligence with conservation concerns, and met with Fish and Game biologists to discuss the proposed location. She said they received no indication that the hut would negatively impact wildlife.
“Working in natural resource management, I get concerned when wildlife management or conservation measures are taken without information to support that action,” Kayser Forster said. “If the goat population is in decline because of habitat loss or because of backcountry cabins, that would be good information for us to know. Maybe we won’t put a cabin there. But (it’s) a pretty low impact project we’re proposing here.”
But advisory committee member Kip Kermoian argued that the absence of evidence is not evidence. He urged the board to consider a conservation principle known as the “precautionary principle,” making the least impactful decision until more information is available.
“Because we don’t know what the impacts of a hut might be does not suggest that there won’t be impacts,” council member Kip Kermoian said. “We have this area that is outside of goat habitat, outside of bear denning habitat, that still facilitates what the goal is.”
Mountain goats are sensitive to helicopter noise and land managers typically require helicopters to travel a certain distance away from the animals. It’s unclear what if any impact people, pets and cabins have on goats, according to Fish and Game biologist Kevin White. White has been involved in goat habitat modeling in the Chilkat Valley.
Advisory committee member Marie Rose voted against the motion. Five members of the 11-person board did not attend the meeting.
“It has been a really thought-out plan,” Rose said. “I know everybody on the board has done their research and tried to be really knowledgeable. Nowhere in the backcountry are you going to be able to entirely avoid wildlife.”
The advisory council decision is only a recommendation and carries no authority. Haines Huts board treasurer Ray Reeves said if the board did decide to abandon the current lease site, they’d want assurances that those opposed to the current site wouldn’t object to a new location.
“All the time that’s been put into the current lease, I would regret abandoning that if we were only to go fight (over a) new lease in a new location,” Reeves said.
Fish and Game biologist Carl Koch commended the Haines Hut board for being willing to consider a new location.
“You guys are busting your butt to find out as much as possible even when you have a permit in hand, which is more than any other permittee that I’ve dealt with,” Koch said.
Kermoian made two additional motions including that should the Haines Hut board move the location out of goat habitat, that the advisory committee write a letter to the Rocky Mountain Goat Alliance requesting grant funding to pay for any expenses associated with changing the lease, and also writing a letter of support of the relocation to DNR.
Kayser Forster told the CVN that the Haines Huts board will reconsider the location at a meeting this month. She said that Haines Huts has long-term goals to create a network of public use cabins in the Chilkat Valley.
“Haines Huts stands by the fact that there’s very little information that shows that hiking and backcountry cabins would have a negative impact on the goat population overall,” Kayser Forster said. “It’s going to be interesting to see how the (advisory committee) navigates these questions of these cabins being in wildlife habitat.”
Depending on the board’s decision and time required to amend or apply for a new lease, the construction of the foundation could begin as soon as this fall, Kayser Forster said.
There are more than 160 public use cabins on Tongass National Forest land in Southeast Alaska. The Alaska Department of Natural Resources also manages cabins across the state.