Department of Fish and Game staff has recommended against increasing elk hunting on Zarembo Island. Two proposals to increase the elk harvest on Zarembo are on the agenda for the Alaska Board of Game meeting scheduled for Jan. 23-27 at the Nolan Center.

The seven-member board will consider almost 70 proposed rule changes for Southeast Alaska hunters and trappers, covering elk, moose, deer, bear, wolves, beavers, migratory birds and other animals.

The regulatory board rotates its meetings across communities in Alaska. The last time it met in Wrangell was in 2006.

The board will hold a work session Jan. 22 before considering proposed rule changes starting Jan. 23.

Among the proposals on the agenda is one submitted by the Wrangell Advisory Committee to the Board of Game that would create a two-week-long hunt on Zarembo for bull elk with three points on either side; one elk per hunter; no limit on the total harvest.

The local committee has long advocated for allowing more hunting for elk on Zarembo to ease the pressure on deer on the island that compete for much of the same food as the elk.

Department of Fish and Game staff opposes the change from the current harvest limit of two elk for 2026. No hunting was allowed from 2006 to 2023, with a limit of a single permit each year in 2024 and 2025.

“If this proposal were adopted,” the staff report said of the proposed unrestricted harvest, “the long-term stability of the elk herd could be jeopardized.”

In 1987, elk were transplanted from Oregon to Etolin Island, where the herd grew large enough that the state allowed hunting in 1997. Over the years, elk swam over to Zarembo to establish a herd on the island that is popular with Wrangell deer hunters.

“They eat everything down to the point that they don’t leave anything for the deer,” Chris Guggenbickler, chairman of the Wrangell Advisory Committee, said this past fall after the committee submitted its rule change proposal to the state.

“They’re starting to decimate the habitat on the beach. … There are a lot of deer hunters who have lost (hunting) areas to elk.”

In opposing additional elk hunting on Zarembo, department staff noted that the “widespread access via logging roads and higher visibility of elk along shorelines” would make it easier for hunters to take elk on Zarembo than from the larger herd on Etolin.

“Based on aerial survey data, trail camera data and reports received from the public, the Zarembo elk population is estimated to be fewer than 50 total animals,” department staff said in its opposition to a larger harvest.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” Guggenbickler said Dec. 29 of the staff position. “We feel the staff is just overly conservative.”

He encouraged Wrangell hunters to come to the Board of Game meeting and testify in support of an expanded elk hunt on Zarembo.

“We’re the ones who have to live with it,” he said of the risk that the elk could reduce the island’s deer population. “We want to fill our freezers.”

A separate proposal before the board, submitted by David Powell, of Wrangell, would create a four-month elk hunt on Zarembo, limit one elk per hunter for the season.

Department staff opposes Powell’s proposal.

“Adopting an unrestricted registration hunt as proposed would likely not be sustainable, and would further exacerbate existing conservation concerns,” the staff wrote.

The board agenda also includes a Wrangell Advisory Committee proposal to change moose hunt rules “to eliminate the regulation that excludes broken, damaged or altered antlers from the definition of spike-fork antlers” for legal kills. The committee said it is an “overburdening regulation, leading to inconsistency and villainizing of hunters.”

Department staff opposes the proposal.

“Naturally or intentionally broken antlers of moose … would again meet the definition of spike or fork antlers and be legal for hunters to retain,” the staff report said. “Because it is difficult to distinguish between naturally and intentionally broken antlers, antlers of any bull moose could be modified to comply with the definition of a spike or fork antler and any bull moose would become legal to harvest, which could lead to conservation concerns.”

The Jan. 23-27 meeting for comments and board deliberations is open to the public in person and by live video stream at boardofgame.adfg.alaska.gov. The meetings will start at 8:30 a.m.

Other items on the agenda include a staff proposal to take a more conservative approach to managing wolf hunting on Prince of Wales Island, to allow the population to increase.

Two Prince of Wales Island Advisory Committees have voted to oppose the move to increase the wolf population, contending that the predators would take more deer, reducing hunting opportunities for locals who depend on deer for food.