Alaska Department of Fish and Game

Alaska sport fish permit prices are slightly lower this year, after the Alaska Department of Fish and Game removed a 15-year surcharge.

Fish and Game raised the price of permits in 2005 to pay off a $68 million bond debt. The bond financed the construction of sport fish hatcheries in Fairbanks and Anchorage, as well as hatchery enhancements in Southeast.

Safari Club International is appealing a decision from a federal judge to uphold hunting and trapping restrictions in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

The hunting advocacy group hopes the court will reconsider the November ruling, said Regina Lennox, litigation counsel for SCI.

The Kenai Peninsula has a new area wildlife biologist. 

Nick Fowler joins the Alaska Department of Fish and Game by way of upstate New York. But he’s lived all over the country.

Fowler grew up in central Missouri and majored in fisheries and wildlife science at the University of Missouri. He got his masters degree in Mississippi and has researched on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and in California.

Scientists are still digging for answers about the low abundance of adult razor clams on the east side of Cook Inlet. Meantime, charter companies are taking passengers over to the west side, where razors abound.

“The west side is like Deep Creek and Clam Gulch were 20, 24 years ago," said Ernie Kerby. He’s owned Bottom Line Charters, in Ninilchik, for almost three decades.

The decision by Federal Judge Sharon Gleason to uphold Obama-era regulations in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge comes amidst a months-long effort by the state and hunting advocates to change those regulations, as well as a concurrent effort to keep them in place.

This summer, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed changes to existing refuge rules that include allowing hunting brown bears over bait and remove trapping setbacks from trails and trailheads, among others. The service is currently sifting through the tens of thousands of comments it received in response — most in opposition.