A philosophical clash could see a unique herd of Alaskan cattle slaughtered in the Aleutians.
The KSRM News Department spent some time researching how changes in federal decision-making could impact Alaskan traditions. For a deeper look, we turn to some little known islands in southeast Alaska…
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is drafting an Environmental Impact Statement which will study how the Chirikof Island and Wosnesenski Island cattle are impacting the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and consider options for the “domesticated” species.
Delehanty: “I like to eat beef as well as the next guy, so I’ve got no complaint about cattle in general, but there’s some question about if and how they fit on this designated National Wildlife Refuge on Chirikof.”
Steve Delehanty manages the refuge which stretches across nearly 47,000 miles and 4.9 million acres.
Delehanty: “It’s really supposed to be a place where the needs of wildlife come first and a place that we set aside for so we can enjoy wildlife and just sort of a gift that there are these magical places that are there to meet the needs of wildlife for future generations.”
On the Refuge’s eastern end is a flat, low-lying landmass known as Chirikof Island. 60 miles southwest of Kodiak, Chirikof is 29,000 acres of grassy slopes and beach. Its only permanent inhabitants are shorebirds and 2,024 head of feral cattle. On Wosnesenski Island there are just 129.
The cattle began in 1887 as a herd of 8 Siberians and short-horned bulls, brought to the island to feed fox farmers and whalers. Through the second world war, beef was sold to the US Army and Navy. Through the years the breed was supplemented with longhorns, Herefords, Angus, and Whiteface.
Long winters and intermittent years of abandonment have honed the herd into a genetically distinct breed. The herd hasn’t needed an outside food source in over a hundred years, surviving solely on Island grasses.
Delehanty says that diet has created its own complications….
Delehanty: “The coastal areas are particularly hard hit and there’s an area sort of in the north side of the island the cattle seem to like a lot. that has a pretty significant area that is almost denuded of vegetation in a sense. It’s really truly radically altered, but other parts of the island have vegetative cover on them still, it’s just different. The vegetation is shorter, because it’s grazed, but then also the species mix tends to change.”
Delehanty said the federal government is also concerned about the loss of archaeological sites which could hold information about past inhabitants and weather patterns.
But Mike Hamrick with the Safari Club isn’t convinced…
Hamrick: “That’s the standard excuse that they’ve used all over Alaska. Are you aware of any native villages, corporations, tribes that are complaining about the ecological sites that are being degraded? I’m not.”
He says this move is in keeping with a recent shift in federal priorities as a new generation filters into national parks’ management.
Hamrick: “These younger people seem to be more of a hands-off policy type thing and I guess ‘green’ would be the word I’m looking for.”
Hamrick isn’t alone.
A similar story unfolded on Simeonof in the mid 1980’s. A herd of a few hundred cattle had been established on the small Aleutian island since roughly the same time as Chirikof.
Pilot Steve Hakala would visit the island to deliver mail to its single occupant and caretaker. Occasionally, he would take home some beef for his family at Sand Point. That ended one day in ’85…
Hakala: “When it came down to the bitter end, they brought out a Bell2 06 JetRanger, chartered, a gunner with an M16 and they flew sideways and shot all the cattle right out the side door and they just let them lay.”
Hakala flew in to help move some of the carcasses to Unga Island and took some for his family, but most were left to rot.
Hakala: “Brutal. Very brutal. Not a pretty sight. The thing that I was troubled the most about, particularly now that they’re looking at going into other areas and doing the same thing, was that those very people that did the killing will never see that island again. The people that they were apparently representing will never see that island. The only people that ever visit those islands, really, are the folks that are either out there on the federal dime or the locals. That’s unfortunate because those cattle are valuable to the local people, unfortunately, probably more than the puffins are.”
The following year, in 1986, Sand Point’s Shumagin native corporation told the Fish and Wildlife Service it was no longer welcome on their 100,000 acres of land. Officers had returned to shoot the final six head of cattle on Simeonoff without giving any notice to the locals.
The government initially offered the cattle on Simeonoff to anyone who could take them, but the weather and economics proved too complicated. Hakala responded to an SOS call from the island in the early 80’s…
Hakala: “So I flew out, checked it out, sure enough six cowboys had actually been abandoned there. So I flew them all back into Sand Point. They were not a bunch of happy guys, they had hair clear down to their ankles, practically, and they’d been eating nothing but beef for six months.”
The rancher had run into debt and never returned for his men.
Reports vary about the last rancher on Chirikof Island, Tim Jacobson, who left the island around 2003 with just 40 head of cattle. He had been contracted to take them all, but the mission failed amidst mounting debts and the standard difficulties associated with barging thousands of feral cattle away from a remote Aleutian island.
Delehanty said it’s a trip few will make…
Delehanty: “It’s pretty exposed out there all by itseld, so it tends to be exposed to quite a lot of weather. It has to be the right sort of boat and the right sort of mariner to pull it off.”
But that doesn’t mean the issue has gone unnoticed. U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski questions the renewed interest in Chirikof Island…
Sen. Murkowski: “They are truly not an indigenous population, but they have been there, they have acclimated, they are not hurting anyone or anything, and yet Fish and Wildlife somehow thinks that it’s incumbent upon them to spend incredible tax payer resources to relocate these animals to who knows where, for what purpose?”
Murkowski asked FWS Director Dan Ashe to reconsider taking any action with the cattle. She says he agreed relocating the cattle would be “difficult and expensive.”
Murkowski’s father, Governor Frank Murkowski, fought the same battle in 2003 during a troubled attempt to remove the cattle.
“These cattle have been out there for over 120 years and are an extraordinary strain of animal, free of disease and growth hormones,” said Gov. Murkowski. “We hope that we will be able to pursue a solution that will allow the cattle on Chirikof Island to stay alive and well. Let’s leave one island in Alaska for the cattle.”
The Service insists at this point that the future of the cattle is still undecided. They may do nothing at all..
Delehanty: “By law, that’s something that the agency need to consider, so at least one of the alternatives will involve doing nothing and leaving the cattle there.”
Delehanty said the ultimate decision will have to balance public input with the mandates handed down by Congress.
The agency is still open to public input, which can be submitted to:
Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge
Attention: Cattle
95 Sterling Hwy, Suite 1
Homer, AK 99603
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 907-235-6546, or Fax: 907-235-7783
