Unless government does something to restrict the use of off-road vehicles, it’s going to continue struggling with managing mountain sheep populations, it was said at a wildlife meeting Tuesday evening.

It was a packed house that turned out for the annual fall meeting hosted by the Yukon Fish and Wildlife Management Board to discuss proposed changes to hunting and fishing regulations.

Fifteen proposals in all were discussed, but none received more attention than the proposal by Environment Yukon to put five sub-zones west of Whitehorse on a permit hunt for Dall sheep.

Environment Yukon officials were peppered with questions about the need to implement a permit hunt now that a big game outfitter is active again in the area.

Officials were asked to justify their proposal with science, and then they were criticized for not having it.

Many felt it was unacceptable to sacrifice sheep hunting opportunities for local hunters to make room for non-resident big game hunters.

It was suggested the government was trying to sneak in the back door with a veiled attempt to force a sheep quota on the big game outfitter, because in subzones where Yukoners are put on permit hunts, the outfitter must be put on a quota.

Several in the audience of 80-plus said that at the end of the day, it all comes down to access to the backcountry by ATVs and Argos.

There’s no management issue if off-road vehicles are banned for sheep hunting, many said.

Twenty years ago, it was said, it took sheep hunters a couple of days to hike into those remote areas and couple of days to hike out. Today, hunters can be in and out in the same day with their Argos, it was said.

Putting the five sub-zones on permits will only push local hunters into other game management zones that are still open to sheep hunting.

Several suggested just as Environment Yukon wants to tighten down game management zone seven this year, when hunters and their ATVs move to management zone five because they didn’t get a permit for seven, Environment Yukon will be back next year for restrictions in zone five.

And when hunters move on to the next management zone after zone five is put on permits, they’ll take their ATVs to the next open zone, and so on, and so on, and so on, said several in the audience.

What the Yukon needs is a comprehensive sheep management plan for the Yukon, one that looks at all aspects of decision-making, one that anticipates the repercussions of closing subzones and putting them on permits, it was suggested.

The wildlife management board uses public input it receives every fall to help formulate a final recommendation to the Environment minister. The recommendations are usually sent in late December or early January.

This year’s list of 15 proposed changes to hunting and fishing regulations is well above the number of proposals the management board usually handles in a single year.

The five subzones in game management zone seven are part of a big game outfitting concession that was seized from the outfitter by the government in the late 1990s. The area was without an outfitter for 15 years, but remained open for resident hunters.

The government sold the hunting concession after years of struggling with what to do with it and big game outfitting returned to the area in 2013.

While resident hunters have maintained a steady harvest of Dall sheep in the five subzones in question, the harvest has been below four per cent of the adult population, a benchmark Environment Yukon uses to determine sustainable harvest levels. The harvest by local hunters, however, has been increasing and with the addition of the non-resident hunts in the last three years, the year’s total harvest of 34 Dall sheep is likely to exceed the sustainable level, Environment Yukon maintains.

Information provided last night indicated of the 34 sheep taken this year, 22 were by resident hunters and 12 were taken by non-resident clients of the big game outfitter.

Government biologist Rob Florkiewicz explained last night that before the government seized the concession in 1999, resident hunters accounted for about two-thirds of the Dall sheep harvest, and one-third was taken by the outfitting business.

Under the proposal, the government wants to replicate that two-thirds, one-third harvest scenario, he said.

Government biologist Troy Hegel said the government is concerned if the subzones remain open, harvest levels will continue to grow.

“Just to maintain a sustainable harvest, that is the intent of this proposal,” he said.

But many in the audience objected, arguing a permit hunt reduces opportunities for local hunters to put food on the table.

Normally it takes between four and seven years in the lottery system to get a permit, so if a local hunter is 60 now, waiting another seven years for a sheep permit might be unfair, it was said.

The accuracy of the government science was questioned and prodded, and it was even suggested the four-per-cent harvest rule is unsupported, and may have even originated from an obscure Alaskan research paper that’s nearly 100 years old.

A couple of big game outfitters in the room who have concessions in other areas of the Yukon suggested the proposal pitted big game outfitters against Yukon hunters unnecessarily, without a lot of evidence supporting the need for permits.

Outfitter Tim Mervyn insisted outfitters don’t want to fight with resident hunters, and resident hunters don’t want to fight with outfitters.

The proposal is creating conflict and should be withdrawn, and replaced with a more fulsome management approach, he said.

“We do not want to fight,” said David Dixon, another outfitter in the audience. “... Government needs to start managing these areas.

“If it’s access, let’s get together to stop the access,” he said, sparking applause.

If ATV access to sheep country is controlled, there would be no issue, it was said many times.

There would be no need to close the subzones and put them on permit hunts, no need to make the 60-year-old hunter wait another seven years, no need to reduce the opportunity for a hunter to feed the family.

But if access is not controlled, the same discussion today about harvest levels in the five subzones west of Whitehorse will eventually come forward for the entire southern Yukon, it was said.

Whitehorse hunter Peter Harms told the audience that until ATV access to sheep country is addressed, the domino theory will remain in play – shut down this area, and then this area, and then this area....

Philip Merchant, a wildlife technican who spent decades with Environment Yukon, said the harvest level by the new big game outfitter is the same as it was before the concession was seized.

“What has changed is the ability for residents to go deep into these areas, and until that is managed, this issue is going to continue,” he told the audience.