The Yukon Wilderness Tourism Association is again raising concerns over a land use application by a big game outfitting business for the exclusive use of campsites in the back-country.

The same company which was embroiled in a court battle with the Yukon government over what the government considered illegal occupation of Copper Point on the Bonnet Plume River has applied to legitimize its use of the site.

"I thought we had already dealt with this,” Blaine Walden, the association's vice-president, said in an interview this week.

Walden said the application filed by Bonnet Plume Outfitters not only raises issues specific to Copper Point, but about several other sites in what looks like an attempt to claim the historic use of campsites the company has never used.

The Yukon government initiated a program in 2005 to provide big game outfitters with an opportunity to identify sites they have used historically to run their business.

The intent is to provide the outfitters with legal tenure in the form of land leases for the larger sites, and licences to use the smaller sites, to provide them with certainty of land tenure and exclusive use of the sites.

Bonnet Plume is only the second application to be received in five years.

Walden said the wilderness tourism association has no problem with 16 of the 28 sites the company has identified.

But with the remaining 12, there are big questions, and he suspects the First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun out of Mayo will be making some pointed submissions, he said.

"It kind of looks like a land grab,” said Walden, who operates a canoeing and rafting business in the Peel River watershed during the summer.

Among the 28 sites, he pointed out, is a claim to three hectares at Copper Point.

Bonnet Plume Outfitters was given an eviction notice last year to remove all buildings from the site within three years, unless it could demonstrate historical occupancy of the site.

Territorial government documents filed with the Yukon Supreme Court indicate the government maintains the company illegally constructed a main lodge, three sleeping cabins and a couple of outbuildings on a site it has no historical claim to.

Though government staff met with Chris and Sharron McKinnon to talk about Copper Point, the government maintains there was never any permission nor permits granted – or even implied – that would allow the McKinnons to use the site, let alone construct buildings.

The McKinnons, on the other hand, maintained they were given the green light to proceed with their Copper Point project through conversations with government staff.

The Yukon government's original eviction notice prompted an all-out battle in a confidential, out-of-court settlement last March.

Under the terms which were made public, Bonnet Plume Outfitters was to tear down the main two-storey dining lodge it had built, and remove all other buildings in three years, unless it could demonstrate historical use as required by the big game outfitter land policy.

Under the agreement, the company was also required to submit its outfitter land use application to identify all its historic sites.

Lyle Henderson, the government's director of lands, said the lands branch encouraged the outfitting company not to include Copper Point in its application.

The site, however, was included in the application received last December.

Henderson said now that Copper Point has been identified as a site the company used historically, it will be treated as all other sites claimed by Bonnet Plume Outfitting, and put through the same review process.

At the end of the day, it will be up to the joint review committee of first nation and Yukon government representatives to recommend acceptance or rejection of each of the 28 sites, including Copper Point, Henderson explained.

Walden said there's absolutely no evidence of any significant historical use of Copper Point by the outfitting company prior to April 1, 2003.

(It is the date outfitters must demonstrate use prior to, as it is the date the Yukon government inherited from Ottawa the responsibility for managing the territory's land and resources.)

Bonnet Plume Outfitters, according to court records, did not begin construction at Copper Point until 2005.

Outfitters who owned the hunting concession prior to the McKinnons buying it in 2005 did not use Copper Point, and there was no evidence of even an old tent frame at the site, Walden said.

He said they may have stopped there and roasted weenies over a campfire, but that hardly counts as justification to claim three hectares – 7.5 acres – to use exclusively as a base camp.

The chair of the wilderness association's lands committee said he was also surprised to see that Bonnet Plume Outfitters was allowed to build a smaller cook shack last year, in place of the larger dining lodge it was required to tear down.

It's not standard practice, Walden said, for the government to issue a building permit for vacant Crown land.

And it's likely no coincidence the building was kept to 600 square feet, or just under the size which would require an official YESAB assessment, he said.

Henderson said a provision for the cook shack was part of last spring's out-of-court settlement, though it will also have to be removed with all the other buildings if the company is not successful in demonstrating historic use of Copper Point.

Copper Point, said Walden, was never used by the outfitters because they would land their clients in float planes at a nearby lake.

He said it was the construction of the airstrip there by a mineral exploration company in the 1990s that turned the site into an attractive location for developments like the one Bonnet Plume Outfitters is trying to push through.

The situation, he said, underlines how the allowance of airstrips in the back-country without any requirement to reclaim them after use can be a magnate to otherwise remote and pristine areas.

Walden said he recognizes mineral exploration companies are entitled to use airstrips for as long on they maintain the mineral claims.

But perhaps it's time to impose harsher restrictions on their use, just like restrictions imposed on the use of winter roads through the wilderness, he said.

Walden pointed out once a company pushes through a winter access road, it doesn't become a public highway, and its use by that company alone is very restrictive.

Henderson said the intent is to have a decision on the Bonnet Plume Outfitters' application by the end of this year.

While the initial 45-day period to receive public comments on application was to end Wednesday, the government has extended it to May 4 because of requests to do so by interest parties, including the First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun.

The first outfitter land application was received by Lone Wolf Outfitters four years ago and is still not complete, though a decision is expected this summer, he said.

Henderson said the Lone Wolf application presented staff and other parties to the process with a fairly steep learning curve but now that they've got the lay of the land, the process should be much more streamlined, as he expects with the Bonnet Plume application.

The Lone Wolf application also raised serious concerns by many, and allegations of attempts to grab primary pieces of wilderness the company did not have any historic claim to.