Northwest Arctic subsistence leaders are again asking regulators to cut caribou hunting to four bulls a year, as the Western Arctic Caribou Herd continues to shrink. The herd has lost about half its animals in six years.
The Northwest Arctic Subsistence Regional Advisory Council voted for the limit at a meeting in Kotzebue on Sept. 24. The vote comes ahead of a key Board of Game meeting in Kotzebue in January. The board sets hunting rules for the region once every three years.
For families across the region, caribou are a central food source. Dozens of communities depend on the herd, which ranges over an area about the size of California. The herd was last counted in 2025 at about 121,000 animals, the lowest number in nearly 50 years. Fish and Game wasn’t able to complete a count of the herd this year because bad weather in late June scattered the caribou before biologists could photograph them, said Alex Hansen, a caribou biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Hansen told the council too many adult cows are dying for the herd to grow. He said predators, mostly wolves and bears cause about 70% of deaths to the herd.
“It’s my estimate that local harvesters take maybe 4,000 cows per year,” Hansen said. “Our harvestable surplus for cows right now is zero. Like any cow we take over, zero is too many.”
That estimate reflects past harvests. Cow hunting is now closed.
Fish and Game has also asked the Alaska Board of Game to approve a plan to kill wolves and brown bears in parts of the herd’s range, a proposal the board is expected to take up in January.
The council voted 6-1 to recommend a limit of four bull caribou a year on federal lands in the Northwest Arctic, the Seward Peninsula and the southwest North Slope. Raymond Lee of Buckland cast the lone no vote. During the discussion, he said families rely on a cow caribou in winter, when bulls are in rut and not good to eat.
The council also voted unanimously to recommend the same limit to the Alaska Board of Game, which sets hunting rules on state land. Under state regulations, Alaska residents can currently take 15 bulls a year in Units 22, 23 and southwest 26A.
The council has asked for these cuts before. In 2024, it joined local advisory groups and the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group in asking the board to reduce the limit to four caribou a year. Some rural hunters told the board four wasn’t enough, and the board set the limit at 15, one of which could be a cow.
Since then, the herd has kept shrinking. Cow hunting is now closed under state and federal rules.
Council members pointed to out-of-town hunters as part of the problem. Fish and Game figures show nonresidents harvested an average of about 180 caribou a year from 2012 through 2022, nearly all of them bulls. Hansen said local hunters take an estimated 10,000 or more caribou a year.
But council members said those numbers aren’t the whole story. They said planes carrying out-of-town hunters, along with helicopters for mining and construction, can scare caribou off their migration routes and delay them. Noorvik council member Elmer Armstrong Jr. said even with federal lands closed to out-of-town hunters, the flights haven’t stopped.
“Even though we closed federal lands here, they were really busy as soon as the season opened,” Armstrong said. “I see them fly every day.”
As of late September, many hunters are still waiting for the caribou to show up.
Biologists and subsistence hunters say the herd has been arriving later in recent years. As of late September, biologists said most collared caribou were still far north, on the North Slope. In Ambler, council member Tristen Pattee said hunters have had to travel farther, and the extra travel gets expensive fast.
“With the high cost of fuel in our community, which is $26 a gallon, having to travel those greater distances made it more difficult and expensive for residents to harvest food for their families,” Pattee said.
In January, the Board of Game will take up more than a dozen proposals on the Western Arctic herd alone. They include a lower bull limit, ending nonresident hunting and predator control. One would stop all caribou hunting, including by local hunters, if the herd falls to 75,000 animals.
Hansen said Fish and Game is still writing its recommendations to the board, but he gave the council his own view.
“The cow harvest needs to go away, and then a reduction of bulls is necessary,” he said. “Four is kind of a number that we’ve fallen to for the past few years, and I think it’s a good starting point.”
After January, the board isn’t scheduled to reconsider the region’s hunting rules until 2030, unless regulators take emergency action.
Council member Mike Kramer of Kotzebue said the region can’t afford to lose the herd.
“I want our people to continue to harvest these animals in a safe manner, conservative manner, to ensure that they continue on,” Kramer said.
Pointing to his young son, who was sitting beside him, Kramer said, “I want him to be able to hunt caribou too.”
The Board of Game meets in Kotzebue Jan. 23-26, and written comments are due Jan. 9. Comments can be submitted through theBoard of Game’s website. The Federal Subsistence Board will decide on the bull limit at its meeting in Anchorage Feb. 2-5.
