The Board of Game voted this week to allow Alaskans to own hybrids of wild cats -- provided their gene pool is watered down -- while rejecting calls to legalize monkeys, sloths and other exotic pets.
"I'm just relieved that little Cleo is no longer a criminal," said Edith Wilson of Anchorage, who owns a 6.5-pound Savannah cat.
The new pet rulings came during a four-day meeting on statewide hunting rules that wrapped up Monday in Anchorage. The Game Board also voted to allow hunters to kill moose and other game for Alaska Native funeral and memorial potlatches in popular hunting grounds such as the Valley and eastern Interior, while tightening reporting requirements and oversight of those hunts.
The board delayed a decision on adding a predator control program in the northern Alaska Peninsula. On Wednesday Fish and Game officials said they recommend killing wolves and transplanting bull caribou as part of a plan to stop the "imminent and perhaps irreversible" decline of a caribou herd on Unimak Island.
As recently as 2002 the Unimak herd in the Aleutian Chain numbered more than 1,200 caribou, according to Fish and Game. The latest count on the island in 2009 found fewer than 300 caribou, with a shortage of bulls in particular.
Both issues are expected to surface at the next Game Board meeting at the end of the month in Fairbanks.
First, the seven-member board faced the exotic-cat lobby. Wilson on Friday gave each member a report blasting what hybrid advocates consider the state's lack of research, saying most states consider Bengals and other cats as domestic breeds rather than wild animals.
Bengals are descended from Asian Leopard Cats. Savannah cats are part serval.
Wilson put a picture of Cleo wearing a dangling, metal-and-crystal necklace on the cover of her report. Board member Ben Grussendorf looked at the photo and told Wilson he had a "old yellow, beat-up tomcat" that would love to meet the hybrid.
The state revisits the so-called clean list of legal pets every four years. Monkey fans also made a push, arguing the state should legalize a small breed called Capuchins that are trained in small numbers by a Boston nonprofit as helpers for the disabled.
"I'm really disappointed because my mother is handicapped," said Bianca Jurczak of Ketchikan, who co-wrote one of the proposals. "She has (multiple sclerosis). She has no use of her legs ... that was really going to be a major option for her to be able to take care of herself."
The state Department of Fish and Game recommended against allowing monkeys, writing that primates are at risk for inhumane treatment and spreading disease.
The board also said no to finches, wallaroos, kinkajous and devenomized reptiles. Despite the addition of some hybrids, some cat lovers aren't declaring victory.
"We got a crumb ... I don't see how it's going to work," said Joann Odd, who lives near Ninilchik and co-sponsored one of the hybrid cat proposals.
One problem, she said, is that the law appears to require too much paperwork from hybrid owners, who must show their animal is at least four generations removed from any wild ancestors.
That means Simon, the loose Savannah that Fish and Game ordered deported after someone caught him in a dipnet in late 2008, can't come home, Wilson said.
Simon was reportedly a quarter serval, meaning he'd still be illegal under the new rules. By the state's math, a fourth-generation hybrid would be more than 6 percent wild.
"The great-great-grandchildren of the breeding of a wild cat would be the first one that would be eligible," said Dale Rabe, deputy director for Fish and Game's Wildlife Conservation.
The cat vote was a close one: 4-3.
"If the regulations had been less stringent, it would have been a failed effort," Rabe said.
When Wilson heard the news, she and Cleo celebrated with Haagen-Dazs and a movie, she said. "She had vanilla, and I had butter almond."
On another sensitive subject, involving potlatch moose kills, the board decided to tweak the law.
The Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that the state must allow people to take game for religious ceremonies. But there's been confusion over the state law, which appeared to ban potlatch kills in non-subsistence areas such as Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, Fairbanks and parts of the Valley.
The board voted 6-1 to adjust the law, making it clear that one can kill game for funeral and memorial potlatches in non-subsistence areas while adding new reporting requirements.
Beginning July 1, hunters will have to get approval of an Alaska Native tribal chief, village council president, clan leader or other official, said Deputy Fish and Game Commissioner Pat Valkenburg.
The hunter and the village or tribal official will be required to carry a "ceremonial harvest report form" from Fish and Game for kills in non-subsistence areas and in the Nelchina Basin.
"The village chief will be the one that gives the permit to the individual, and then the village chief will turn around and report the permit to fish and game," said board Chairman Cliff Judkins.
Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.
By KYLE HOPKINS
khopkins@adn.com