Edith Wilson asked the Game Board to legalize her cat Cleo at this weekend's meetings in Anchorage. Board member Ben Grussendorf said he has "an old yellow beat-up Tom cat" that would love to meet the hybrid.

The Board of Game voted this week to allow Alaskans to own watered-down hybrids of wild cats while rejecting calls to legalize monkeys, finches, sloths, wallaroos and other exotic pets.

In fact, if you've got a chimpanzee in the basement, better tell the Department of Fish and Game soon. The board voted to make chimps illegal, but if anyone actually owns one in Alaska, they can likely get grandfathered in with a little paperwork.

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 the Valley and eastern Interior, while tightening reporting requirements for those hunts.

The board delayed a decision on adding a predator control program in the northern Alaska Peninsula.

The state revisits the so-called “clean list” of legal pets every four years. 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.

Remember Earl the Bengal?

His owners said he’s a seventh-generation hybrid, meaning he’d be legal with the right documentation. Simon the Savannah, however?

Bob Hallinen / Anchorage Daily News Simon, a Savannah cat, Nov. 7, 2008 in west Anchorage

He’s the hybrid that was ordered to be deported back in late 2008, spurring efforts to legalize hybrids statewide. 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 vote was a close one: 4 to 3.

“If the regulations had been less stringent, it would have been a failed effort,” Rabe said.

SALVAGE REQUIREMENTS

As the trial began this week for the remaining Point Hope caribou hunters accused of wasting caribou meat in 2008, the board voted against a related proposal that would have loosened requirements for salvaging game. The proposal was originally a regional request by the Arctic Advisory Committee, who proposed allowing hunters to leave meat that they considered diseased.

The board in November delayed that request to the Anchorage meeting, considering it a statewide issue.

But over the weekend, North Slope Borough biologist Brian Pearson told the board that the regional advisory council didn’t intend for the rule to be applied statewide and didn’t support it as such.

In voting down the proposal, “several board members pointed out that they heard virtually no other testimony in favor of it,” said Fish and Game spokesman Bruce Bartley.

POTLATCH MOOSE

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. Those areas are generally the most populated in the state and include Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, Fairbanks and parts of the Valley.

The board voted 6-1 to clarify the rules, making it clear you 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, where Ahtna Inc. sought to play a larger role in oversight of potlatch hunts.

“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.

Valkenburg explains:

“What we’re trying to do is accommodate both the concerns of the Anchorage, Mat-Su and Fairbanks advisory committees, where they see this an essentially unsupervised, open-ended way for people to harvest more moose – especially in their areas where competition for moose is fairly high. ... But also to accommodate Native concerns that they need to be able to take moose in non-subsistence areas to have a reasonable accommodation.

"And then also to accommodate Native concerns that they want it to be organized," he said. "They where as much in favor of having more organization to the thing as the department was.”

In all areas of the state, Alaska Native leaders will be required to keep records of potlatch kills and provide them to Fish and Game upon request, Valkenburg said. The Department will keep a list of areas where potlatch hunts will still be off limits because of low game numbers.

PREDATOR CONTROL

The board also rejected a proposal that would have barred non-residents for hunting in predator control areas where subsistence needs aren’t being met, according to The Associated Press:

Supporters of the proposal said it would have reserved moose and caribou for Alaska residents in areas where predator control is operating. Supporters pointed out that Alaska law mandates that moose and caribou be a priority subsistence resource for Alaska residents.

But the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said it is an allocation issue the board should decide on a case-by-case basis.