U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell has appointed a new member to the Federal Subsistence Board. On Monday, January 9th, Rhonda Pitka was selected to fill one of the two public member positions after it became vacant in November of 2016, when Anthony Christianson was appointed by Jewell to chair the Federal Subsistence Board.
A January 9th press release explains that Pitka was chosen due to her “strong record of public involvement in subsistence and natural resources management.” She presently serves on the federal subsistence program’s Eastern Interior Regional Advisory Committee and the Yukon River panel, which provides recommendations on fisheries management for the river to both the U.S. and Canada.
Pitka is also the First Chief of the Beaver Village Council in Beaver, Alaska – located north of Fairbanks toward the Canadian border.
The Federal Subsistence Board was established in the 1990s. It’s made up of a chair and two public members as well as state directors of the National Park Service, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs and the USDA Forest Service.
The U.S. Federal government, through the Federal Subsistence Management Program, manages subsistence uses on roughly 230 million acres of Federal public lands and waters in Alaska.
