PUBLIC LANDS --  A co-operative agreement for the management of moose and caribou between the federal government and Alaska tribes is the first in what may be a trend toward more Native American authority on public lands.

The new agreement gives a committee of Alaska Native leaders authority to set subsistence hunting rules for members of eight tribes on federal and Native corporation lands in Southcentral Alaska.

The U.S. Department of the Interior announced the agreement with the Ahtna Intertribal Resources Commission in a news release Tuesday. The agreement won’t change rules for people who aren’t members of Ahtna-area tribes.

The agreement between the Ahtna commission and the federal government is the first such cooperative management deal established under an order Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced in Fairbanks at the Alaska Federation of Native’s annual convention in October.

The agreement instructs the Federal Subsistence Board to create a permit system that will allow the Ahtna commission to “establish harvest limits, quotas, season dates, and methods and means” for hunting moose, caribou and “other species culturally and traditionally harvested.”

The text of the agreement is published on the Department of the Interior’s website.

In her order this fall, Secretarial Order No. 3342, Jewell ordered federal land managers to look for opportunities to work with Native governments.

However, according to a report in the Fairbanks News-Miner, the announcement of the order "specified that cooperative agreements are voluntary and are not “co-management,” a term of art that signifies a legally mandated sharing of  powers between the United States and other governments."