Using an airplane to spot Dall sheep while hunting will stay illegal in the state for now.

The Board of Game on Tuesday reaffirmed its support for a controversial regulation that bans the use of planes to look for Dall sheep, which typically live in the rocky crags of mountains in the mountains of Southcentral and northern Alaska. The regulation, commonly referred to as Proposal 207, has been in place since March 2015 and has survived scrutiny at multiple meetings since.

The board defeated a proposal Tuesday that would have repealed the regulation entirely by a narrow 4-3 majority. The public was divided, with a number of advisory committees on both sides of the issue and public commenters both in writing and in person at the Board of Game’s meeting in Anchorage split on the proposal.

The proposer, John Frost, wrote in his proposal that the regulation causes crowding and safety issues as the Dall sheep season opens and that it is redundant to another federal regulation that already bans harassment of wildlife by airplane.

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