Today, Wilderness Watch, together with a coalition of conservation organizations, filed a lawsuit to stop the Trump administration from reinstating cruel “hunting” practices on 19 million acres of America’s National Preserves in Alaska, which includes millions of acres of Wilderness. National Preserves in Alaska are administered by the National Park Service and are essentially national parks, except that they allow hunting. In 2015, the National Park Service banned controversial hunting practices on the Preserves. On May 20, Trump’s Interior Department announced a rollback of these protective rules, which were adopted by the National Park Service on June 9, and allow seemingly any method to kill wildlife, including: - Killing mother bears and cubs in their dens;
- Baiting brown and black bears with human food or garbage;
- Killing wolves and coyotes with pups during their denning season;
- Shooting wildlife from aircraft, snowmachine, ORV, motorboats, or any other motor vehicle;
- Shooting wildlife from boats or shore as they swim across lakes or rivers;
- Indiscriminate trapping; and
- Using dogs to hunt bears and other wildlife.
These killing methods have no place in wildlife management, let alone in our National Preserves. Not only are these practices barbaric and unethical, but bears, wolves, and other native predators are an integral part of what makes these places truly wild and they should be free from human manipulation in these Preserves and Wildernesses. Wilderness Watch and our allies vow to fight to keep these cruel and unethical practices out of our National Preserves in Alaska. “If these new National Park Service regulations are allowed to stand, our Alaska National Park Preserves will be transformed by hunting methods such as the baiting of bears for easy killing, and the extermination of entire wolf families during their denning season when they are most vulnerable,” said Fran Mauer, Alaska Chapter of Wilderness Watch. “Maintenance of natural predator and prey relationships, a predominant purpose for the Preserves, will no longer prevail. Instead, these great wild lands will be converted to game farms for sport hunters.” | |
