We have some disappointing news to share.
On July 3, the National Park Service (NPS) issued a final rule governing hunting on the 19 million acres of national preserves in Alaska, which includes over eight million acres of Wilderness. The NPS administers national preserves similar to national parks, but allows hunting and trapping.
Unfortunately, with the exception of ending the practice of baiting brown and black bears with attractants like bread, dog food, and bacon grease, the Biden administration has abandoned the Obama administration’s 2015 ban on cruel predator killing practices in national preserves in Alaska, instead reverting back to practices established by the Trump administration.
The following activities are now allowed within national preserves in Alaska, including in Wilderness: - Killing mother bears and cubs in their dens, including using artificial spotlights;
- Killing wolves and coyotes with pups during their denning season;
- Shooting caribou from motorboats or shore as they swim across lakes or rivers;
- Indiscriminate and cruel trapping; and
- Using dogs to hunt bears.
Under the Obama administration, the NPS rightly banned these controversial hunting practices on national preserves in Alaska, codifying into law its longstanding position that killing predators to increase prey populations violates its mandate to protect our national preserves in all of their diversity. In August 2020, after Trump’s Interior Department rolled back the NPS’s protective rule with its own rule that deferred to state regulations allowing many egregious “hunting” practices, Wilderness Watch and 12 other groups, represented by Trustees for Alaska, filed a legal challenge. In September 2022, a federal judge ruled in our favor, and against the 2020 Trump rule, which sent the NPS back the drawing board.
In spite of tens of thousands of comments from Wilderness Watch’s supporters and our allies over the past two years, the Biden administration has largely rubber stamped the continuation of cruel and barbaric hunting practices across national preserves in Alaska, including in over eight million acres of Wilderness.
Allowing the extermination of entire wolf families during their denning season or killing mother bears and bears and cubs in their dens has no place in wildlife management, let alone in our national preserves! Bears, wolves, and other native predators are an integral part of what makes these places truly wild and ecologically healthy. Nature should be allowed to shape these wild places, and natural processes should determine wildlife populations and distribution. If these new National Park Service regulations are allowed to stand, one of the main purposes of our national preserves—allowing natural predator and prey dynamics to play out—will no longer prevail. Instead, these great wild lands will be converted to game farms for sport hunters. Suffice to say, we are incredibly disappointed in this news, and Wilderness Watch and our allies are weighing our options to protect wildlife living in national preserves in Alaska. |
