A ban on bear baiting by hunters in national wildlife preserves in Alaska goes into effect on Aug. 2 under new National Park Service restrictions imposed for reasons of public safety.
In a lengthy notice published on July 3 in the Federal Register the NPS said this rule would lower the probability of visitors encountering a bait station where bears may attack to defend a good source.
The rule will also lower the risk that bears will associate food at bait stations with humans and become conditioned to eating human-produced foods, thereby creating a public safety concern, NPS officials said.
A third consideration, NPS said, is that NPS is guided by its mandates under the NPS Organic Act to conserve wildlife and under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) of 1980 to protect wildlife populations. While NPS supports wildlife harvest as authorized in ANILCA, it cannot promote activities that increase non-harvest mortalities of bears, the park service said in its announcement in the Federal Register.
Bear baiting has long been a contentious issue in Alaska. This new final rule comes in the wake of years of rulemaking and reversals with the changing of the guard in the White House.
Environmental entities including the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), say the new restriction is too narrow, because it fails to protect bear cubs and wolf pups from various sport hunting practices allowed by the state of Alaska, including killing cubs and pups in dens.
“The agency has flat out decided not to do its job of protecting parks and park wildlife,” said Jim Adams, Alaska senior regional director for NPCA. “Under the NPS Organic Act, the agency has a legal obligation to prioritize conservation of wildlife over use. And while NPS acknowledges that the above hunting practices are not appropriate under NPS management policies, they have decided to allow them to continue anyway, except for bear baiting.”
Of the 54 million acres of national parklands in Alaska, approximately 22 million are managed as national preserves, which allow for activities including fishing and hunting. However, such activities must follow park service guidelines which prevent hunting methods intended to reduce predator populations.
Alaska’s congressional delegation meanwhile rebuked the park service decision to restriction hunting, contending that such restrictions violated the intent of Congress in ANILCA.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the park service “failed to recognize that the state has primacy over hunting, fishing, and trapping activities, and failed to acknowledge that Congress has already rejected a substantially similar rule from the Fish and Wildlife Service.”
“The park service totally ignored the expertise and voices of Alaskans, including state scientists and biologists and Alaska Native people who rely on traditional hunting practices to feed their families and who’ve thrived on these lands for millennia,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska.
“Alaska needs to maintain predator control, not because we want to kill bears and wolves, but because we rely on the caribou and moose for subsistence,” said Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska.
The delegation had in March asked Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to withdraw the proposed rule.
