The eye targeted on the spectacle of state wildlife biologists flying round in helicopters capturing each grizzly bear they’ll discover (186 killed to date plus 5 black bears and 20 wolves) on the calving grounds of the Mulchatna Caribou Herd in Southwest Alaska mustn’t obscure the geographically a lot bigger marketing campaign towards grizzly bears being performed by the Alaska Division of Fish and Recreation and the Alaska Board of Recreation.
This warfare, usually termed “intensive administration,” is being performed by many years of liberalized bear looking laws motivated by the need to cut back bear numbers within the hope this can end in extra moose and caribou for harvest by hunters (most of whom dwell in city areas).
The Mulchatna program is formally outlined as being “predator management” as a result of it includes aerial capturing of bears by Fish and Recreation employees. The geographically a lot bigger effort to cut back bear abundance utilizing regulation liberalizations just isn’t outlined as predator management. This lawyerly sleight-of-hand by definition permits Fish and Recreation to misleadingly declare that predator management on bears (and wolves) is happening solely within the comparatively small parts of Alaska the place aerial capturing of bears is ongoing. The other is true utilizing a commonsense definition of predator management, which is to realize declines in predator numbers.
We’re 4 retired Alaska Division of Fish and Recreation biologists who’ve revealed a number of peer-reviewed papers documenting this effort to cut back grizzly abundance by regulation liberalizations. We documented this in an space that represents roughly 76% of Alaska; the world the place liberalizations of bear looking laws are most aggressive. That is in all places besides in Southeast Alaska, Kodiak, Prince William Sound and the Alaska Peninsula, the place bears are massive and are nonetheless managed for sustainable trophy harvests. It contains all areas the place moose and/or caribou are frequent. Some parts of the liberalizations on this space embrace:
• Liberalized laws in a Recreation Administration Subunit a complete of 253 instances and made extra conservative solely six instances. This contrasts dramatically with the sample previous to passage of the Intensive Administration regulation in 1994, when regulation adjustments have been equally balanced between small tweaks in both route.
• Growing the bag restrict from one bear each 4 years (in all places in 1980) to 1 or two bears per 12 months. In 2005, 5% of the world had an annual bag restrict of two per 12 months however this elevated to 45% by 2020 and to 67% by 2025.
• Longer open looking seasons to incorporate intervals when hides are in poor situation and bears are in dens. The entire space had looking seasons totaling lower than 100 days in 1975; by 2015, 100% of the world had seasons longer than 300 days (20% longer than 350 days).
•Grizzly bears couldn’t be baited wherever in 2010 however, by 2022, grizzlies could possibly be baited in 75% of the world (basically in all places besides north of the Brooks Vary).
• In 1975, all resident hunters have been required to buy a $25 tag previous to looking grizzly bears however that is now routinely waived in all places.
• Rules designed to incentivize killing extra grizzlies even embrace permitting hunters to promote the hides and skulls of bears they kill (nowhere previous to 2010, 26% of the world in 2016 and 67% in 2025). Permitting these gross sales is, successfully, a bounty on bears and is opposite to one of many fundamental ideas of the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation towards the commercialization of hunted wildlife.
All through this complete space of our evaluation, there was just one scientific examine with new data on grizzly bear numbers or traits. In Subunit 13A, Fish and Recreation biologists reported a decline in bear density of 25%-40% throughout 1998-2012; outcomes from a follow-up ADFG examine in the identical space 5 years in the past haven’t been analyzed. It’s scientifically irresponsible to conduct a examine like this with (in all probability) greater than $200,000 of public funds expended and never analyze and report the outcomes. Declines in grizzly bear density much like or larger than these present in 13A have most likely occurred all through Alaska correlated with the regulation liberalizations (and documented will increase in grizzly bear harvests). No person can say this for certain nonetheless, as a result of the state has not executed any research. In need of avoiding extirpation, it’s onerous to not conclude that the BOG and the management of ADFG doesn’t care what is occurring to grizzly bear populations in most of Alaska.
This aggressive administration of bears is basically pushed by the 1994 Intensive Management Law (IM). This regulation set a wildlife administration precedence for human consumptive use of moose, caribou, and deer. Beneath the IM regulation, state managers are successfully required to conduct predator discount efforts wherever hunter calls for for extra moose or caribou harvests exceed the availability.
Nowhere in Alaska for the reason that passage of the IM regulation has there been any scientifically-documented “success” exhibiting elevated hunter harvests of moose, caribou or deer that’s considerably correlated with the predator discount applications. One among us (Sterling Miller) co-authored the one peer-reviewed paper on this matter since passage of the IM regulation; this paper concluded that 40 years of wolf and bear discount efforts in GMU 13 weren’t correlated with elevated hunter harvests of moose. We’re saddened to see the company during which we as soon as proudly served the Alaska public now decreased to capturing bears (and wolves) from helicopters in some areas whereas deceptive Alaskans in regards to the true extent of the warfare on bears that’s occurring in Alaska and its “effectiveness”.
Sterling Miller, PhD; John Schoen, PhD; Charles C. Schwarz, PhD; and Jim Faro, MS are retired analysis and administration biologists for the Alaska Division of Fish and Recreation’s Division of Wildlife Conservation who’ve performed analysis on bears and different matters in Alaska and elsewhere.
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