Environmentalists sue Alaska over sanctioned killing of 99 bears

ANCHORAGE (CN) — An Alaska wildlife advocacy organization sued the state, its game board and the commissioner of the state agency that oversees hunting and fishing on Monday for unlawfully adopting a predator control program that killed 99 bears in less than a month.

In a 20-page suit filed in Alaska Superior Court on Monday, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance objected to an amendment of a proposal originally addressing wolf management to include bears without regard for state due process requirements for public notice and public comment during a January Alaska Board of Game meeting.

“There was no opportunity for public or state biologists to comment on adding bears to the predator control program, nor did the board hear any reports or presentations from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game on bear populations in the region before adopting the proposal. In fact, the Department of Fish and Game has never conducted a bear population survey in the area,” the alliance says in the complaint.

This amendment resulted in the killing of 94 brown bears — including 11 cubs — five black bears and five wolves on the Mulchatna caribou calving grounds, ranging through southwest Alaska's Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, Wood-Tikchik State Park and several Bristol Bay-area villages. The killings took place only on state-owned land via helicopters and airplanes and occurred from May 10 and June 4.

“With this egregious mass shooting of a valuable public resource, the state has run roughshod over the rights of its citizens and will be held accountable for its wrongs,” Nicole Schmitt, executive director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, wrote in a statement posted on the organization’s website. 

Ryan Scott, acting director of wildlife conservation for the Department of Fish and Game, declined to comment on pending lawsuits. An advisory statement issued by the agency on June 6, announced the completion of its predator control program to benefit the Mulchatna caribou herd and 48 Alaskan communities that rely on the herd for food.

According to state agency data, the Mulchatna caribou herd — which once included around 200,000 animals during its peak in the 1990s — had been decimated to 12,850 caribou by 2021. The Department of Fish and Game’s goal for the herd now is to increase population up to 30,000 to 80,000 animals. The agency acknowledged that disease, predation, harvest and animal nutrition can all impact caribou survival but noted that predation was something they could more immediately address with the amendment of an already active wolf control program.  

“Reducing the number of bears and wolves was a logical step in adaptive management to determine if summer calf survival can be improved," the agency said in the advisory. "While there are other factors to consider with the herds’ decline (e.g., habitat capability, disease), predator control is an immediate tool the department can use to attempt to reverse the herds’ decline. The spring portion of this Intensive Management effort was accomplished by department staff.”

The Alaska Wildlife Alliance, however, disagrees.  

“This program should alarm any Alaskan interested in our state’s wildlife management. The state’s aerial killing of 99 bears this spring was made possible by a wolf proposal that magically morphed into a new bear control program lasting until 2028, funded by hundreds of thousands of state dollars. If the board is allowed to completely re-write proposals and pass them without public input, then trust in the state’s wildlife management system collapses,” Schmitt said.  

The grassroots nonprofit’s case is represented by former Alaska Board of Game member, Joel Bennett, and Juneau-based attorney, Joseph Geldhof. 

“Joel is mad. This is a righteous lawsuit,” Geldhof said in a phone interview Thursday. “My co-counsel is 80 years old and he is mad. He was on the Board of Game for years and upset that the commission now would allow such a travesty.”  

The substance of the suit is confined to lack of due process on the part of the state, Geldhof said. The alliance says in the suit that the proposal, if allowed to continue, will kill all black and brown bears that wander into the Mulchatna calving grounds each year until 2028.  

“I’ve been a lawyer for 42 years and not prone to conspiracy theories, as legal issues often result from human stupidity," Geldhof said. “But this involves evil and malicious intent.”

Geldhof, suggesting that a personal agenda to demonization of bears is at play in the proposal, asked, “Where was the grown-up leadership here? Where was the governor or the board of game commissioner? This is an obvious due process mistake on the part of an agenda to demonize a species that has coexisted alongside caribou for 10,000 years." 

The Alaska Board of Game, the State of Alaska and Alaska Department of Fish & Game commissioner, Douglas Vincent-Lang, are named as defendants.

The Alaska Wildlife Alliance’s suit asks for a declaration that the Board of Game failed to meet its constitutional requirements for due process, a declaration that the Department of Fish and Game failed to provide the necessary information to properly institute bear control consistent with sustained yield and requests an injunction to halt the bear control program until it complies with the law and the Constitution. 

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