Vern Evans
Wildlife officials in Alaska are pushing back on a state supreme court decision to halt an aerial predator-control program they say is necessary to help reverse caribou declines. Less than two weeks after a court order halted the program, officials petitioned the state Board of Game for an emergency authorization Friday to continue killing bears and wolves in Western Alaska. The predator control there is part of the agency’s efforts to the critically declining Mulchatna caribou herd.
Since 2012, the ADFG has been using aerial methods to remove wolves from the herd’s range. In 2023, the agency expanded its predator-removal efforts to include brown and black bears. A total of 19 wolves and nearly 200 bears have been removed.
Then, Anchorage Superior Court Judge Andrew Guidi deemed the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s predator-culling management plan unconstitutional in a 10-page decision filed on March 14. Guidi found the Board of Game’s approval of bear kills in the Mulchatna range violated constitutional mandates for sustainable management by failing to consider the program’s impact on the bear population. He also found that the Board’s action violated constitutional standards for public notice and comment.
Including “a bear removal program on state lands substantially changed the subject matter of the proposal,” Guidi wrote in his decision. “These changes went far beyond varying, clarifying, or altering the specific matter of the proposal addressed in the original notice. As a result, the BOG failed to adhere to mandatory due process standards.”
In response, ADFG filed its petition to the State Board of Game on March 21 seeking an emergency regulation to begin its third year of “intensive management” in the struggling Mulchatna herd’s range. Officials say that bear and wolf removal are “critical” for the herd’s continued recovery and don’t negatively impact the bear and wolf populations in Western Alaska. They also argue the predator-culling program needs to continue to realize the effects of past removals.
“To be effective the MCH IM program was designed to manage large predator populations in a small, defined area at a low density for a period of time long enough to allow caribou calves to be recruited into the population and to reproduce, which is a minimum of three years,” ADFG wrote in the petition. “The department is asking the board to find an emergency and make emergency regulations to aid in achieving the IM objectives and to provide a harvestable surplus. Not being able to remove predators from the calving grounds in the spring of 2025 further threatens the recovery of the MCH, which will also preclude subsistence hunters from being able to harvest caribou for an unknown number of years to come.
“Department-led efforts have resulted in positive growth in herd abundance and improved calf [to] cow ratios,” the peition continues. “Not being able to conduct control efforts in the third year is detrimental to the program and will result in a loss of the improvements in calf recruitment and survival that have been realized since the department treatment began in 2023.”
Western Alaska’s Mulchatna caribou herd consisted of nearly 200,000 animals in 1997 when the herd provided more than 4,700 caribou for the subsistence needs of 48 local communities. At that time the herd also provided hunting opportunities for Alaskan and non-resident hunters. The herd has since dwindled to 13,000 caribou, despite hunting being closed since 2021.
Although the Mulchatna caribou herd’s declining numbers are indisputable, the cause of the population drop is up for debate. Critics of the ADFG’s wolf- and bear-culling program say climate change is a key factor in falling caribou numbers. They contend that warming temperature trends have caused a dramatic habitat change, allowing woody bushes and trees to expand into tundra territory. Since caribou rely on lichen and moss to survive, the spread of woody plants across their traditional habitat has made it less suitable for supporting a thriving herd.
Critics also say diseases such as brucellosis have contributed to the decline of the Mulchatna herd — not apex predators.
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The ADFG aims to restore the Mulchatna herd to between 30,000 and 80,000 caribou, which it says would sustain annual hunts of 2,400 to 8,000 animals. According to the Alaska Beacon, the emergency authorization petition is being considered by the state Board of Game during its eight-day meeting.
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