A mother bear known as Bear 402 and her cubs are seen on Sept. 26, 2018, below a viewing platform at Brooks Camp in Katmai National Park and Preserve. The Brooks Camp site, at the salmon-rich Brooks River, is a world-famous destination for bear viewing. Bears that arrive at the river's waterfall area each year include those roaming the habitat used by the Mulchatna caribou herd. (Photo by R. Taylor/National Park Service)
With the Board of Game’s consent, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is again killing large numbers of bears and wolves, most of them brown bears, this time to grow the Mulchatna Caribou Herd so its members can again be hunted by people living in the area. Or so the argument goes.
While combing through some writings of mine from years ago, I recently came across a piece I’d written for the Anchorage Daily News in 2006, when Frank Murkowski was governor and the state was once again expanding its predator-control efforts. In the commentary’s headline, I posed the question: “Where’s the outrage?”
Though angered and discouraged by the state’s intensifying campaign to kill wolves and bears, I was equally disheartened by the public’s apparent apathy. Most people didn’t seem to care, or weren’t paying attention. Or they’d grown numb to the carnage. Or they too readily accepted the state’s claims at face value.
Two decades and many predator-kill programs later, it seems not much has changed. In some ways, things are worse than ever, particularly in Southwest Alaska.
This state-run slaughter of brown bears—and what else can you call it?—is unprecedented, in multiple ways.
We might begin with the number of dead brown bears, which now exceeds 250 animals gunned down by department staff or hired killers since 2023. Or the fact that this has been the most brutal sort of bear-kill program, the animals terrorized by helicopter gunships before they’re killed; and even moms with cubs, and the cubs themselves, targeted for death. This is so despite abundant evidence that bears are not the problem and their killing not the solution.
I have written about this cruel, immoral slaughter several times, most recently in a commentary headlined “In defense of bears.”
Following its publication, a good friend texted me, “I just read your ADN article. Your scathing comments are remarks that people like me need to hear. Apparently folks go about their daily lives mostly unaware, or only vaguely conscious, of deceptive public commentary and downright evil Alaska policies/actions.
“I do encourage you to write more, but I also wonder if the public is listening or cares about an issue so unconnected to their daily activities. Somehow I feel an ADN article is more of a whisper when a bullhorn is needed. . . .”
His assessment appears all too true. I know many Alaskans who consider themselves progressive and “green” but are too busy or distracted or focused on other issues to care much about the killing of bears and wolves. Sadly, most of my friends fit into that category.
Even more infuriating is that most of the state’s conservation or environmental groups have largely stayed silent, the most notable exception—and too often the only exception—being the Alaska Wildlife Alliance.
Yes, those groups have their reasons, their priorities. But at some point, as we all know, silence becomes complicity.
It is frustrating and, yes, discouraging, to those of us who are passionate wildlife advocates to not only witness regressive and inhumane policies and practices not only continue, but in notable ways worsen, without a public uprising.
I know, I know: many of the people in my circles of friends—and those representing advocacy groups—who pay little or no attention to our state’s “wildlife politics” have their own passionate causes. I also realize I live in a “red” state and that many residents don’t share my views. And that many rural Alaskans, including Alaska’s Indigenous peoples, have different perspectives than mine.
But I also know this: If most Alaskans better understood the deception that underlies much of Alaska’s predator-kill programs, they would oppose what our state’s wildlife managers are perpetrating.
Our state’s system of wildlife management has been broken for far too long. A groundswell of opposition is needed.
There was a time when Alaskans pushed through citizen initiatives to right some of the state’s wrongs. But citizen revolts are most likely when “we the people” can see or read first-hand accounts of what’s happening. I think of the physician-hunter Jack Frost and his “mechanical predation” of wolves in the 1980s, or biologist-activist Gordon Haber’s snared-wolf video in the nineties.
In other words, people are most likely pushed into action by something visceral. And for more than a quarter century, the despicable nature of Alaska’s predator-kill programs has remained largely out of sight, and therefore out of mind.
But that may be changing, thanks largely to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and increased media coverage of the Mulchatna bear slaughter, particularly by the Daily News. The AWA’s recent images of state-killed bears left to rot on the tundra, accompanying an ADN article, have already made some difference. And now the Daily News has begun a series of articles that takes a much-needed, in-depth look at the state’s Mulchatna bear-kill effort.
I’m hopeful this will make a difference: stir things up, get more Alaskans involved, ignite the start of significant change. Provoke some outrage.
Something else that gives me hope: the looming election.
Under Gov. Mike Dunleavy, our state’s mismanagement of wildlife—particularly the state-run killing of bears and wolves—has been more egregious than any I’ve witnessed in the 40 or so years I’ve covered Alaska’s wildlife politics.
But the push for extreme predator-control programs began long before Dunleavy took office and is intimately connected to our state’s unbalanced system of wildlife management, starting with the so-called “intensive management” law passed in the 1990s. And by the Board of Game.
The last time that seven-member board had any semblance of balance was during Tony Knowles’ term as governor nearly a quarter century ago. Since then, things have gotten progressively worse, as both BOG members and Department of Fish and Game officials have been appointed by Republican governors — and approved by legislators of both major parties — who have emphasized ever-more-extreme “intensive management,” predator-kill strategies to benefit human hunters, the large majority of them urban “sport hunters” and guided non-residents.
Over the years, the BOG and F&G have discovered they can do just about anything they want, without significant public or political backlash. That has emboldened their outrageous behaviors.
It’s long past time to return to more balanced—and yes, more progressive—wildlife management policies and priorities. This is the way Alaskans can have the most immediate impact: elect a governor and legislators who will ensure that ALL of Alaska’s wildlife are managed in a respectful, humane manner. It’s the least that we can do, outraged or not.
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Courtesy of Alaska Beacon
