June, Alaska — Conservation groups filed a lawsuit Monday over a government program in Alaska that allows the killing of brown bears and black bears as a way to increase the size of a caribou herd that was once large in the southwestern part of the state. The groups claim the program lacks scientific basis and is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit filed in state court says the program adopted by the Alaska Game Board in July does not require the Department of Fish and Game to monitor bear populations to ensure their numbers remain sustainable. It also says the program — which is implemented by department employees and allowed to shoot from helicopters — sets no limits on the number of bears that can be killed in an area roughly the size of Indiana.
The lawsuit, filed by the Alaska Trustees on behalf of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity, lists as defendants the state, the board, the Department of Fish and Game and the department’s commissioner. A message seeking comment was sent to the Alaska Department of Legal Affairs, which typically represents state agencies in lawsuits.
The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest in an ongoing legal battle over what Fish and Game viewed as an attempt to restore the Mulchatna caribou herd. The herd, named after its traditional birthplace, peaked at around 190,000 in the late 1990s and was an important source of food for subsistence hunter-gatherers from dozens of communities. But herd numbers began to decline, reaching about 13,000 caribou by 2019, and hunting has not been allowed since 2021, according to the administration.
The department said factors such as disease, hunting, food availability and quality, and predation can impact caribou survival, and in this case, the board decided it could address predation. It said it was responding to requests for help rebuilding the herd and restoring caribou as a food source in the area.
In a fall news release, the department said bears and wolves “have been identified as significant predators of calves.” She said an aerial survey last fall indicated the ratio of calves to cows in the western subset of the herd was the highest recorded since 1999. She added that this indicates a “positive response” to the 2023 and 2024 predator control program targeting bears and wolves in calving areas.
According to the lawsuit, in May 2023 the agency killed “every brown and black bear it found in the 1,200-square-mile (3,108-square-kilometer) concentration area that includes the calving grounds of the western Mulchatna caribou herd.” In 2023 and 2024, 180 bears were killed, most of them brown bears, the lawsuit says.
The Alaska Wildlife Alliance previously filed a lawsuit to end the program. In that case, a judge in March found fault with the process by which the program was approved, concluding that the state lacked data on the sustainability of bears in the area before implementing the program.
But the board and management went ahead with emergency regulations under which 11 bears were euthanized before another judge could kill them.
The department later announced a public comment process surrounding plans to reauthorize the program, which the lawsuit filed Monday said includes elements that were deleted in the March ruling. The plan approved by the board in July allows the program to continue through 2028, the suit says.
“We were trying to rebuild the caribou herd, but we would not jeopardize the long-term sustainability of bears by doing so,” the department’s commissioner, Doug Vincent Lange, said in a statement after the board’s action.
He said there was “strong evidence that neither disease nor nutrition is preventing this herd from recovering,” and that predation “has been isolated as a limiting factor preventing the herd from growing.”
The program “threatens bears moving across vast swaths of public lands,” said Nicole Schmidt, executive director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance.
Parts of the area where bears can be killed are near Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Katmai National Park and Preserve and near wildlife refuges, Schmidt said in a statement Monday.
Michelle Sinnott, a staff attorney for the Alaska Trustees, called the program unconstitutional. She said it “gives Fish and Game a blank check to destroy bears throughout the entire region with impunity. The Game Board has once again evaded its constitutional obligations and ignored previous court decisions in its unscientific and relentless war on predators.”