A state judge has blocked the Alaska Department of Fish and Game from conducting a controversial predator control program, ruling that the department acted “in bad faith” when it launched this season’s planned bear kills on Saturday.
Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin, in a ruling issued late Monday, granted a temporary restraining order sought by a conservation group that opposes the state’s program to cull bears in Western Alaska territory used by the ailing Mulchatna caribou herd.
Last week, Rankin ruled that a restraining order was unnecessary because the program was already legally voided by a previous court order that was still in effect. That previous order came in a March 14 ruling by Superior Court Judge Andrew Guidi, who found that the program, as originally authorized by the Board of Game in 2022, violated constitutional mandates.
But two days after Rankin issued her earlier ruling, the department on Friday announced that it planned to conduct this season’s bear-removal program anyway. The department, in a press release issued late Friday, said the program authorized by the Board of Game’s March 27 emergency action was unaffected by Rankin’s ruling.
The judge, in her order Monday, said that interpretation was wrong.
The March 27 emergency regulation “is invalid and without legal effect,” she said. The state disregarded directives in both Guidi’s order and her follow-up order, demonstrating bad faith, she said.
The state’s push for the emergency regulation and its decision to move forward with the program this past weekend even though it failed to fix the court-identified problems show that “continuing predator control by any means was the goal.”
The department’s predator control program killed 175 brown bears, five black bears and 19 wolves in 2023 and 2024. The animals were killed by being shot from aircraft.
Last weekend’s activities added to the toll. Eleven brown bears and one wolf were “removed,” Ryan Scott, director of the department’s Division of Wildlife Conservation, said by email.
Rulings by Rankin and Guidi resulted from a lawsuit filed in 2023 by the Alaska Wildlife Alliance. The alliance argued that the state’s program violated constitutional requirements for public notice and input and for management of public resources in a sustainable manner. The lawsuit argued that, among other failings, the state did not analyze the impacts of Mulchatna predator control on the area’s bear population, which includes animals that roam in Katmai National Park and Preserve.
Nicole Schmitt, executive director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, said Tuesday that it was a “big deal” that the state had been found to be acting in bad faith.
“The State got in planes and shot nearly 200 bears over the past two years,” she said by email. “When the Court found that the program was unconstitutional, we expected them to come to the table to remedy their mistakes — if the program was deemed unlawful, that means the State just poached hundreds of bears on Alaskans’ dime. Instead, they went back up in the air last weekend, in defiance of the Court’s order, to try poaching more. The Court’s most recent order is a much-needed affirmation and reminder to the Board of Game and ADFG leadership that wildlife management in Alaska is still a public process that requires at least some degree of biological sustainability.”
The state has argued that bear predation on calves is preventing recovery of the Mulchatna caribou herd. The aerial bear-culling program has thus been carried out in spring and early summer, when the caribou calves are being born.
In a statement, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang said state officials are “extremely disappointed” with the ruling. “This will severely reduce our ability to rebuild this herd to provide sustained subsistence hunting opportunities as required under state law,” he said.
The department has ceased the program for this year and hopes to revive it in the future, he said. “While we continue to pursue any legal options available to us, we will schedule a Board of Game meeting in accordance with the court order to get the program re-authorized,” he said.
The Mulchatna herd’s population has declined dramatically in recent decades, from about 200,000 in the 1990s to about 15,000 as of 2024, according to the Department of Fish and Game estimates. Hunting has been barred since 2021, and the department maintains that predation by bears is preventing the herd from expanding to a size that will support hunting.
The department’s goal is for the herd to grow to between 30,000 and 80,000 animals.
The state’s Mulchatna predator control program has the backing of many of the region’s subsistence hunters, and the Alaska Federation of Natives in 2023 passed a resolution supporting it.
But critics argue that the focus on bears is misplaced. They say there are other and more likely reasons for the caribou population decline, including a rapidly changing habitat. Because of climate change, there are more woody plants growing on the tundra territory, a transformation that favors moose but not lichen-eating caribou. Other factors cited as possible causes of the herd’s decline include disease and past overhunting.
In addition to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance lawsuit, a separate lawsuit challenging the program is pending in state court. That lawsuit was filed by Anchorage attorney Michelle Bittner.