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Trump Administration Revives

Banned Hunting Techniques in
Alaska
The move reverses an Obama-era ban on
hunting methods like baiting bears with
doughnuts and shooting swimming caribou.

A brown bear and her cub in Katmai National Park in

southern Alaska. David Tipling/Universal Images Group, via
Getty Images

By Lisa Friedman

June 9, 2020

WASHINGTON — Baiting grizzly bears with

doughnuts soaked in bacon grease. Using
spotlights to blind and shoot hibernating black
bear mothers and their cubs in their dens.
Gunning down swimming caribou from
motorboats.

Hunting methods that for years were decried

by wildlife protectors and finally banned as
barbaric by the Obama administration will be
legal again on millions of acres of Alaskan
wilderness in time for the warm July weather.

The National Park Service policy published

the new rules in the Federal Register on
Tuesday, reversing Obama administration
rules and giving trophy hunters, outfitters and
Alaskans 30 days to prepare to return to
national preserves in Alaska with the revived
practices. Among the reinstated tactics:
killing wolves and coyotes, including pups,
during the season when mothers wean their
young, and using dogs to hunt bears.

Expanding hunting rights on federal lands has

been a priority under the Trump
administration, and an issue championed by
the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., an avid
hunter. In February the Safari Club
International, which promotes big-game
hunting, auctioned a weeklong “dream hunt”
through Alaska with the president’s son as
part of its annual convention.

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Hunting advocates and Alaska state leaders

had opposed the Obama-era restrictions as an
encroachment on states’ rights and an
infringement on their livelihoods. Senator Dan
Sullivan of Alaska, a Republican, accused the
previous administration of leading an “attack
on our unique game management authority”
protected under state and federal law.

Eddie Grasser, director of wildlife

conservation for Alaska Department of Fish
and Game, said the tactics would be used
sparingly, and mainly by subsistence hunters.

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“Most of our towns and villages are not real

connected,” he said. “You have to fly in and fly
out. Living off the land is a critical component
of rural Alaska lifestyle, so those methods that
people are upset about, and I understand why
and I understand the misconception, the fact
is those are primarily methods that are used
by subsistence users in the state of Alaska.”

“The regular hunters in the state don’t hunt

that way and neither do the residents that are
coming in especially ones that are guided,” he
said.

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Animal rights and wildlife protection groups

condemned the rule as allowing inhumane
trophy hunting of wild brown and black bears.

“This would allow extreme cruel killing

methods on over 20 million acres of national
preserves in Alaska,” said Laura Smythe, a
staff attorney with the Humane Society of the
United States.

The initial dispute stemmed from conflicting

approaches over how Alaska manages
predators in the state. The Alaska board of
game allows such baiting tactics to kill bears
and wolves in order to ensure enough moose,
caribou and other game are available for
hunters. The National Park Service, however,
is charged with protecting wildlife populations
including predators like bears.

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In 2015 the Obama administration codified the

Park Service’s role by enacting a rule that
eliminated sport hunting and trapping on
federal public lands in Alaska. The new rule
says state hunting regulations should take
priority over federal ones.

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“This rule acknowledges this longstanding

deference to state law required by statute in
removing the hunting and trapping
prohibitions identified in this rule,” the Park
Service rule said.

President Trump’s first interior secretary,

Ryan Zinke, a former Montana congressman
who displayed a stuffed bear in his
Washington office, signed an order to expand
recreational opportunities on public lands,
including hunting and fishing. Park service
officials later cited that order as the reason for
overturning the ban.

The rule was opposed by a bipartisan group of

79 members of Congress and hundreds of
scientists who said there was “little scientific
evidence” that relaxing hunting rules for
predators and allowing baiting techniques
would increase the availability of other game.

“We have never opposed hunting, but this can

hardly be considered hunting,” said Theresa
Pierno, president and chief executive of the
National Parks Conservation Association. “To
be going into dens of hibernating bears and
killing cubs and killing moms certainly is, I
don’t think, the picture most people have of
hunting.”

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The Safari Club, which lobbied in favor of the

rule, did not respond to a request for
comment.

In 2017 Mr. Trump condemned trophy hunting

as a “horror show.” But in the years since his
administration reversed Obama-era
restrictions on the import of elephant and lion
trophies from some African countries.

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