Groups Sue Over Plan To Gun Down Bears In Southwestern Alaska

The Alaska Wildlife Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity have sued the Alaska Board of Game for violating the Alaska Constitution when adopting a predator control program. The program authorizes the killing of an unlimited number of brown and black bears across 40,000 square miles in Southwestern Alaska, with the Southeast border of the program only 30 miles from Katmai National Park & Preserve.

The program also operates near Lake Clark National Preserve, McNeil and Brooks Falls, the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, and the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. This means that it “threatens bears who move across vast stretches of public lands,” according to Nicole Schmitt, executive director with the Alaska Wildlife Alliance.

The lawsuit challenges the reinstatement of the Mulchatna bear control program under the sustained yield clause in Article VIII, Section 4 of the Alaska Constitution, which applies to all animals, including bears.

From 2023-2024, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game killed 175 brown bears and five black bears under the 2022 Mulchatna bear control program. In March 2025, the Alaska Superior Court struck down the original program as unconstitutional, partly because the Board of Game did not have credible scientific evidence of bear populations. The court found the Mulchatna bear control program was “unlawfully adopted and, therefore, void and without legal effect.”

A week later, the Board of Game adopted an emergency regulation to reinstate the program. In mid-May, the court struck down the emergency regulation, but Fish and Game had killed 11 more brown bears in the meantime.

A similar program of “lethal control” was used from 2005 to 2018 on wolves living outside the boundaries of the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve in order to help the Fortymile Caribou Herd by reducing predation in their calving area. Despite the state agreeing that collared wolves would not be targeted for lethal control because they live within the preserve, research teams were forced to shut down studies after collared wolves were shot.

In April 2018, the state stopped predator control of wolves because the program didn’t seem to be working. Despite the caribou herd’s overall gains, calf weights were decreasing. The decrease was attributed to the herd having reached its carrying capacity, meaning the wolves had likely been helping to keep the herd at a healthy size.

Similar justifications were used in the implementation of the Mulchatna bear control program, where the state is seeking to help the ailing Mulchatna caribou herd by culling bears during the spring and summer when calves are being born.

Critics of the program say that other factors, such as climate change, disease, and past overhunting may be to blame for the herd’s decline and that the villanization of the bears is misplaced.

“There’s no excuse for the state of Alaska to be gunning down bears from helicopters,” said Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is a disgraceful misuse of public resources and a betrayal of the trust Alaskans place in their wildlife managers. State officials should protect all of our wildlife for future generations, not flaunt their power by orchestrating the mass killing of iconic bears with no scientific basis. The Mulchatna bear-killing plan is an embarrassment, and it needs to end now.”