Judge says Alaska bear-killing program remains void, despite emergency authorization
A brown bear walks on the tundra in Katmai National Park and Preserve on Aug. 11, 2023. Critics of the state's bear-culling program, which is aimed at boosting Mulchatna Caribou Herd numbers, say Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials have failed to adequately analyze impacts to bear populations, including impacts to bears that roam in Katmai. (Photo by F. Jimenez/National Park Service)
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game does not have the right to carry out a controversial plan to kill bears this spring, at least for now, a state judge has ruled.
Superior Court Judge Christina Rankin found that the department's predator control program, aimed at boosting a caribou population that has declined dramatically since the 1990s, remains unconstitutional, despite an Alaska Board of Game emergency authorization for the bear-killing to resume.
Through the program, which began in the spring of 2023 after the board first authorized it in 2022, the department has killed 175 brown bears, five black bears and 19 wolves.
Rankin's order, released late Wednesday, was in response to a request by the Alaska Wildlife Alliance for a restraining order barring the department from carrying out this year's predator control. The department had planned to start culling bears this weekend.
A restraining order is not needed because the program is already legally invalid, under a ruling issued by Superior Court Judge Andrew Guidi on March 14, Rankin said.
Neither the Department of Fish and Game's March 21 petition for an emergency nor the Board of Game's March 27 approval of the emergency changed the fact that there is an existing court ruling that the predator control program violates the constitution, Rankin said.
The state has not satisfied the requirements in Guidi's order for adequate public notice and analysis of the predator control program's impact on the bear population, Rankin said. Because of that, 'the Court specifically finds that the requirements of the Order have not been met and are still binding on the State,' she said.
Critics of the state's program argue that bears are not to blame for the Mulchatna Caribou Herd's decline. They point to numerous other factors, including a changing habitat in which tundra vegetation favorable to caribou has been replaced by woody plants favorable to moose.
They also argue that the predator control program poses a threat to bear populations, including those that roam through Katmai National Park and Preserve.
The Alaska Wildlife Alliance sued the state in 2023 to block the program, and that lawsuit resulted in Guidi's March ruling.
On Thursday, the alliance counted Rankin's ruling as a victory, even though it did not result in a restraining order blocking the state's plans to start roving bears on Sunday.
'The Superior court ruled that the existing predator control program was unlawful, which means that the State poached almost 200 bears over the past few years, including dozens of cubs, from planes and helicopters,' Nicole Schmitt, the organization's executive director, said in a statement. 'Instead of remedying those legalities, the State and the Board tried to skirt the public process again. We're grateful the Court saw this process for what it was: an attempt to run-around a Court order without meaningful engagement from the public.'
In their petition to the Board of Game for emergency authorization, state officials argued that they were under a time crunch to remove bears from the caribou herd's range.
The bear culling has to be conducted during the spring and early summer, the time when caribou are giving birth to calves on which the bears might prey, department officials argued in their petition and at the March Board of Game meeting.
But Rankin, in a hearing Tuesday, expressed skepticism about the justification for the emergency finding.
She peppered Kimberly Del Frate, an assistant attorney general for the state, with questions about how the emergency action would not be seen as an end run around Guidi's ruling.
'I know it's a hard fact, but you need to just admit it: The emergency was created because you lost with Judge Guidi. You wouldn't have needed to do it if you didn't have this decision,' Rankin told Del Frate.
Department of Fish and Game officials did not provide information Thursday on their plans now for predator control in the Mulchatna area. The department was still evaluating Rankin's decision, a spokesperson said.
Joe Geldhof, one of the attorneys representing the organization, said he fears that state officials will carry out their predatory control program in defiance of the ruling.
He and fellow attorney Joel Bennett, a former Board of Game member, see parallels with the Trump administration's defiance of court rulings.
To try to bolster the case against the bear-killing program – and potentially give Rankin legal grounds to issue a restraining order against the Department of Fish and Game — Geldhof and Bennett on Wednesday filed an amended complaint that adds the Board of Game's emergency authorization to the list of state actions that they want to overturn.
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