FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Rick Steiner (907) 360-4503 richard.g.steiner@gmail.com
Jeff Ruch (510) 213-7028 jruch@peer.org
Alaska Aerial Gunning Bears Yields No Clear Benefits
State Has No Evidence Strafing Brown Bears Increases Caribou Calf Survival
Washington, DC — The State of Alaska wants to continue a controversial program of aerial gunning bears and wolves for a third year even though its own internal assessment concedes that it may not have the desired effects. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) advocates that the state end the program now.
Under its “Intensive Management” (IM) program, Alaskan game agents, primarily in helicopters, shoot any bears and wolves they can find. In 2024, the state Department of Fish and Game killed 95 predators (82 brown bears and 14 wolves) across a 1,350 square kilometer area. In the same area in 2023, the state shot 94 brown bears (20 of which were cubs), five black bears, and five wolves from helicopters. Alaska’s aerial gunning program constitutes the largest government kill of brown bears anywhere, ever.
In an October 2024 report, Southwest Regional Management Coordinator Todd Rinaldi wrote, “The goal of the project was to increase caribou calf survival by removing all bears and wolves from the calving grounds…” However, his report concedes, “Data does not exist to evaluate whether the goal was achieved.”
The report points to other factors, “including disease, nutrition, and winter severity, [that] may also simultaneously be affecting the growth” of the caribou herd in the region. In fact, more than two-thirds of caribou calves necropsied “died from starvation and/or dehydration.” At the same time, the caribou herd is also afflicted with the “continued active spread of brucellosis,” a disease that, among other adverse effects, can decrease calf survival.
Rinaldi’s report concluded, “the Department does not fully understand the long-term ramifications of predator control and interaction with nutrition and disease, but they are currently being investigated.” Nonetheless, he recommended continuing the program into a third year because killing predators “is one of the only tools available to the Department.”
“Fish and Game’s justification for slaughtering scores of brown bears because it does not know what else to do is fairly pathetic,” stated Rick Steiner, an ecologist, former University of Alaska-Fairbanks professor, and Chair of PEER’s Board of Directors, noting that the Department spent more $500,000 of State of funds on this aerial gunning program in 2024 alone. “The Department should have a full scientific grasp of its actions before it launches the gunships again.”
Nor does the Department know what impact the mass removal operations have had on the region’s brown bears since “the Department did not have an opportunity to estimate brown bear densities within the IM areas prior to removal.” More than half of the brown bears killed in 2024 were adult females, while more than a fifth were cubs. The state refuses to allow photographs of the slaughter to be taken, independent observers to be present, or to subject the program to scientific review by the National Academy of Sciences.
“This program epitomizes wildlife mismanagement rather than its management,” added PEER Executive Director Tim Whitehouse, whose organization is urging that the state’s Game Commission not extend it for a third year. “In 2018, Alaska considered asking the National Academies of Science to evaluate its predator control programs before backing off; it should reconsider.”
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Revisit the 2023-4 lethal removal operations
