Alaska conservation groups sue over unlimited bear killings in southwestern Alaska

(CN) — Conservation groups in Alaska challenged the state Board of Game’s authorization for the unlimited killing of black and brown bears in southwestern Alaska on Monday for a second time.

The groups say the state violated the Alaska Constitution when it adopted a predator control program that authorized the unlimited killing of the bears across a 40,000-square-mile swathe of southwestern Alaska, known as the Mulchatna Control Area.

The new lawsuit is the latest back-and-forth between two conservation groups, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Alaska Board of Game, which began when the state enacted the bear control program in 2022 in an effort to recover the population of the Mulchatna caribou herd.

But conservationists say the state has an ulterior motive.

“The state of Alaska wants to turn Alaska into a game farm and artificially boost ungulate populations as high as possible for hunters at the expense of other wildlife,” the Center for Biological Diversity’s Alaska Director Cooper Freeman told Courthouse News after the lawsuit was filed. “They have one tool they want to use to do that. That’s predator control, or aerial gunning, of animals like bears and wolves.”

https://www.courthousenews.com/alaska-conservation-groups-sue-over-unlimited-bear-killings-in-southwestern-alaska/