Alaska groups sue over unlimited bear killings in southwestern Alaska

Quinn Welsch

(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.”

The Board of Game’s regulation allows the Alaska Department of Fish and Game agents to kill an unlimited number of bears of any age in the Mulchatna Control area through 2028. The Department of Fish and Game is also a defendant in the lawsuit.

“They are doing so without any scientific support or any data to back up what they’re doing,” Freeman said. “They’re just dosed on the religion of predator control. It’s not only abhorrent, but it’s unlawful.

In their lawsuit, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity argue that the Alaska Board of Game’s bear control program is unconstitutional under the sustained yield clause of the Alaska Constitution. The sustained yield clause requires that Alaska’s natural resources, such as wildlife, be allowed to naturally replenish over time for future generations.

The groups first challenged the regulation in 2023, and in March 2025 the Alaska Supreme Court found that the sustained yield applies to all animals, including bears. However, the Board of Game adopted an emergency regulation shortly after the court’s decision to reinstate the Mulchatna bear control program. The court also struck down that regulation in May.

In July, the board again allowed unlimited killing of brown and black bears. The plaintiffs say this is basically the same action the court blocked in March, because it didn’t follow the state’s rules for sustainable wildlife management.

The Alaska Board of Game says that predation of the Mulchatna herd’s calves by bears and wolves is the main reason for the herd’s slow recovery, according to a fall newsletter. Ninety percent of caribou calf deaths within the first two weeks of life are a result of predation, mainly from brown bears, it said.

The Mulchatna caribou herd once included nearly 200,000 animals during its peak in the 1990s, but shrunk to just below 13,000 by 2021, according to state data. The state’s goal is to increase the population back to a desired range of 30,000-80,000 animals.

According to the new lawsuit, about 200 brown and black bears have been killed in the area as a result of the regulation. It’s not clear how significant that number is, according to Freeman.

The plaintiffs also accuse the Board of Game of failing to collect relevant bear population studies, which was mandated by the court in March, according to the complaint.

“Their scientific rational is on incredibly shaky footing,” he said. “They basically presented no new information that fundamentally changes that picture. They just plug their ears and keep going.”

Michelle Sinnot, staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska, the firm that filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, said in a press release that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game

“This program hands fish and game a blank check to destroy bears across an entire region with impunity,” “The Board of Game has once again shirked its constitutional obligations and ignored prior court decisions in its unscientific and relentless war on predator animals.”

The Board of Game could not immediately be reached for comment.