OPINION: Lamenting the state’s kill of Wood-Tikchik Park bears

Something has been nagging me since the Alaska Department of Fish and Game slaughtered nearly 100 bears last spring in Southwest Alaska, namely that part of the killing occurred within Wood-Tikchik State Park.

Here I will share what I’ve recently learned about Wood-Tikchik’s place in that state-run massacre, in the hope that increased public awareness will also swell opposition to the state’s predator-control program.

I must first emphasize that the entire 2023 “Mulchatna intensive management program” remains unconscionable to me, an appalling and needless waste of life. (I previously expressed my perspective in the June 2023 commentary, “Bear slaughter is disgusting, heartbreaking.”)

The fact that many predators were killed in one of Alaska’s foremost wilderness parks only makes the whole thing more offensive.

According to Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang, 17 bears (16 brown and one black) and one wolf were killed in the park’s designated wilderness, out of 99 bears and five wolves total.

And more killings are on the horizon. Fish and Game has announced its intent to resume the airborne shootings this coming spring and it seems likely that dozens more bears, and some number of wolves, will again be gunned down while terrorized by helicopter crews, a portion of them within Wood-Tikchik, which, at 1.6 million acres, is our nation’s largest state park — and arguably its wildest and most majestic.

The prospect of those additional kills is what prompted me to shed new light on what’s happening.

Despite being one of Alaska’s premier wildlands, Wood-Tikchik is, I would argue, an underappreciated place, partly because of its remote location—some 325 miles southwest of Anchorage — and also because of its state park status.

Despite its inland setting, Wood-Tikchik is a water-based park, dominated by — and named after — the Wood River and Tikchik lakes systems, which provide critical spawning grounds for five species of Pacific salmon and other species, most notably the trophy-sized rainbow trout that lure anglers from around the world. Besides attracting recreational adventurers, the park is important to locals who lead subsistence-centered lives and to Bristol Bay’s world-famous commercial sockeye fishery. There’s lots more to say about the park, but that will have to suffice here.

I got to know Wood-Tikchik in the 1990s and early 2000s. Besides kayaking and camping in its wilderness, I had a chance to spend time with ranger Dan Hourihan and fly around much of the park while working on a conservation-themed book project with acclaimed photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum. It’s been said that the best way to appreciate the full magnificence of this 1.6 million-acre park is from the air, and I think there’s truth in that.

For all of its wild grandeur, Wood-Tikchik has been dreadfully underfunded and understaffed since its birth in 1978. For its first six years, the park didn’t have a budget, staff, or management plan. Since 1984, when Hourihan became its first and longest-serving “Lone Ranger,” Wood-Tikchik has for most of the past 40 years had only a single person to patrol its 1½ million acres.

At the same time, the park’s “enabling legislation” established a seven-member management council, with five positions filled by residents. That council has played a critical role in the park’s management and lately has received considerable attention because Gov. Mike Dunleavy attempted to abolish it, a bad idea that the Alaska Legislature rightly rejected.

I have noted my own experiences in Wood-Tikchik to show I once had a close connection to the place. My ties weakened over the past 15 to 20 years but recently have been renewed, primarily because of Fish & Game’s 2023 massacre of bears and the prospect of additional killings.

I contacted a few people to learn how Fish & Game got permission to kill bears in Wood-Tikchik’s wilderness zone. And I read the park’s management plan.

That plan includes the park’s enabling legislation, which makes clear that “The primary purposes of creating Wood-Tikchik State Park are to protect the area’s fish and wildlife breeding and support systems and to preserve the continued use of the area for subsistence and recreational activities.”

Furthermore, of the state’s three primary management objectives, No. 1 is this: “protect and conserve the area’s fish and wildlife populations and breeding systems.”

After noting these points of emphasis and the plan’s section on wilderness management, I wondered how the heck Fish & Game could go in and kill a bunch of bears for intensive management reasons. My heart sank when I came to Table 8 and discovered the plan allows predator control throughout the park.

That was the loophole that would allow Fish and Game to fly planes and helicopters into Wood-Tikchik’s wilderness, if authorized by the director of state parks, and kill a bunch of bears (or wolves) to “favor” the Mulchatna caribou herd.

One last hope remained. In Appendix A, a section titled “Park Enabling Legislation” made it clear that “The Department of Fish and Game shall consult with the department (of natural resources) and the management council before adoption of regulations governing fish and wildlife management in the park.”

To my great disappointment, a couple of members confirmed that Fish and Game did inform the management council of its IM plans at a public meeting. Thus the department met its Wood-Tikchik obligations in 2023 and will likely do so again this year.

Here’s something else I discovered during my recent research: Fish & Game has for years supervised predator-control wolf kills in Wood-Tikchik, so all that’s really new about the current IM program is that it’s been expanded to include bears.

It seems an exceedingly sad and lamentable thing to me, that the state can wage war on bears and wolves within a state park that was established, first and foremost, to protect and conserve the area’s fish and wildlife populations — and that it can do so within designated wilderness, no less. I believe that State Parks Director Ricky Gease could prevent the helicopter assault by withholding the necessary permit, but based on past actions, I’m sure that won’t happen.

All of this leads me to wonder whether a wider coalition of Alaskans — including Alaska Native groups and the tourism industry — will ever come forward to protest and halt the state’s awful predator-kill programs in any part of Alaska where it’s legal. One initial step would be to speak out against this year’s scheduled Wood-Tikchik predator kill at the management council’s 9 a.m. meeting on March 21 (contact the park at 907-842-2641 for meeting information).

It also prompts me to once again give thanks that much of Alaska’s wildlands and wildlife are protected by federally managed refuges, parks and preserves, where predator control is not business as usual and where bears and wolves are valued as much as other creatures.

Anchorage nature writer and wildlife/wildlands advocate Bill Sherwonit is a widely published essayist and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Wood-Tikchik: Alaska’s Largest State Park” (a collaboration with photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum) and “Alaska’s Accessible Wilderness: A Traveler’s Guide to Alaska’s State Parks.”

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