OPINION: Biologists dispute the state’s Mulchatna ‘intensive management’ rationale

Following the latest state-run slaughter of 81 bears in Southwest Alaska — the total kill now 180 bears, including cubs and moms with cubs, since May 2023 — Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game issued a press release in mid-June that summarized the agency’s official position on this “Intensive Management Program.” In short, the program’s goal is to kill lots of bears and wolves in order to help “rebuild” the Mulchatna caribou herd, which in the late 1990s reached a historic high of 200,000 animals but has since dropped to about 13,000.

Fish and Game’s upper-level managers maintain that killing bears and wolves is the one thing the department can do to increase the herd’s size and further claim that this program is based on sound science and “a logical step in adaptive management,” as the department attempts to grow the herd toward an arbitrary target of 30,000 animals.

What Alaskans need to know is that many knowledgeable biologists, both inside and outside Fish and Game, strongly disagree with the state’s official position — and its rationale. Some of the biologists and lower-level managers most familiar with the Mulchatna IM program say that not only is Fish and Game’s predator-kill approach wrongheaded but that upper-echelon administrators pushing the program have ignored the work and recommendations of the agency’s own caribou researchers. Even worse, those administrators continue to spread disinformation, contrary to what biologists have learned from their studies.

It turns out that a number of biologists with close connections to the Mulchatna herd have recently retired or moved to other jobs and are thus more willing to publicly share their knowledge and criticisms of Fish and Game policies and actions. At least one former department employee is working on his own commentary/analysis to express his concerns. Here I will share some of what I’ve learned from other “insiders.”

I’ll start with Pat Walsh, who recently retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after serving as the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge’s supervisory biologist since 2001. Walsh points out that the Mulchatna herd’s range includes parts of that refuge, adding that he “collaborated with ADFG on Mulchatna caribou management.” At least until Fish and Game’s leaders decided his input was no longer relevant, given the direction they’d chosen to take — namely the killing of bears and wolves.

Walsh recently shared a critique of Fish and Game’s recent Mulchatna “advisory announcement” news release, in which he disputed many of the agency’s points. Here I’ll share just a few.

For starters, Walsh pointed out that the department’s summary of the Mulchatna herd’s decline from 1997 to 2019 “doesn’t provide the whole story.” It’s important to know, he wrote, that “the herd underwent what’s referred to as a ‘population explosion,’ increasing from its 1970s level of approximately 13,000 to 200,000 in the 1990s, then returning to about 13,000 at present. Thus it’s arguably back to its historic norm.”

Then there is Fish and Game’s statement that caribou survival can be affected by disease, predation, (human) harvest, and food availability and quality and that “The Board of Game reasoned that addressing predation is something that can be addressed.”

Walsh notes, “The Board of Game’s reasoning incorrectly implies that disease, harvest and habitat quality cannot be addressed. They can, and ADFG’s researchers have a demonstrated history of investigating each of these in other management situations. The current reliance on predator control as the only option is a result of both a misinformed Board and senior management at ADFG.”

Next is the state’s assertion that “Reducing the number of bears and wolves was a logical step in adaptive management . . . predator control is an immediate tool the department can use to attempt to reverse the herd’s decline.”

Walsh comments: “It can be equally argued that reducing predators was not a logical step ... The State’s Intensive Management Policy itself states that predator control should be the last step considered, rather (than) an ‘immediate tool.’”

There’s plenty more, but I’ll end with Walsh’s observation that “the Mulchatna caribou predator control program is driven by the fact that the population is far under the established objective of 30,000-80,000 caribou” established by the Board of Game in 2008. That objective was “ecologically unrealistic at that time and has been increasingly demonstrated to be unrealistic ever since. Revising the population objective based on the ecological potential of the herd can eliminate the regulatory need for predator control and immediately permit human harvest.”

That last point is hugely important because the state’s primary IM rationale is to “restore this source of (human) food.” If hunting of the Mulchatna herd were to be permitted again, no state-run massacre of bears and wolves would be needed.

Others closely connected to the Mulchatna caribou herd and/or the IM program prefer to remain nameless, at least for now, because of their connections to Fish and Game. One former state employee agrees with Walsh that Fish and Game’s caribou population objectives are unrealistic and based on little if any data. If herd population objectives were based on what’s known about caribou ecology and the state’s own research findings, there would be no need for predator control.

The biologists and managers closest to the Mulchatna caribou study and IM program ask the same question: Why is so much weight placed on numbers that have zero foundation in science? And why does Fish and Game’s upper management ignore — or dismiss — the findings of its own researchers?

There’s more to say, but that will have to do for now.

My own perspectives about the Mulchatna IM program are by now well known. I’m encouraged that people with “insider” knowledge are starting to speak out and join those of us who’ve been highly critical of the state’s appalling and, I would argue, unethical killing of bears and wolves, for no good reason — at least none truly based in science, or respect for other life forms, including predators.

More enlightening — and disturbing — revelations about Fish and Game’s inner workings will be coming. You can count on that.

Anchorage nature writer and wildlife/wildlands advocate Bill Sherwonit is a widely published essayist and the author of more than a dozen books, including “Alaska’s Bears” and “Animal Stories: Encounters with Alaska’s Wildlife.”

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