OPINION: Alaska’s misguided bear control continues

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) recently finished up the second year of an effort to kill as many bears as they can in a remote part of Alaska, intending to improve calf survival of caribou in the Multchatna caribou herd. This year’s total was 81 brown bears and 14 wolves. Maybe you heard about last year’s predator control effort, which killed 99 bears (94 brown bears and five black bears) and five wolves.

For context, the Mulchatna caribou herd erupted from 12,000 animals in the 1970s to more than 200,000 in the 1990s, then declined to the current population of roughly 12,000. A “normal” population of caribou should have started to increase by this point. In situations where populations remain below objectives (an arbitrary number usually based on historic high population estimates, but that’s another story), the ADFG has a legal option to conduct what is called “Intensive Management,“ also known as predator control. Predator control has been a longstanding tool used by the ADFG as a last-ditch effort (though more recently, it has become more of a primary effort) to increase populations of ungulates that remain below population objectives.

The current predator control effort began in 2011 when the Alaska Board of Game authorized a predator control program to reduce the wolf population on the calving grounds of the Mulchatna herd, which primarily occupies land in Alaska Game Management Unit 17. The herd was estimated to be approximately 24,000 at the time. From 2011 to 2021, volunteers were authorized to hunt wolves indiscriminately using airplanes and snowmachines. More than 140 wolves were ultimately killed as part of that effort, but the Mulchatna caribou herd continued to decline to its current population.

As a result, at the 2021 Alaska Board of Game meeting, one board member suggested that killing bears should be considered after hearing that bears were identified as the primary predators of Mulchatna caribou calves during a research update by the ADFG research staff. Not long after that suggestion was made, an amendment to the existing predator control program from 2011 was introduced, which included a provision that allowed bears to be killed by ADFG staff — including shooting them from aircraft. That amendment was quickly adopted.

The short time between the suggestion of killing bears by a board member and it being drafted into an amendment is unusual. Additionally, the addition of another species into an existing predator control program is unprecedented within the norms of Alaska Board of Game meetings, according to many familiar with the process. Even more odd was the speed at which ADFG created an operational plan and began carrying out the predator control of bears in GMU 17 (less than two years).

Beyond the procedural oddities, the current effort seems in direct opposition to the Alaska Constitution’s Article VIII, section 4, which states: “Fish, forests, wildlife, grasslands, and all other replenishable resources belonging to the State shall be utilized, developed, and maintained on the sustained yield principle, subject to preferences among beneficial uses.” The sustained yield principle in wildlife management is based on understanding how many animals a population can produce (for human consumption) without causing fundamental problems to a species population. The main conflict is that both brown bears and black bears are game species, and therefore are themselves covered under the sustained yield principle. Yet ADFG has never collected any population data on brown or black bears within GMU 17 or surrounding units, so how can they say that those populations are being managed under the sustained yield principle and not causing fundamental problems to those populations?

They can’t.

Though they’ve tried. Based on their operational plan for the amended Intensive Management plan, they used brown bear density estimates based on research conducted more than 20 years ago. Based on those studies, they estimated that 54-118 brown bears would be within the area identified for bear control within the amended predator control plan and based on “correspondence with pilots and biologists familiar with the area” that 5-15 brown bears would be removed.” Notably, no estimate was given for black bears. Yet, during the predator control effort in 2023, more than 94 brown bears were killed and 81 more were killed in 2024. Based on these numbers, we now know with certainty that the ADFG had no idea how many bears were within the predator control area or how many animals would be killed as part of the effort, and any estimates of bear populations within GMU 17 were little more than a poorly informed back-of-the-envelope calculation. This clearly demonstrates the lack of scientific rigor that exists within, particularly in Region 4, the agency that some previously considered to be one of the premier state wildlife agencies in the US.

Speaking of science, reading the operational plan shows that ADFG has not clearly defined criteria for evaluating the success of the effort other than vaguely referring to increasing calf survival. If increasing calf survival is the goal, then a parallel effort to monitor calf survival (by placing radio collars on calves and aerially monitoring their monthly survival) should be occurring at the same time as the bear control, yet this did not happen in 2023 and may be happening in 2024, according to the most recent report — though ADFG noted that the number of calves counted per cow last fall was double the recent average. The real test will be if any of those additional calves survived the winter and if they contribute to the overall population number, which will be estimated later this summer.

Importantly, a lack of appropriate data collection has been a regular feature of predator control efforts in Alaska, as noted by recent research and another amazing book (”Wolves, bears, and their prey in Alaska” by the National Research Council) based on another contentious predator control period in Alaska, which demonstrated that the state rarely collects the appropriate data (e.g. calf survival, etc.) to document the success of its predator control efforts. Further, an internal ADFG study in the form of a PowerPoint presentation (unpublished, like many “studies” conducted by the ADFG) evaluating the efficacy of state predator control efforts could find only a few “success” stories (defined only as population increases) out of 11 efforts evaluated. Again, this report stated that evaluating the efficacy of predator control efforts is hampered by insufficient data collection.

Another primary issue with the predator control being conducted is that it is unlikely to increase the population of Mulchatna caribou, as voiced by 34 retired Alaska biologists and scientists in an opinion piece published in the ADN in 2023.

It is widely observed that caribou populations have cyclic boom and bust periods, where populations increase exponentially and then decline precipitously for a period before increasing again. In general, it is understood that the “bust” portion of arctic caribou populations is primarily driven by food depletion — in particular, winter food sources such as lichen. In the context of climate change and the rapid changes expected in the Arctic, it is unknown how the regrowth of lichen will be affected. As a result, the typical boom and bust cycle may be changing and the bust portion of the cycle may be the new normal.

Importantly, the ADFG has never done any work on forage quality or quantity (which is also required by Alaska’s predator control law, but mostly ignored) for the Mulchatna herd and, rather than trying to understand what is truly limiting the herd (which they likely can’t do anything about), they’d rather do the easy thing.

Bryan Reiley is a former area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for Game Management Unit 17, where the Mulchatna caribou herd has its calving grounds.

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