This is in response to Dan Dunaway’s commentary titled “Mulchatna predator control is worth a try,” published on Aug. 30.
After undermining a commentary by Bryan Reiley, Dunaway stated, “Since 2017, salmon runs to the Nushagak and Wood rivers and adjacent drainages have reached their highest levels in history,” and then went on to suggest that this must be why there are — scientifically unsupported — higher numbers of bears in the area that are eating the calves of the Mulchatna caribou herd, resulting in the herd’s decline from 200,000 in 1998 to 12,000 today.
While the Nushagak and Wood rivers have seen historical growth in sockeye salmon harvests since 2017, chinook and chum salmon harvests and escapement are at their lowest levels in history. Dunaway argued that since sockeye salmon runs have increased, even though other runs have decreased, this must have resulted in an increase in the number of bears yet he provides no scientific support for this assertion whatsoever. In addition, Dunaway asserted that these bears, prior to salmon returning, are eating the calves of the Mulchatna herd, resulting in the precipitous decline of the herd from 200,000 in 1998 to about 12,000 currently.
Dunaway ignored the most recent scientific studies of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s own expert wildlife biologists that illegal hunting, wounding events, brucellosis and poor nutrition due to climate change are the primary causes of the Mulchatna herd’s decline and failure to rebound. The Alaska Board of Game, as Dunaway stated, has arbitrarily set a population goal of 30,000 to 80,000 animals. Yet this objective is not based on the historical population of the herd, which has most years been about 12,000-18,000 since 1974.
Some bears do eat caribou calves when they emerge from hibernation.
The wildlife biologists estimated that recently, bears eat about 20% of the calves and that 30% of their mortality is due to other causes. However, even given this reality, several aspects of the state’s predator control program targeting bears and wolves in the calving range of the Mulchatna herd do not make sense. The state has been killing wolves and has been allowing private citizens to kill wolves in large numbers since 2011. The state’s own wildlife biologists concluded, after a 10-year study, that wolves were not having an impact on the decline of the herd. Based upon the state’s own regulations, state and private predator control of wolves should have immediately ceased.
Second, the numbers do not pencil out. In 2023, the state of Alaska killed 94 brown bears including 20 cubs. Commissioner Vincent- Lang told me that a brown bear eats an average of four calves after emerging from hibernation. Since most of the cubs killed in 2023 were cubs of the year and still nursing, that means that the state killed 74 brown bears that would have each eaten four caribou calves. Saving about three hundred calves per year that are being born into a herd facing significant human, biological, and environmental challenges is not going to grow the Mulchatna caribou herd to the unrealistic population goals set by the Board of Game. Killing 74 bears to save 300 caribou calves a year is not justified, is not “worth a try,” and is not working.
— Michelle Bittner
Anchorage
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