These photos appear to indicate that an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle was used to kill wolves near Denali National Park/PEER

Wolf hunters, some possibly using AR-15 style semiautomatic rifles, have so decimated wolf populations outside Denali National Park in Alaska that the state is shutting down hunting and trapping in areas adjacent to the park.

"Hunting seasons for wolves in Game Management Unit 20C within the townships in the Stampede corridor area bounded by Denali National Park and Preserve will close on Monday, April 2, 2018. Trapping seasons for wolves in Game Management Unit 20C within the townships in the Stampede corridor area bounded by Denali National Park and Preserve will close on Monday, April 9, 2018," the state said in an emergency closure order.

According to Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials, the current wolf harvest has surpassed the five-year average, "and there is potential for more harvest to occur before the end of the regulatory hunting and trapping seasons."

Park Service biologists have said five collared wolves were killed this winter by hunters or trappers. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility staff said Tuesday the state of Alaska has no idea how many wolves have been killed this year. And while the group maintains that one hunter used a semiautomatic rifle recently to kill ten wolves outside the national park, it added that the state has not confirmed those kills.

“While I am glad that Governor (Bill) Walker has acted, I am concerned that it may be too little, too late,” said Rick Steiner, a retired University of Alaska professor and PEER board member who has led the charge for permanent buffer zones around Denali. “The historic high level of take has already altered wolf ecological dynamics, not counting these reports of additional kills just now coming in.”

Alaska and Park Service officials long have been at odds over the state's hunting seasons and limits on predators. In 2016, the Park Service announced it was ending a long-running study of wolves at Yukon-Charley National Preserve because packs had been wiped out by hunting and predator control. In 2014, state predator control officers killed an entire pack that used the preserve. 

Hunting of wolves outside Denali in 2015 prompted a petition with more than 100,000 signatures calling on then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to intervene to halt the killings of wolves that wander out of the park. At the time, trappers and hunters had reduced the wolf population in and around the park and its adjacent preserve from 143 to 48 over a seven-year period.

In 2010, the state's Board of Game, despite Park Service opposition, had removed a no-trap, no-kill buffer zone on state land adjacent to the park. That buffer zone had applied to a rectangular block of land due west of Healy, Alaska, that follows the Stampede Trail. Wolves that leave the park and follow caribou to wintering grounds on this landscape are subject to trapping in some places. 

Park Service officials in the past have tried to protect wolves. In 2014, they proposed a permanent federal prohibition against certain hunting practices, such as the hunting of wolf and coyote pups and adults in early summer when they den and their pelts have little commercial value.

And the agency has repeatedly requested the State of Alaska and the Alaska Board of Game to exempt national preserves from state regulations that liberalized methods, seasons, and bag limits for predator hunting. The requests have been denied in the past. State officials have also objected to the use of repeated temporary federal closures, and advised the NPS to seek permanent regulations.

Sport hunting occurs on about 38 percent, or more than 20 million acres, of the land managed by the National Park Service in Alaska. In these national preserves, sport hunting generally occurs under state regulations. 

According to a release Tuesday from PEER, "studies show hunting and trapping outside Denali is having a big impact on the viability of wolf packs inside Denali, which is Alaska’s top tourist attraction, drawing more than a half-million visitors annually. Not only are Denali wolf family groups disrupted, but visitor viewing success has plummeted as well."

Significantly, the release added, "Alaska has agreed to participate in an independent National Academy of Sciences review of its predator control programs for the first time in 20 years since the administration of Governor Tony Knowles (1994-2002), the only governor in Alaska history to prohibit lethal predator control programs."

“Alaska’s predator control program is clearly out of control,” said PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “Alaska should put predator control on hold until it gets a handle on what is actually occurring.”

In response to the recent excessive losses at Denali, Alaska citizens are renewing their call for the governor to establish a permanent no-kill buffer protecting all park predator species – wolves, bears, lynx, wolverines - along the boundary of Denali, to restore the natural ecosystem and visitor viewing success in the park.