The National Park Service erred in its approach to easing hunting and trapping regulations in national preserves in Alaska, a judge has ruled/NPS file

Administrative errors, not wildlife management issues, prompted a federal judge to find that the National Park Service erred in 2020 when it relaxed its hunting and trapping regulations in national preserves in Alaska so they'd be in line with state regulations.

In her 63-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason found that the Park Service was wrong in believing it had to "defer to state hunting regulations," and held that the Park Service acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it concluded that the state's wildlife management requirements were equivalent to those of the Park Service, and when it ignored its own previous finding that Alaska's regulations failed to address public safety concerns associated with bear baiting. 

The judge, however, did not toss out the regulations the Park Service adopted two years ago because the agency already is working to revise them.

The ruling handed down September 30 addressed a matter that critics said unduly inserted politics into management of the National Park System.

Back in 2017, the Interior Department under President Trump ordered the Park Service to reconsider wildlife regulations that were at odds with hunting and trapping regulations enforced by the state of Alaska. The order, signed by Virginia Johnson, then Interior's acting assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, directed the Park Service to reconsider rules it adopted in October 2015 concerning hunting and trapping on national preserves in Alaska where sport hunting is allowed. Under those regulations, hunters on national preserves could not:

• Use bait (donuts, grease-soaked bread, etc.) to hunt bears;
• Use artificial light to spotlight dens to kill black bears; and
• Kill bear cubs or sows with cubs.
• Take wolves and coyotes (including pups) during the denning season (between May 1 and August 9)
• Take swimming caribou
• Take caribou from motorboats under power
• Take black bears over bait
• Use dogs to hunt black bears

Three years later, acting National Park Service Director David Vela removed those 2015 prohibitions on harvest practices. The changes applied to national preserves in the state, such as the preserve sections of Wrangell-St. Elias, Denali, Katmai national parks as well as Yukon-Charley and Gates of the Arctic national preserves. In announcing the change, the Park Service said the new rule "affirms the state of Alaska’s role in wildlife management on Alaska national preserves, consistent with the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act and Department of the Interior policies guiding the federal-state relationship in the management of fish and wildlife."

But critics said the change ran contrary to the National Park Service's mission to manage for naturally-functioning ecosystems and processes. Phil Francis, then chair of the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, said the Park Service has the authority to manage wildlife within parks and preserves. 

“We are appalled by the Secretary of the Interior’s decision to adopt these cruel and unsportsmanlike hunting practices on National Park Service preserve lands in Alaska. The Coalition supports legally authorized sport and subsistence hunting in national preserves in Alaska; however, it must be regulated by practices that align with long delineated NPS laws, regulations, and policies," Francis at the time. "Techniques such as killing bear sows with cubs at den sites or harvesting brown bears over bait are clearly inappropriate within units of the National Park System. The Organic Act, which established the National Park Service, mandates that the NPS manage native wildlife populations to maintain the natural abundance, diversity, and distribution of those populations in ALL park units throughout the country, including in Alaska. This means allowing natural predator-prey relationships and population dynamics to occur, rather than removing the predators through objectionable hunting practices."

But in her ruling, Judge Gleason noted that "population data provided by the State of Alaska shows that these State hunting regulations do not have the effect of reducing predator populations and increasing prey populations." She also pointed out that "the 2020 Rule noted its consistency with hunting regulations at several national parks located in the lower 48 states, where 25 national park units allow year-round coyote hunting, six national park units permit the use of artificial light for hunting, seven national park units allow hunting of black bears with dogs, and four national park units permit bear baiting to harvest black bears."

The Park Service did, however, err by believing it had to align its regulations with those of the state, the judge wrote. She pointed out that recent Ninth Circuit rulings have underscored that the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act "preserves the federal government’s plenary power over public lands in Alaska" and that "the Department of Interior need not defer to the State’s hunting regulations."

Additionally, Gleason wrote, the Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution "requires that Federal hunting regulations override conflicting State laws in accordance with the principle of conflict preemption."

“This ruling is important. The court flat out found that the current rule is illegal and that the Park Service indeed has authority to protect the national interest in federal public lands,” said Jim Adams, Alaska regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association. “Unfortunately, it also left the illegal rule in place in the short run, putting bears and wolves at risk and flying in the face of the agency’s mission and core values. NPCA has fought for commonsense hunting regulations on Alaska’s parklands for decades, and we will continue to push for an end to this terrible rule.”

At the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, Chair Mike Murray also was disappointed that the rules would remain in place until the Park Service completes its current review of them.

“The court ruling is a mixed blessing for Alaska’s national preserves and the wildlife that inhabit them,” he said. “We are pleased that the ruling affirms the National Park Service’s authority to regulate hunting in national preserves, which includes the authority to preempt conflicting State law. In our view, the Service has an obligation to manage national preserve wildlife in accordance with the agency’s own conservation mandate, which states that ‘when there is a conflict between conservation and use, conservation is to be predominant.’

"However, we are disappointed that the court decided to leave in place Alaska’s so-called ‘liberalized sport hunting’ practices, such as bear baiting and killing adult wolves and wolf pups during the denning season," he added. "These practices had previously been prohibited in national preserves; however, the 2020 rule passively allowed them to occur by removing the previous prohibitions. We look forward to the pending NPS revisions of the 2020 rule.”