Alaska's congressional delegation, arguing that the National Park Service's move to prohibit bear-baiting in national preserves in the state isn't supported by science and violates congressional intent, wants Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to block the agency's effort.

At issue is a back-and-forth-and-back effort by the Park Service to ban controversial sport hunting practices such as using donuts or grease-soaked bread to lure bears within range.

The agency had adopted the regulations back in 2015, but the Trump administration rescinded them five years later. Now the Park Service is working to reinstate the regulations. Under them, 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

But Alaska's congressional representatives — Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Representative Mary Sattler Peltola — told Haaland in a letter that the latest rule change was made without any consultation with the state of Alaska and is unsupported by scientific data. Furthermore, they maintain that the regulations violate the clear intent of Congress as included in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. The delegation also cited the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Sturgeon v. Frost, which “unanimously affirmed Alaska’s right to manage its fish and wildlife.” 

"NPS holds only the legal and statutory authority granted by Congress,” members of the delegation wrote. “Any attempt to move forward with the 2023 Proposed Rule would disregard congressional intent; confuse hunters, trappers, and anglers about the rules in national preserves; and significantly reduce the State’s lawful ability to manage healthy, effective, sustainable wildlife populations for all Alaskans, especially subsistence users.”

In their letter (attached below), the delegation said that while the Park Service under ANCILA "has authority to restrict the take of fish and wildlife," they added that the act "explicitly does not provide NPS with authority to regulate the 'methods or means' for harvesting wildlife, as those practices are governed by the State."

But last September a federal judge, while finding that the 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, held that the agency does not have to "defer to state hunting regulations."

U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason pointed out that recent Ninth Circuit rulings had 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, the judge wrote that 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."

The issue of bear-baiting in Alaska has been debated for years. The practice has even generated books on how to bait bears, and spurred some cartoonists to lampoon Alaska officials for pushing the practice.

In the decade leading up to the 2015 rule, the Park Service made more than 50 requests to the Alaska Board of Game to limit native carnivore-hunting efforts on national park lands, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. The vast majority of requests were ignored and resulted in adoption of the 2015 rule, the group said.

As they were going through the rulemaking process in 2015, NPS officials pointed out to the acting director of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game that, "the State does not believe there are any sustained yield concerns, and thus no basis for NPS actions. As has repeatedly been communicated in writing and verbally, the differing legal frameworks for the State of Alaska and the National Park Service compel each of our agencies to assess issues associated with wildlife management and the national park areas differently."

Nearly 60,000 comments were received during that rulemaking process. 

"Over 59,000 comments objected to recent state-sanctioned practices as being inconsistent with generally accepted hunting practices," the Park Service noted in analyzing those comments. "These commenters described these (state) activities as 'not sustainable,' 'cruel,' 'barbaric,' 'unsporting,' 'unethical,' 'inconsistent with fair chase,' and "danger[ ous] to humans and wildlife.' Additional comments were also received in support of the NPS position that intensive management of wildlife is not appropriate in NPS Preserves."

When the Trump administrative began working to overturn the 2015 rule, more than 100 scientists in a letter to the National Park Service's regional director in Alaska, voiced their opposition to the move.

“This is simply about killing bears and wolves to increase moose and caribou numbers for hunters in National Park Service preserves,” said Sandy Rabinowitch, a former NPS staff advisor to the Alaska Federal Subsistence Board.

The letter (attached below) was signed by some scientists who were part of the National Research Council’s 1997 examination of “Wolves, bears, and their prey in Alaska.” Scientists signing the letter included many former Alaska Department of Fish and Game, National Park Service, and other former state and federal government employees and prominent academics nearly half of whom worked in Alaska.

But the congressional delegation also maintains the rule changes disregard "the importance of traditional hunting practices of Alaska Natives residing in non-rural areas."

"Bear baiting is a traditional hunting practice for many Athabascan hunters, a great number of whom now reside in non-rural areas. Because of this, they are not considered federally-qualified subsistence users and would be subsequently barred from practicing their traditional hunting practice under this proposed rule. Regardless of the explicit carve-out separating federal subsistence from this proposed rule, the restriction still would negatively harm Athabascan hunters whose right to practice their traditional hunting technique should be respected regardless of where they reside," they said in their letter to Haaland.