The Biden administration is being accused of dragging its feet on reversing "barbaric" hunting practices on national preserves in Alaska/NPS file

Inaction by the Biden administration on rules that would prevent bear baiting in national preserves in Alaska has reopened litigation over those rules.

At issue are rules that would allow hunters on national preserves to use donuts and grease-soaked bread loaves to lure in bears, to kill bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens, and to hunt caribou from motorboats. While the Obama administration reversed those rules, the Trump administration reinstated them.

Under President Biden, the National Park Service again began work to revise the regulations to ban those practices, but it's been more than a year since those rules were proposed and nothing has been done. While environmental groups went to court to overturn the Trump rules, that litigation was stayed while the Biden administration was working to once again reverse the regulations.

That stay expired in May, clearing the way for the litigation to resume next month. That is not a good thing, according to Jeff Ruch, Pacific director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

"A court ruling that the Trump rules were deficient would not prevent a second Trump administration from reinstituting them, especially if the basis of the court ruling was some procedural defect, such as an insufficient [environmental impact statement]," Ruch said in an email Wednesday. "That is one reason the enviros agreed to the now-expired stay. Further, if whatever ruling is appealed and heard by this Supreme Court, who knows what will happen.

"Litigation is always risky and, as illustrated in this case, time-consuming. Restoration of the 2015 rules could and should have been much quicker," he added.

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

Furthermore, the delegation maintains that the regulations now proposed by the Biden administration 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 told Haaland in a letter in March 2023. “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.”

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.

At stake, maintains PEER, is whether more than 22 million acres of Park Service-administered land in Alaska will remain open to questionable hunting and trapping techniques, "such as killing bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens, luring bears with bait, and shooting swimming caribou from a motorboat."

As a result of the lengthy delay by the Biden administration on revising the regulations, in late May the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals refused to extend the stay on the litigation and has ordered that briefing on the case begin on July 29th.

“For three years, the Biden administration has been in court defending the Trump rules even as they promise to repeal them,” said PEER Board Chair Rick Steiner, a retired University of Alaska professor. “The Obama rule prohibited some barbaric wildlife killing practices on our National Preserves in Alaska, Trump rescinded it, and it is absolutely inexcusable that the Biden administration is dragging its feet restoring the original Obama rule.”

PEER in a press release said that if the Biden rule is finalized before a 9th Court decision, it would likely make the litigation moot. If the Biden rule remains stuck, the environmentalists will be litigating against the Biden Park Service until there is a final ruling, the group added.

While hunting is allowed in park preserves, it is not allowed within National Parks, such as Denali and Glacier Bay. But excessive hunting in the adjacent preserves often depresses wildlife populations within the parks themselves, according to PEER. For example, as a result of trapping and hunting in Denali National Preserve, the ability of tourists in Denali National Park to see wolf packs in the wild, one of the state’s largest tourist attractions, has plummeted.

“Healthy wildlife populations inside Alaska parks are at risk from what happens outside them,” Ruch said in the group's release. “Deferring to state game rules will allow bear and wolf populations to continue to be decimated within park preserves and buffer areas.”