A bear sits in the grass in 2023 in Katmai National Park and Preserve / NPS

The Alaskan Supreme Court has ruled that Alaskans who like viewing bears in the wild have the legal grounds to sue the state over a plan to cull the animals. An Anchorage-based attorney named Michelle Bittner filed the original lawsuit in 2023 that challenged the state's efforts to reduce the bear and wolf population in the state. That lawsuit was thrown out by Superior Court Judge Andrew Guidi, but the state Supreme Court took up the case on appeal, and ruled that Bittman does indeed have standing to sue. 

The state of Alaska manages a program meant to control bears and wolves, which prey on caribou, in order to boost the population of the Mulchatna caribou herd. Bittner's lawsuit was aimed at preventing a change to the program that expanded to allow the state to target bears as well as wolves. Bittner argued that because she enjoyed visiting Katmai National Park and Preserve to watch bears, she had sufficient standing and interest in the local bear population to file a lawsuit aiming at preventing the state from targeting bears. Though the Superior Court countered that Bittner lacked standing to bring her lawsuit, the Supreme Court disagreed. 

The killing of bears does not happen within the park borders, but bears do not respect park boundaries so it's reasonable to expect that killing bears outside the park would impact the number of bears inside the park. During a hearing in the original lawsuit, Bittner said she'd spoken with park rangers at Brooks Falls, a popular bear-viewing area in Katmai, who's said bears they knew from visiting the falls hadn't returned, and they suspected they'd been killed by the state's culling program. 

The Court wrote: "Because Bittner alleged that she returned to an area plausibly impacted by the predator control program expanded by the Board, she articulated an injury to her interest in viewing bears in Katmai National Park that is both specific and personal." Later in the judgment, they added, "As long as it is plausible that the harm caused by the predator control program extends to the area of Katmai that Bittner visited, her allegation is sufficient to support interest-injury standing."

Bittner's lawsuit was not the only filed against the state's predator control program in 2023. Another lawsuit filed by the Alaska Wildlife Alliance is being heard in the state Superior Court by the same judge who threw out Bittner's lawsuit. 

The Alaska Board of Game agreed to the current predator culling program in 2022. So far, the state has killed nearly 200 bears. The hope is reducing the predator population will boost the numbers of the Mulchatna caribou herd back up to 30,000 animals, from a low of only 13,000 caribou in the past few years. As recently as 1997, the herd was 200,000 animals strong. According to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, a 2020 study by state biologists said the caribou herd's decline had been due to a disease and lack of food, not predation. 

Bittner's lawsuit seeking to challenge the Board's decision to inluxe bears in the predator culling program can now move forward.