“This sets a dangerous precedent,” Ripple says. They acknowledge that the hunting rule change may not threaten Alaska’s overall populations of bears and wolves, but they express concern that it undermines the National Park Service’s mission to preserve and protect nature-not just in Alaska, but possibly throughout the U.S. Ripple and others disagree with that interpretation. “We look at it as more of an alignment of regulations between the Park Service and the state,” says Eddie Grasser, director of the division of wildlife conservation at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
#The hunted 2020 code#
“It’s not consistent with compassionate management in any way.” Fair chase, a code adopted by many hunting organizations, entails ethical and sportsmanlike pursuit of wild game by ensuring that an animal has a reasonable chance of escape.īut Alaska state officials see it differently. “Allowing the killing of bear cubs and wolf pups is appalling and goes against a basic convention of good hunting-the fair chase,” says William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University, in Corvallis. The announcement drew criticism from scientists, wildlife managers, and animal advocates, who say the new rule allows cruelty to animals and undermines the National Park Service’s conservation mission. According to the Park Service, this is meant to bring federal regulations more closely in line with state ones.Īlaskan officials so far have granted permission for these controversial methods only in certain national preserves, but the rule change opens up all 10 of the state’s preserves (a total land area about the size of South Carolina) to the option of allowing them. On June 9, however, a final rule issued by the National Park Service said that the United States government may no longer block hunters from using those methods in Alaska’s national preserves.
But on National Park Service-managed lands-including national preserves, national parks, and national monuments-federal law had prohibited the most controversial hunting techniques. Many have been permitted for years across tracts of wilderness in the state, and some have been used for centuries by Alaska natives.
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