Agency proposes bear bait ban for Alaska national preserves

JUNEAU, ALASKA — Bear hunters in Alaska might now not have the ability to use bait, together with things like pastries, pet food or bacon grease, because the Nationwide Park Service on Friday proposed a brand new rule that might prohibit bear baiting in nationwide preserves within the state.

It is the most recent in a dispute over what animal rights supporters name a merciless apply. The park service additionally says the brand new proposal would, partially, “decrease the chance that bears will affiliate meals at bait stations with people and turn into conditioned to consuming human-produced meals.”

In September, U.S. District Court docket Choose Sharon Gleason discovered issues with a 2020 Trump administration-era rule that lifted restrictions beforehand in place on sport searching and trapping in nationwide preserves in Alaska, together with bear baiting. The case was introduced by conservation and animal rights teams.

However the decide didn’t set the rule apart, and famous the park service had indicated it was already within the technique of reassessing the rule. She despatched the matter again to the company.

Appeals within the case are pending.

Peter Christian, a spokesperson with the Alaska area for the Nationwide Park Service, mentioned the assistant secretary of Fish, Wildlife and Parks final February directed the park service “to provoke a rulemaking course of to rethink the factual, authorized and coverage conclusions within the 2020 Alaska Looking and Trapping rule which approved a number of controversial sport searching practices.”

The park service is pursuing the brand new proposal “on account of authorized and coverage issues concerning bear baiting implications for public security. Bears that turn into habituated to non-natural meals used as bait pose a security hazard to the general public,” he mentioned by e mail.

An identical ban on bear baiting, enacted in 2015 in the course of the Obama administration, was rescinded by the 2020 rule, the park service mentioned.

Based on the company, the proposed new rule additionally would reinstate prohibitions that had been in place beneath the 2015 rule “on strategies of harvest that aren’t appropriate with usually accepted notions of ‘sport’ searching.”

The 2020 rule eliminated restrictions on things like harvesting bears over bait; taking wolves and coyotes in the course of the denning season; taking swimming caribou; and utilizing canines to hunt black bears, the company mentioned.

Sara Amundson, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund, in an announcement known as the brand new proposal “a victory for Alaska’s iconic wildlife species.”