Alaska wildlife agents can resume shooting and killing black and brown bears — including from helicopters — as part of a plan to help recover a caribou herd that was once an important source of food for Alaska Native hunters, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Two conservation groups, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and Center for Biological Diversity, sought to halt the program while their lawsuit challenging its legality plays out. But Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman said the groups had failed to show that the state acted without a reasonable basis for approving the plan.

The timing of the ruling is important: The Mulchatna caribou herd in southwest Alaska is expected to begin calving soon. The babies are particularly susceptible to being eaten by bears or wolves.

State officials see the bear-killing program as important to helping the caribou herd recover. The herd, which once provided up to about 4,770 caribou a year for subsistence hunters from dozens of communities, peaked at around 190,000 animals.

But the caribou population began declining in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and by 2019 numbered around 13,000 animals. Last year, the population was estimated around 16,280, according to the state Department of Fish and Game. Hunting has not been allowed since 2021.

The state killed 180 bears from 2023 to 2024, most of them brown bears, plus 11 more last year, according to the conservation groups’ lawsuit. According to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, 99 bears, including 20 cubs, were killed by the state from the air in less than a month in 2023.

The groups argue that the Alaska Board of Game last year authorized reinstating the program without key data on the bears’ population numbers and sustainability.

Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement the groups want to see the caribou herd thrive, “but the state simply hasn’t shown that the unrestrained killing of bears is going to help us get there.”

“We need to stop this disgraceful waste of the state’s limited resources and work based on science to protect all our wildlife,” Freeman said.

State attorneys have said that officials took a “hard look” at factors related to bear numbers in adopting the plan. Alaska is home to an estimated 100,000 black bears and 30,000 brown bears.

“The herd has persisted at low numbers but started showing a positive response since 2023, when bear removal during calving seasons began,” they wrote in a court filing.

The Alaska Department of Law welcomed Zeman’s decision “to allow this management program to continue during the upcoming caribou calving season, a crucial time for herd recovery,” spokesperson Sam Curtis said by email. The department represents the board and Department of Fish and Game.

“Continuing this program makes sense in light of the scientific record,” Curtis said.

Attorneys with Trustees for Alaska, representing the conservation groups, are reviewing the ruling and “will consider all available options,” spokesperson Madison Grosvenor said by email.

The program has been the subject of ongoing litigation. A judge last year, in a case previously brought by the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, found fault with the process in which it was adopted and concluded the state lacked data on bear sustainability.

Emergency regulations implemented by the state were later struck down. A subsequent public process was announced surrounding plans to reauthorize the program, which the board did last July.

According to the Alaska Wildlife Association, a group of state biologists in 2020 determined that the main reasons for the herd’s decline were disease and a lack of food and “bear predation isn’t even in the top three identified causes of mortality among the Mulchatna herd.”

“We are concerned that big game management in Alaska has become a process whereby population objectives for wild ungulates are established based on public demand rather than on habitat capacity, promoting unsustainable management,” the alliance says in a position paper.

The Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport has reached new heights, becoming the largest cargo hub in the U.S. last year.

It may be a first for the Anchorage airport, based on historical data from the Airports Council International.

The ascendance is based partly on the airport’s steady growth in cargo volume landed there in recent years, according to figures from the group.

It came even as President Donald Trump’s tariffs upended global trade patterns, the group’s latest rankings show.

A key part of the rise? The state’s strategic perch near much of the industrialized world.

But perhaps more important in the latest figures was the large decline in cargo volume at the Memphis International Airport last year.

The FedEx superhub has long been the dominant cargo airport in the U.S., and sometimes the world. But FedEx has restructured its operations, contributing to the airport’s drop in cargo volume.

That helped the Anchorage airport leapfrog past Memphis last year.

With 3.9 million tons of cargo landed, Anchorage was behind only the Hong Kong and Shanghai airports, globally.

In recent years in particular, the Anchorage airport has become a critical crossroads for aviation shippers, in part due to the increase in e-commerce packages moving between Asia and the U.S.

Carriers often drop into Anchorage to refuel, allowing them to haul more of their valuable payload, and less fuel traveling between continents.

“Aircraft can reach 90% of the industrialized world within 9 1/2 hours from the airport,” said Teri Lindseth, the airport’s development manager, in an interview Friday.

Also important is the “targeted effort by the airport development team and the (Alaska) Department of Transportation to expand Anchorage’s cargo presence and overall airport development,” she said. “We’ve focused on supporting our existing partners at the airlines, creating opportunities for growth, and we’re seeing that strategy pay off.”

Over 30 cargo carriers using the airport have helped boost those numbers, Lindseth said.

Some of the carriers have significantly increased their cargo landings in Anchorage last year, she said, including China Airlines and Taiwan-based EVA Air Cargo, and Kalitta Air and Atlas Air, based in the U.S., she said.

Greg Wolf, head of the Alaska International Business Center, said that the airport has done a good job marketing the benefits of the Alaska route to cargo carriers.

The extra cargo each jet can carry as it lands in Anchorage helps give extra oomph to the numbers, compared to other airports, he said.

The Anchorage airport’s rise to first place came as Alaska reached its highest-ever volume in foreign exports, at $6.7 billion, Wolf said.

Some of that product moved by air, adding to the airport’s cargo numbers, he said.

And while Trump has slapped extra-high tariffs on China, Alaska exports still traveled there, apparently after first reaching other Asian countries with lower tariffs before making their way to China, Wolf said.

Alaska’s export value to China fell to fourth last year — behind Korea, Australia and Japan — though it’s typically been the state’s top export partner.

“I’ve talked to businesses, not just from Alaska, but other American businesses, and they’ve done their best to work around the tariffs,” he said.

Facing pressure from Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy to quickly finalize a bill to support the Alaska LNG megaproject, key members of the Senate on Tuesday expressed skepticism that they’ll finish the task before the session ends later this month.

Senate President Gary Stevens told reporters that he doesn’t think the lawmakers can finalize a bill by May 20, which could open the door to an immediate special session, or whenever the governor chooses to call one.

Senators are being asked to move quickly, creating the possibility of unexpected outcomes if a bill is passed now, said Stevens, a Kodiak Republican.

“There’s a lot of work yet to do, and I think you’re seeing the concern around this table of the mistakes we could easily make,” he said during a press conference alongside other leaders of the Senate Majority.

The concerns came one day after Dunleavy urged lawmakers in both chambers to quickly pass a bill to give the LNG developer Glenfarne a substantial property tax break, so North Slope gas can be delivered to Southcentral Alaska and overseas to large Asian buyers.

The governor argued Alaska LNG will generate billions of dollars in production taxes, gas royalties and other revenues, create thousands of jobs, lower energy costs and resolve a looming shortage of locally produced gas.

Dunleavy indicated that the Senate and House resources committees burdened the bill he introduced in March with excessive costs that would block the project. Although Dunleavy floated the idea of introducing his bill early in the session, he didn’t formally introduce it until March.

Those committee substitutes would sharply increase the alternative volumetric tax the governor had proposed to tax natural gas shipments in order to bring in more state revenue. That new “alternative volumetric tax” would replace the state’s property tax for the project.

Dunleavy said he will only support a bill that allows the project to receive financing to move forward. He said he would call a special session if a bill he doesn’t think makes the project workable fails to pass the Legislature.

Members of the Senate Resources Committee said Tuesday they lack a clear picture of the important financial details they need to determine what size of tax break the project should receive, if any.

Some of the missing pieces, they say, include a recent update to the project’s $46 billion price tag, a figure that’s been around for more than a decade, and a better understanding of the estimated cost of gas to Alaska ratepayers.

Before the project can receive a tax reduction, the developer needs “to help us with this bill, giving us actual numbers so that we can credibly set a realistic AVT, alternative volumetric tax,” said Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage and chair of Senate Resources.

Adam Prestidge, with project developer Glenfarne, told Senate Resources on Tuesday morning the company can share financial details with lawmakers if the state takes a stake in the project, under confidentiality agreements or confidential executive sessions.

He said that publicly releasing the project’s cost estimate would put the project at a competitive disadvantage at a time when it’s negotiating agreements with contractors for work, and purchase agreements with entities that would buy and sell the gas, he said.

In such cases, he’s seen the “counterparty try to back calculate what they think the cost of the product is that we’re selling, using what they’ve seen as public information, and it creates a real challenge for being able to commercialize the product,” he said.

Giessel said confidential agreements are problem for lawmakers.

“Confidential executive sessions put us at a real disadvantage because now we have to craft a bill based on what you’ve told us privately, and yet we can’t tell the public what those numbers are,” she said. “It doesn’t work very well.”

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, and vice chair of Senate Resources, said he won’t vote on a bill that could remove potentially $1 billion in annual property tax revenue — referring to Dunleavy’s original version — without having solid numbers on the project.

“From my perspective, this bill should not go to the floor because, me personally, I don’t want to commit generations of Alaskans to billions of dollars in tax breaks without firm numbers,” he said.

Tim Fitzpatrick, a spokesperson with Glenfarne, said in a statement Tuesday that “the state, along with other potential investors, will have the information needed to make an informed investment decision.”

“The state has no financial risk in Alaska LNG and as testimony has made clear, publicly releasing sensitive cost information harms the project’s competitive position and ability to deliver reliable, low-cost energy for Alaskans,” he said.

“Alaska is rapidly running out of reliable, affordable energy, and state and local policymakers and the legislature’s own consultants have highlighted the need for tax reform for over a decade, during which no project has progressed,” he said.