ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The Alaska Board of Game on Thursday approved state officials’ request to continue a controversial predator control program in Western Alaska, even though a judge ruled two weeks ago that the bear-killing program violated the state constitution. This is according to Yereth Rosen at the Alaska Beacon.
The board granted an Alaska Department of Fish and Game petition for emergency action to carry out a third season of shooting bears and wolves to keep them from preying on the ailing Mulchatna Caribou Herd. In the past two years, the predator control program — carried out in late spring and early summer within the herd’s range — killed 175 brown bears, five black bears and 19 wolves, according to the department.
The emergency finding is warranted to help a herd that fell from a peak of about 200,000 in the late 1990s to about 13,000 now, too low to allow any hunting, board members said on the final day of a weeklong meeting in Anchorage…