Background

Alaska’s Board of Game passed a regulation allowing for the killing of human tolerant bears from the McNeil River Bear Sanctuary. The killing of these bears was slated to start during the summer of 2007.

What AWA has done

Prior to the March 2007 meeting of the Alaska Board of Game, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance mounted a major campaign to save these human tolerant bears. These efforts included the production of a YouTube video spot that produced media coverage around the world and resulted in over 500 personally written letters presented to Alaska’s Board of Game prior to their March 2007 meeting.

Success!

This, combined with letters to the editor and a local media campaign, proved instrumental in convincing the Board of Game to rescind the regulation they had previously passed authorizing this hunt and to also vote to not revisit the issue for 10 years, thus saving the McNeil River Bears from being killed in the Kamishak Special Use Area adjacent to the McNeil River Bear Sanctuary.

What You Can Do

Unfortunately, another more distant area still allows the hunting of bears, some of which migrate there from the McNeil Sanctuary. The Alaska Wildlife Alliance will keep you posted on efforts to stop this hunt and what you can do to assist us with that.

Your donations are critical in assuring the continued efforts of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance on this critical threat to the McNeil River Bears.

Write!

For now, your personally written letter to Marsha Blaszak, Alaska Regional Director of the National Park Service, encouraging her to implement the policies necessary to dramatically reduce this hunt to biologically sustainable levels are your way of standing up for these threatened bears. Her address is:

Marsha Blaszak
Alaska Regional Director
National Park Service
240 West 5th Avenue, Room 114
Anchorage, AK 99501