AWA Lawsuit challenges Alaska Board of Game plan to gun down bears in southwest Alaska
The best way you can support our work is by becoming a member. You can also start a peer-to-peer fundraiser to support our work. Thank you for supporting Alaska’s bears!
Photo generously donated by Aditya Datta
After multiple legal victories against the Mulchatna predator control program, we are once again heading to court to defend Alaska’s bears. In July, after two court orders and a bad faith ruling against the State, the Board of Game reinstated the Mulchatna predator control program — authorizing the killing of an unlimited number of brown and black bears across 40,000 square miles in southwest Alaska.
The Board of Game gave the Alaska Department of Fish and Game the authority to aerially shoot any bears of any age across 40,000 square miles until 2028, with no population data or cap on the number of bears killed.
The southeast border of the gunning program is only three miles from Lake Clark National Preserve, 30 miles from Katmai National Park, 50 miles from McNeil and Brooks Falls, and goes all the way west to the borders of Togiak National Wildlife Refuge and the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, which means this program threatens bears who move across vast stretches of public lands.
"Instead of setting up the program to be measurable and accountable, it was clearly established to kill as many bears as possible first, then ask questions later. The Board of Game can’t pass a bear control program without safeguards for bear sustainability."
- Nicole Schmitt, AWA Executive Director
Photo of bear resting in Katmai National Park generously donated by Aditya Datta.
Today’s lawsuit was filed in Alaska’s Superior Court and brought by the law firm Trustees for Alaska, representing both AWA and the Center for Biological Diversity. The lawsuit challenges the reinstatement of the Mulchatna bear control program under the sustained yield clause in Article VIII, Section 4 of the Alaska Constitution. The Alaska Supreme Court has determined that this sustained yield clause applies to all animals including bears.
Operating under the 2022 Mulchatna bear control program, Fish and Game killed 175 brown bears and 5 black bears in 2023-2024. We challenged this original program in court - and won. In March 2025, the Alaska Superior court struck down the original program as unconstitutional, in part because the Board of Game did not have credible scientific evidence of bear populations. The court found the Mulchatna bear control program was “unlawfully adopted and, therefore, void and without legal effect.”
Photo generously donated by Aditya Datta
A week after that decision, the Board of Game voted to adopt an emergency regulation to reinstate the program. In mid-May, the court struck down the emergency regulation as a bad faith attempt to circumvent the March order, but not before Fish and Game killed 11 more brown bears.
In July, the Board of Game reinstated the Mulchatna bear control program without collecting relevant bear population studies that the court determined was required. The Board authorized the program through 2028. The current litigation challenges the program as unconstitutional.
"The Board of Game created a program as large as the entire state of Kentucky, with no controls or measures on the impacts to bears. I think even those who support predator control have a problem with the Board of Game extending its authority so far, especially when the gunning area borders the most famous bear viewing sites in the world.”
- Nicole Schmitt, AWA Executive Director
