OPINION: Attacks on Alaska Fish and Game predator control are unfair

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced on June 6 that the Mulchatna caribou predator-control program had just been completed on this herd’s calving ground. This was followed by a front-page ADN article on June 11 that raised the question of whether this was a reasonable method for promoting an increase in the size of the Mulchatna herd.

It is perfectly understandable that the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and others, such as Rick Steiner and Bill Sherwonit, would speak out against this program. Just like many conservation organizations, they oppose the consumptive use of wildlife and management actions that foster such use.

I know from many years of researching and managing caribou herds in Alaska that the management science is based on the principle that caribou herds left to their own devices will cycle, over years and decades, back and forth between low and high numbers in response to range conditions, weather and predation, including hunting. Alaska’s constitution and statutes require that the state does not leave these caribou herds to their own devices. The constitution and statutes mandate that the state “protect, maintain, improve, and extend the game resources of the state.”

The Mulchatna herd is just one of a number of herds that have cycled up to very high numbers and then declined over the past 60-plus years. Fish and Game has studied these herds, radio-collared some animals, regularly tracked movements and range use, evaluated body condition and completed annual post-calving counts and fall calf survival counts. On the ground, habitat is typically evaluated on a seasonal basis. Even with such efforts to document what a herd is doing, maintaining a herd at a specific, optimum population level that the range can support can be difficult. The main tools to accomplish this goal are hunting regulations to increase hunting mortality to slow or stop herd increases, and restrictive hunting regs plus predator control — to reduce mortality and allow herd increase.

Once a herd with very high numbers has declined as a result of range damage, recovery can be accelerated with predator control, especially on the calving grounds. Note that when at or near a low point in herd size, a caribou population can shift range use to small areas with reasonable forage adjacent to their traditional home range, further fostering recovery.

The importance of predator control in wildlife management has been recognized for over a century. Aldo Leopold, the father of modern wildlife management, discusses this in detail in his 1933 bible, “Game Management.” And as I’ve mentioned, most of the biology and management of caribou outlined above is nothing new. A.W.F. Banfield reported much of this in his famous 1951 book, “The Barren Ground Caribou.”

Because of the apparent effort by anti-hunting activists to portray Fish and Game predator-control programs as mismanagement, here are a few responses to their rhetoric.

• The intensive-management statute passed in 1994 was not the beginning of predator control in Alaska. The state has managed big game prey populations through programs that included predator control since statehood to help sustain prey population levels that would provide for traditional human harvest. The 1994 statute was passed not to create new policy, but rather to provide more specific legal documentation for an ongoing process.

• Fish and Game does not just serve those who hunt and consume Alaska wildlife; they also promote and facilitate non-consumptive/wildlife viewing programs throughout the state. An example is the world-famous McNeil River State Game Sanctuary bear viewing program.

• Between more than 100,000 Alaskans off the road system and the 100,000-plus on the road system who hunt, plus their family members who partake through processing and consuming, it is estimated that more than 80% of Alaskans are consumptive users of wildlife.

• There is no evidence that hunters or ADF&G biologists consider bears and wolves to be vermin. On the contrary, pretty much everyone I’ve ever talked with sees these as magnificent wild mammals as needing to be managed to retain reasonable numbers throughout their home ranges

• Even with the regular use of predator control in various areas of Alaska over the past 60-plus years, there are no areas where predator populations haven’t rebounded from reductions, and where such predators have not continued to thrive.

• The composition of the Board of Game over the past 60-plus years has included a number of members who were neither hunters nor guides, and it can be reasonably assumed that this will be the situation again in the future.

• The Board of Game does not act on its own by telling Fish and Game what it wants the agency to do and what regulations it wants put on the books. Rather all Alaskans, community advisory committees and ADF&G submit proposals for changes to state wildlife regulations. The Board then listens to and discusses these proposals with any interested Alaskan/member of the public and with specific ADF&G wildlife managers and researchers who have been managing or studying the population potentially affected by a proposal. At the end of this process, the board then votes on what to pass, not pass or adjust before passing.

Fish and Game has an admirable history of successfully managing the wildlife of Alaska without endangering any species or populations. This fact is recognized by The Wildlife Society and many University wildlife science programs in the lower 48. This will continue to be the situation, as long as Alaska maintains its vast areas of prime wildlife habitat.

For anyone interested in learning about caribou management and associated predator control outside Alaska, there is a new (2023) Canadian Arctic Resources Committee report, “Northern Caribou in Canada,” available online.

Jim Lieb, MS, Ph.D, is a retired Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist who lives in Palmer. He does not speak for the department.