Trump administration to ease rules for hunting bears and their cubs in Alaska

(Image credit: AP File Photo/Mark Thiessen, File)

published 29 May 2020

The National Park Service is rolling back Obama-era regulations that banned hunters in Alaska's national preserves from using food to lure black and brown bears out of their dens.

The new rules will also let hunters use artificial light to attract black bears and their cubs, shoot caribou from motorboats, and hunt wolves and coyotes during the denning season, the Anchorage Daily News reports. The Obama administration enacted the regulations in order to prevent the destabilization of Alaska's ecosystems.

This change is "amazingly cruel," Jesse Prentice-Dunn, policy director for the Center for Western Priorities, told The Guardian, and is "just the latest in a string of efforts to reduce protections for America's wildlife at the behest of oil companies and trophy hunters."

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Several Native American tribes criticized the original rule, opposing it due to rural Alaskans needing wild food sources. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) cheered the reversal, saying it was necessary "not only as a matter of principle, but as a matter of states' rights."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.