WASHINGTON – The Trump administration is taking aim at restrictions on recreational hunting and trapping inside national parks and refuges in Alaska, according to directives posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).  The regulations limit questionable hunting techniques, such as killing bear cubs and sows with cubs, luring grizzlies with rotting meat, trapping and snaring bears, and killing wolves while they are raising pups, among other controversial methods.

In a pair of July 14, 2017 memos, Virginia Johnson,  Acting Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, orders the acting directors of the National Park Service (NPS) and theU.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), “to initiate a rulemaking process to reconsider” each of their agency rules. She cites “various prohibitions that directly contradict State of Alaska authorizations and wildlife management decisions.”

The essential conflict is that…