Interior department order follows a temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities imposed by president on first day in office

A polar bear keeping close to her young along the Beaufort Sea coast in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. — A polar bear keeping close to her young along the Beaufort Sea coast in the Arctic national wildlife refuge in Alaska. Photograph: Reuters

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About this content Jillian AmbroseWed 2 Jun 2021 10.21 EDT

The Biden administration has reversed plans approved by Donald Trump to allow companies to drill for oil and gas in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge, a remote region that is home to polar bears, caribou – and 11bn barrels of oil.

The decision to suspend the oil drilling licences follows the temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities imposed by Joe Biden on his first day in the White House, and serves as a high-profile show of his climate credentials after approving hundreds of requests to drill on federal lands in recent weeks.

Biden used his 2020 presidential campaign to oppose drilling in the remote, 19.6m-acre Alaskan refuge, which is considered sacred by the indigenous Gwich’in communities and is also home to polar bears, caribou, snowy owls and other wildlife, including migrating birds from six continents.

The region has long been an area of deep political contention between Republicans and the oil industry, which have long been trying to open up the oil-rich refuge, and the Democrats, environmental groups and some Alaska Native tribes which have been trying to block drilling since the mid-1990s.

But after a decades-long battle the first sale of the lease areas in the refuge earlier this year failed to attract interest from the oil industry’s biggest players, potentially making the decision to suspend the oil drilling licences an easier option for Biden’s officials which last week angered environmental groups by defending a major oil project on Alaska’s north slope.Advertisement

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The US Department of Justice said the Trump-era decision to allow the project in the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska’s north slope was “reasonable and consistent” with the law and should be allowed to go ahead. It added that opponents of the Willow project were seeking to stop development by “cherry-picking” the records of federal agencies to claim environmental review law violations.

The decision to green light the Willow project, spearheaded by $78bn oil company Conoco-Phillips, was heavily criticised by climate campaigners which claim that it flies in the face of Biden’s pledges to address climate change. It has also raised concern that the Biden administration is not willing to take a stand against US oil giants.

The Arctic is heating up at three times the rate of the rest of the planet and ConocoPhillips will have to resort to installing “chillers” into the Alaskan permafrost, which is rapidly melting due to global heating, to ensure it is stable enough to host drilling equipment.

By contrast, the suspension of oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge is unlikely to be opposed by the oil industry after the the first sale of drilling rights raised less than $15m (£11m) from two small oil drillers and failed to attract interest from companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

Kristen Miller, acting executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, hailed suspension of the Arctic leasing program, which she said was the result of a flawed legal process under Trump.

“Suspending these leases is a step in the right direction, and we commend the Biden administration for committing to a new program analysis that prioritises sound science and adequate tribal consultation,” she said.

More action is needed, Miller said, calling for a permanent cancellation of the leases and repeal of the 2017 law mandating drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain.

The drilling mandate was included in a massive tax cut approved by congressional Republicans during Trump’s first year in office. Republicans said it could generate an estimated $1bn over 10 years, a figure Democrats call preposterously overstated.

Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Nation steering committee, thanked the president and the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, and said that tribal leaders are heartened by the Biden administration’s “commitment to protecting sacred lands and the Gwich’in way of life”.

Agencies contributed to this report

Final Plan for Arctic Refuge Drilling Could Cause Extinctions, Admits Government

Posted on September 23, 2019 by Exposing the Big Game

The decision to open the refuge’s entire coastal plain to development, combined with climate change, ‘may result in extinction’ for some birds.

By Andy McGlashenAssociate Editor, Audubon Magazine

September 17, 2019

Birds in This Story

Gyrfalcon

Falco rusticolus

begging call of captive

Whimbrel

Numenius phaeopus

flight alarm calls

Spectacled Eider

Somateria fischeri

https://www.audubon.org/news/final-plan-arctic-refuge-drilling-could-cause-extinctions-admits-government?emci=969ccc7e-e8db-e911-b5e9-2818784d6d68&emdi=a36c264f-fbdd-e911-b5e9-2818784d6d68&ceid=688148&ms=digital-eng-email-ea-newsletter-engagement_20190923_wingspan_medium&utm_source=ea&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=engagement_20190923_wingspan&utm_content=medium

Permanently Protect the Arctic Refuge

A new bill in Congress would permanently protect the Refuge from drilling.

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The U.S. Department of the Interior last week took a major step toward the first-ever oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In a decision that outraged but did not surprise environmentalists, the agency announced its final plan to develop one of the world’s last great wildernesses, acknowledging that its chosen course might wipe out some bird species and harm other animals that make their home on the pristine reserve.

The Trump administration had multiple options when planning to open the 19.3 million-acre sanctuary to drillers. After Republicans in Congress and President Trump directed Interior in 2017 to create a leasing plan for the refuge’s 1.5 million-acre coastal plain, the department laid out three possible scenarios for energy development there. But on Thursday, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced that the department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had chosen the most extreme plan, one that makes the entire coastal plain eligible for leasing and comes with the fewest restrictions on industry’s footprint.

Such an aggressive approach, the BLM acknowledged in its final environmental impact statement, combined with the effects of climate change, could drive birds to extinction, as E&E News first reported. Species that nest in the refuge “already are experiencing decreasing populations, and many could suffer catastrophic consequences from the effects of global climate change in one or more of their seasonal continental or even global habitats,” the document says. “These effects combined with development-related impacts across the ranges of many bird species may result in extinction during the 85-year scope of this analysis.”

Some 200 bird species rely on the refuge, including hardy year-round residents like American Dipper, Gyrfalcon, and Rock and Willow Ptarmigan. The area fills with birdlife each summer, including migrants from every U.S. state and six continents, such as Red-throated Loon, Buff-breasted Sandpiper, and Whimbrel.

According to the BLM report, development could require energy companies to pump out large volumes from the coastal plain’s limited water bodies, resulting in food and habitat loss for loons and other waterbirds. Additional species could lose nesting habitat to roads and other infrastructure, and a variety of birds will likely be injured or killed in collisions with drilling rigs, communications towers, and vehicles.

Birds are far from the only wildlife with habitat at stake on the coastal plain, a strip of tundra, rivers, and wetlands wedged between the Brooks Range foothills and the Beaufort Sea. Federally threatened polar bears, which nurture their cubs in dens along its rivers and shoreline, will likely be killed as interactions with humans become more common, the impact statement says. Caribou migrate roughly 1,500 miles each spring to give birth on the plain, where there’s plenty to eat, sea winds to keep mosquitoes at bay, and few predators to threaten their calves. With new development, the biggest threat to caribou is displacement through oil and gas activities.

While the impact statement mentions some potential threats to wildlife, many experts believe it is not explicit enough when addressing the potential risks and even likelihood of extinction for a variety of species. “Oil and gas infrastructure in the Arctic Refuge, when considered in conjunction with climate change, poses an existential risk to several Arctic bird species,” said Audubon Alaska in a press release. Moreover, choosing such an aggressive development plan despite the toll it will take on wildlife “just goes to show how far this administration is willing to go to extract oil and gas, even in what should be a protected area,” says Susan Culliney, the group’s policy director.

The Arctic Refuge provides potential breeding habitat for Spectacled Eiders and hundreds of other species of birds. Photo: Danita Delimont/Alamy

In several high-stakes fights over the past 50 years, advocates for preserving this rare expanse of untouched wild have prevailed over the oil companies, Alaskan politicians, and native corporations that have pursued drilling. Political headwinds—produced in part by the public outrage after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska—have blocked past attempts to open the refuge. A bill to do so made it through Congress in 1995, but President Bill Clinton vetoed it. Democrats and some Republicans have voted to stop other such efforts. A 2017 Yale University poll found that 70 percent of Americans oppose drilling in the refuge.

But that dynamic shifted in December of 2017, when Republicans in Congress, backed by the administration’s call for “energy dominance,” tucked into a tax bill a provision to establish a fossil-fuel leasing program on the refuge’s coastal plain. Sometimes referred to as the 1002 Area, the coastal plain is considered the ecological heart of the refuge, but federal scientists estimate that it also sits atop 7.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The bill gave Interior until 2021 to conduct the first of at least two lease sales, each offering 400,000 or more acres. Department officials have pledged to hold that initial sale this year.

One reason for the aggressive timeline is to give industry a foot in the refuge’s door during President Trump’s first term, since having leases in place would complicate a future administration’s efforts to block drilling there, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said last year.

As a result, the regulatory process—typically measured and deliberate—has been rushed, confusing, and even misleading, according to reports from federal agency employees. A comprehensive review for any leasing program over such a large area would typically take two or three years. But the administration compressed that timeline: The draft environmental impact statement was published last December, only eight months after the review began. Investigations have found that, in its hurry, Interior omitted relevant information, and even altered reports from career scientists to downplay potential environmental impacts. And the rush for leasing this year didn’t leave time for seismic testing to give energy companies an idea of where oil deposits most likely exist, which can only happen when the tundra is frozen.

On Thursday, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt called the final environmental impact statement “a big step to carry out the clear mandate we received from Congress to develop and implement a leasing program for the Coastal Plain, a program the people of Alaska have been seeking for over 40 years.”

Energy development in the Arctic Refuge will likely harm polar bears and other wildlife. Photo: Steven J. Kazlowski/Alamy

Many Alaskans support drilling in the refuge—perhaps not surprising in a place where, over the past four decades, oil revenue has averaged about 85 percent of the state budget—but questions linger around the purported economic benefits of doing so. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that lease sales would generate only half of the $1.8 trillion in revenues claimed by the Trump administration. More recently, a New York Times analysis found that sales may generate just $45 million across the entire coastal plain.

Although some Alaska Natives advocate tapping into the oil reserves, the Gwich’in people have been outspoken opponents. They live outside the refuge but hold sacred the Porcupine caribou herd that migrates there each spring, and subsist by hunting the animals. The plan announced last week “demonstrates that this administration and the Alaska delegation will disregard our way of life, our food, and our relationship with the land, the caribou, and future generations to pander to industry greed,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, in a statement.

Even before the administration’s plan was announced, there was pushback on Capitol Hill. Hours earlier, the House of Representatives passed a bill to prohibit energy development in the refuge. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate on Wednesday, but it stands little chance of passing the Republican-majority chamber where pro-drilling Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski holds the powerful chairmanship of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “I’m hopeful we can now move to a lease sale in the very near future, just as Congress intended,” Murkowski said in a statement, “so that we can continue to strengthen our economy, our energy security, and our long-term prosperity.”

Environmental groups, meanwhile, are gearing up to fight the plan in the courts. While the plan is final, Interior still needs to issue a formal record of decision, expected in about a month. Once it does so, lawsuits will certainly follow, as they did when the Trump administration lifted protections from national monuments and gutted the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Endangered Species Act, and other environmental laws and regulations.

The plan is “categorically illegal,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, in a press release. “We will not tolerate the administration’s brazen attempt to paper over the impacts of this disastrous proposal, and we will see them in court for this reckless effort to turn this iconic American landscape into an industrial oilfield.”

***

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Dove hunting opens today at Swan Lake NWR

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Exposing the Big Game

Swan Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Chillicothe, Missouri, will be open for the second year for dove hunting during the Missouri season starting today.

Steve Whitson, refuge manager, said the Missouri dove hunting season will be held for the second year at the refuge starting Sept. 1. The recently approved Refuge Hunting Plan opened areas of the refuge to dove hunting.

He said the dove hunting area is located on the north end of the refuge near the Hunting Headquarters site.

“The spring flood took out mist of the crops on the unit so habitat conditions were impacted but we decided to keep the hunt open this year,” Whitson said.

Last year, there were 29 hunters that participated in the opening weekend and 71 doves were harvested.

Hunters must check in at the Hunting Headquarters prior to entering the dove hunting area and when leaving the hunt area. A Missouri Small Game Hunting Permit and a Migratory Bird Hunting Permit along with a check-in stub are required to hunt dove. Hunters may check in 2 hours prior to official sunrise.

He said hunting dogs used for dove hunting are allowed for retrieval only and must be under the control of the owner at all times.

There is no overnight camping allowed on the refuge. Nontoxic shot is required while dove hunting on Swan Lake NWR and lead shot is prohibited. All Missouri dove hunting regulations will apply.

Whitson said hunting is a priority for public use in the refuge system and is allowed when found compatible with that specific refuge’s mission and purpose.

The dove hunting regulations flyer along with an area map can be found on the Swan Lake NWR website under the hunting section at https://www.fws.gov/refuge/Swan_Lake/.

Remote Hawaiian Island Wiped Off The Map

Posted on October 24, 2018 by Exposing the Big Game

“This event is confronting us with what the future could look like,” one federal scientist said about the loss of East Island, caused by Hurricane Walaka.

By Chris D’Angelo

East Island was the second-largest islet in the French Frigate Shoals, an atoll in the remote northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

A powerful hurricane in the eastern Pacific washed away an 11-acre island in the French Frigate Shoals, part of a national monument in the remote northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Approximately a half mile long and 400 feet wide, East Island was the second-largest islet in French Frigate Shoals ― an atoll some 550 miles northwest of Honolulu ― and a key habitat for the critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal, the threatened Hawaiian green sea turtle and several species of seabirds.

The island’s dramatic vanishing act was first reported by Honolulu Civil Beat and confirmed by HuffPost. Satellite images distributed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service show the spit of white sand almost entirely erased, scattered out onto the reef to the north. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

East Island was destroyed by storm surge from Hurricane Walaka, which roared through the northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a powerful Category 3 storm this month. Seven researchers, including three studying green sea turtles on East Island, were forced to evacuate from French Frigate Shoals before the storm.

Charles Littnan, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s protected species division, told HuffPost it will likely take years to understand what the island’s loss means for these imperiled species.

The biggest concern, he said, is the persistent loss of habitat, which has been identified as a significant threat to monk seals and green sea turtles. Nearby Trig Island was also lost beneath the surface this year, not because of a storm but from high wave activity.

“These small, sandy islets are going to really struggle to persist” in a warming world with rising seas, Littnan said. “This event is confronting us with what the future could look like.”

French Frigate Shoals is the nesting ground for 96 percent of the Hawaiian green sea turtle population, and approximately half lay their eggs at East Island. Historically, it has been the “single most important” nesting site for the turtles, he said.

All nesting females had left by the time Walaka hit, so the storm likely had little if any impact on the adult population. But NOAA scientists estimate that 19 percent of this year’s nests on East Island had not yet hatched and were swept away by the storm. And 20 percent of the turtle nests on nearby Tern Island, the largest island in the French Frigate Shoals, were lost.

The island was also a critical habitat for the federally protected Hawaii monk seal, one of the most endangered marine mammals on the planet. Roughly 80 percent of the population of just over 1,400 seals live in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, a remote archipelago that is surrounded by the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument.

In a typical year, 30 percent of monk seal pups are born at East Island. In 2018, 12 pups were born there, and NOAA said it believes that all but maybe one had been weaned before the storm hit.

Littnan said that monk seals are known to move into the water to ride out storms but that scientists won’t know if there was significant mortality until they are able to return to the area to survey the population next year.

Athline Clark, NOAA’s superintendent of Papahanaumokuakea, described the satellite images as “startling” and said that while the long-term implications are not clear, the island’s loss will have significant effects on future nesting and pupping cycles.

Before disappearing, East and Trig islands accounted for 60 percent of the monk seal pups born at French Frigate Shoals, according to NOAA.

Chip Fletcher, an associate dean at the University of Hawaii’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, told HuffPost that after an initial “holy shit” moment, he realized the island’s disappearance makes sense.

“This is not surprising when you consider the bad luck of a hurricane going into that vicinity and sea level rise already sort of deemed the stressor in the background for these ecosystems,” he said. “The probability of occurrences like this goes up with climate change.”

This month the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading United Nations consortium of researchers studying human-caused climate change, issued a dire warning about the threats the world now faces. Failing to overhaul the global economy and rein in carbon emissions would come with devastating, perhaps irreversible effects, the IPCC found.

The scientific community — including experts at NOAA — has long warned that anthropogenic climate change influences extreme weather events. The 2015 National Climate Assessment concluded that “hurricane intensity and rainfall are projected to increase as the climate continues to warm.”

Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane expert at Colorado State University, said the central Pacific is one area where a lot of models forecast that climate change will trigger more frequent and stronger hurricanes. He said Walaka rapidly intensified at an “impressive rate,” from a tropical storm with 40 mph winds to a major hurricane with winds of 120 mph in just 30 hours.

After reaching Category 5 strength, it weakened as it made its way north toward the national monument.

“The complete loss of the island is very impressive,” Klotzbach said after viewing the photos.

From satellite imagery and observations during a flyover of East Island and Tern Island, Littnan said, NOAA scientists expect that all the islets in French Frigate Shoals were completely washed over by the storm surge. It’s unclear if any others experienced significant damage.

There’s no telling if East Island will return. An islet named Whale-Skate Island, also once an important habitat for Hawaiian monk seals, vanished from French Frigate Shoals in the 1990s and has not reappeared.

Clark, Fletcher and Littnan said scientists are already exploring what, if anything, can be done to intervene to protect these vulnerable habitats and increase the resilience of the affected species. Those efforts could include pumping sand back above the ocean’s surface to restore islets.

“We’re going to have to look at really creative ways to help support these species to persist into the future,” Littnan said.

A Great Migration is in Danger

Posted on July 25, 2018 by Exposing the Big Game

Help Save the Sandhill Crane

Every year, sandhill cranes fly thousands of miles from their breeding grounds as far north as the Arctic down to their winter nesting grounds in the Southwest. This is one of the greatest migrations on Earth, and it happens in our own backyards across the American West.

But this ancient migration is in peril due to wasteful, inefficient, and unsustainable water use that is drying up our rivers. The crisis is growing on the Rio Grande and especially in the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, where the cranes could end their great migration on a depleted, dry river instead of the lush floodplain upon which they depend.

The Bosque del Apache Refuge was created to save wildlife like the iconic sandhill crane. However, as long as we continue living beyond our means, not even a refuge can save these birds if the lifeblood of the river runs dry.

The sandhill cranes depend on the Rio breathing life into the refuge, and the Rio depends on people like you to save it.

BREAKING: Trump administration pushes forward on Arctic Refuge drilling

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Exposing the Big Game

From Defendersorg

Today the Trump administration announced the start of a process to sell out the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for destructive oil and gas development.

This announcement is especially outrageous since it comes just one day before the 8^th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, an industrial disaster that left thousands of animals – from dolphins to birds to sea turtles – covered in oil, and huge swaths of water and beaches covered in chemicals and sludge.

Jim, when will they stop subjecting our precious wildlife and wild lands to such dangerous, irresponsible industrialization?

The Trump administration’s reckless dash to expedite drilling and desecrate the Arctic Refuge is unacceptable.

Trump admin to expand hunting access on public lands

Posted on September 15, 2017 by Exposing the Big Game

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/15/politics/interior-expand-hunting-access-on-public-lands/index.html

By Miranda Green, CNN

Updated 3:25 PM ET, Fri September 15, 2017

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Order aims to allow broader access to public lands to hunters, fishers
Interior Department says Obama administration was too restrictive

Washington (CNN)Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order Friday morning aiming to expand access for hunters and fishers to public lands and monuments.

In what is being described as an “expansive” secretarial order, Zinke’s rule would ultimately allow broader access across the board to hunters and fishers on public lands managed by the Interior Department, according to the order.

A section of the order also amends the national monument management plan to include or expand hunting and fishing opportunities to the “extent practicable under the law.”

The order cites a 2007 executive order from President George W. Bush to “facilitate the expansion and enhancement of hunting opportunities and the management of game species and their habitat.” It directs agencies to to create a report and plan to streamline how best to enhance and expand access to hunting and fishing on public lands.

The Interior Department oversees national parks, wildlife refuges and other federal lands.

The secretarial order also aims to expand educational outreach for hunting and fishing to “under served” communities such as minorities and veterans as well as increase volunteer access to federal lands.

“Today’s secretarial order is the latest example of how the Trump administration is actively moving to support hunting and other forms of outdoor recreation on public lands,” Zinke said in a statement.

“Hunting and fishing is a cornerstone of the American tradition and hunters and fishers of America are the backbone of land and wildlife conservation,” he said.

Interior said Obama administration policies were too restrictive.

“Through management plans made under the previous administration, which did not appreciate access to hunting and target shooting like this administration does, access and usage has been restricted,” said Interior spokeswoman Heather Swift.

Zinke’s rule will not have to go through a formal rule-making process.

It is the second major action from Interior in the last few weeks.

In August, Zinke recommended shrinking the boundaries of a handful of national monuments, but stopped short of suggesting the elimination of any federal designations following a review ordered by President Donald Trump.

At Trump’s direction, Zinke earlier this year launched a review of 27 national monuments, a controversial move that could undo protections for millions of acres of federal lands, as well as limits on oil and gas or other energy production. Interior and the White House have so far resisted releasing the contents of Zinke’s full recommendations.

However some groups are arguing that the new order is a “stunt” by the department, aimed at moving the dialogue away from other recent controversial actions they’ve taken — including recommending the shrinking of national monuments and supporting increased fracking and logging.

“The real story is that, with this announcement, the Trump administration is trying to create a distraction from their plans to dramatically reduce the size of America’s national monuments, which would be the largest elimination of protections on wildlife habitat in US history,” said Matt Lee-Ashley, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.

He added that according to the Congressional Research Service, every national monument “that the Trump administration claims to be opening to hunting and recreational fishing is already open to hunting and recreational fishing.”

Drew McConville, a senior managing director at the Wilderness Society, called the order a “red herring.”

“This issue is … completely unnecessary, since national monuments are typically open to hunting and fishing already,” McConville said. “The Trump administration ‘review’ of places protected as national monuments is nothing more than an excuse to sell out America’s most treasured public lands for commercial gain by oil, gas and other extractive industries. This agenda inherently means a loss of access to premier places for hunting, fishing and other outdoor pastimes.”

Congress repeals a regulation limiting hunting in Alaska’s wildlife refuges

Posted on May 16, 2017 by Exposing the Big Game

https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-05-15/congress-repeals-regulation-limiting-hunting-alaskas-wildlife-refuges

Bears in Alaska, including the Kodiak brown bear, could be affected by the repeal of a rule that limited hunting in Alaskan wildlife refuges.

Republicans in Congress, led by Alaska Rep. Don Young, have repealed Obama-era restrictions on hunting predators in national wildlife refuges in Alaska.

Restrictions still remain in national parks, but now Alaska’s state rules govern predator hunting in the refuges. These rules are designed to help hunters by reducing the number of predators that take the area’s game, such as deer, moose and caribou.

The Obama rule reversed by Congress gave the Fish and Wildlife Service ultimate control over hunting regulations on refuges and near refuges. The rule is one of many the new GOP Congress has reversed using the Congressional Review Act.

Tensions are high on both sides of this issue and the Center for Biological Diversity is challenging the legality of the repeal, saying the law requires that regulation of refuges benefit nature, not hunters.

“For many, it’s an argument over states’ rights, over who gets to be in charge,” says Erica Martinson, an Alaska Dispatch News reporter in Washington, DC. “On another, it’s about something they call ‘predator control.’”

The Board of Game in Alaska wants to allow, at certain times, the hunting of wolves and bears in order to maintain the population of moose, deer and caribou, so that people who want to hunt them for meat can do so, Martinson explains. The federal government, on the other hand, isn’t in favor of bolstering populations for hunting reasons.

Martinson says there has been “a lot of hyperbole on both sides” of this issue. “Overall, there hasn’t been much predator control activity on refuges, [though] it’s often near those areas. And the shooting of wolves from helicopters is pretty rare … All in all, 1,100 wolves are killed every year in Alaska, and about 12 percent of those come from predator control. So, [only] a small amount are affected by this, especially since this only impacts refuges and not state lands.”

Many Alaskans are in favor of the federal regulations and plenty of others are opposed to it, Martinson says. “Most often, these federal Fish and Wildlife regulations were set by federal workers in Alaska. It’s a decadeslong history of disagreement over this in the state.”

The Congressional Review Act allows a new Congress to overturn with a simple majority any rule that was made in the last six months of a previous administration, but it has only 60 legislative days to do so. Until the Trump administration, the CRA had only been used once since it was created in 1996. The current Congress has already used it 13 times. This makes the outcome of the Center for Biological Diversity’s lawsuit hard to predict.

The center is arguing that the rule in question was created over many, many years and isn’t just the product of the last days of the Obama administration. A nearly identical rule for National Parks in Alaska was issued by the Park Service but has not been overturned, since it was issued over a year ago, Martinson points out, so the refuge rule was “certainly not something that was done at the last minute.”

In addition, the center is arguing that the CRA is a blunt instrument because anytime it is used to overturn something, nothing substantially similar can ever be passed again. “It means there’s no chance for the Fish and Wildlife Service to tweak this rule or do something similar,” Martinson says. “It means that they’ve lost all ability to write any kind of regulation about this [issue].”

Some of the Alaska refuges that may be affected by the rule’s repeal include the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge and others in Yukon and Kodiak. There are 16 refuges in Alaska, which take up about 77 million acres.

Martinson points out that, even with the rule change, the Alaska Board of Game still maintains significant rules for hunting all over Alaska.

“This doesn’t wipe out the existence of hunting rules entirely. People aren’t allowed to just hunt whatever, with these actions,” she explains. “It just sort of alters the lay of the land for how they decide each year’s hunting allotments — who can hunt where and what.”

This article is based on an interview that aired on PRI’s Living on Earth with Steve Curwood.

Despite Trump overturning refuge hunting rules, conflict remains

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Exposing the Big Game

http://www.alaskajournal.com/2017-04-10/despite-trump-overturning-refuge-hunting-rules-conflict-remains#.WOvPEIjyvIU

By:

Elizabeth Earl

Morris News Service-Alaska/Peninsula Clarion

Post date:

Mon, 04/10/2017 – 8:11am

Although Congress put an end to a set of federal restrictions on wildlife management on national wildlife refuges in Alaska, the underlying conflict is far from over.

President Donald Trump signed a House Joint Resolution on Tuesday overturning a set of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulations enacted in 2016. The rule restricted certain hunting methods on national wildlife refuges in Alaska, with additional specific rules for the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Under the rule, predator control activities were banned unless based on sound science and in response to a conservation concern or met refuge need. On the Kenai, additional public use restrictions went into place, including some plane and motorboat access, camping restrictions and requiring a permit for baiting black bears and prohibiting using a dog to hunt big game except black bears, among other rules.

The state filed a lawsuit in January against the Department of the Interior over the Fish and Wildlife rules and another set of hunting restrictions set by the National Park Service in Alaska’s national preserves. The Safari Club International, a hunting organization, filed a similar lawsuit of its own about a week later. A few days after that, the Alaska Professional Hunting Association filed its own lawsuit over the same regulations.

“Passage of this resolution reaffirms our state sovereignty, and the state’s authority to manage fish and wildlife statewide, including on federal public lands,” said Alaska Attorney General Jahna Lindemuth in a news release issued Tuesday. “Alaskans depend on wildlife for food. Reversal of these regulations will allow residents to continue their hunting and gathering traditions.”

Despite the overturn, there’s still a sharp philosophical management disagreement between federal wildlife managers and state wildlife managers, and unless one side’s mandate changes, the disagreement will remain. Fish and Wildlife manages the national wildlife refuges for natural biological diversity, without promoting prey species over predators. Fish and Game, on the other hand, is mandated to manage for maximum sustained yield, which would provide enough harvestable animals to provide for hunters. The National Park Service protects the lands it manages and all the wildlife on them, prohibiting hunting entirely on national preserves.

The part of the regulations still on the table, the National Park Service regulations, strongly affect rural hunting guides, hence the reason the Alaska Professional Hunters Association sued, said Thor Stacey, the registered lobbyist for the organization. Many of the group’s 300 members live in rural Alaska, where the economy is mixed cash and subsistence, and sustained hunting both for guided clients and for food purposes is important. Blocking hunting practices or not allowing the state to enact predator control to boost prey populations for sustainable yield impacts those groups, he said.

Stacey said the group contests that by bypassing the state’s game management authority, the refuge and national park rules effectively amend the state’s constitution.

“(The state constitution) is where you get the maximum sustained yield management rules,” he said. “Within (Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act), it says nothing is supposed to modify or amend the state’s constitution. We argue that whrere the federal government steps in and imposes a foreign management philosophy, that actually effectively amends the state’s constitution.”

The three agencies cooperate on management issues, but there have been times over the years when the Board of Game or Fish and Game crossed a line and trigged a reaction from the feds. A recent example was when the Board of Game authorized the taking of brown bears over bait on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, said Board of Game chairman Ted Spraker.

“We allowed the taking of brown bears over bait in 2013, and the refuge immediately said, ‘Not on the refuge,’” he said. “That hasn’t changed.”

There are management tools built in, such as an overall quota for brown bears taken in the area before the season closes, he said. The refuge allows baiting for black bears in an area of Game Management Unit 15A but put brown bears off limits, which seemed inconsistent, he said.

The National Park Service regulations are still in place, so the lawsuits will go on with those challenges, and the regulations on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge are still in place, so the Safari Club’s lawsuit will still challenge those.

“It has more to do with not ceding authority to the federal systems compared to whether the department and the Board of Game will change things that we’re currently doing,” Spraker said. “I don’t see any major changes coming because of this, I think there will be a little more cooperation on some of the issues, but I don’t see the refuges embracing any sort of predator management because of this.”

The overturning of the rule must be frustrating for the agency, though, said Michelle Sinnott, an attorney with environmental law firm Trustees for Alaska, which represents a group of conservation organizations that petitioned to intervene in the three lawsuits and have been granted intervener status in the Safari Club and Alaska Professional Hunters Association lawsuits.

“It’s maddening to a sense and I’m sure it’s very frustrating for federal agencies, because the Congressional Review Act takes a sledgehammer to agencies’ years of work and communications with the public and public noticing comment and meetings with people in the region,” she said.

ANILCA has a role to play too. The act, passed in 1980, affected about 157 million acres of federal land in Alaska and changed management for others, including converting the Kenai National Moose Range into the current Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Its baseline principles include the provision of managing for natural diversity, and so even with the 2016 rules changed, with ANILCA still in place, the conflict still stands between federal management of wildlife on federal land and state sovereignty.

“That question is still alive and well and we’ll be part of it now,” Sinnott said. “It’s great that our intervention was granted, because now there’s a whole host of Alaskan voices that will be heard in these cases.”

Once the debate moved to the national level, the groups supporting Fish and Wildlife’s rule received support from members of Congress who saw problems with the rules themselves and with the state asserting its right to manage wildlife on federal lands, said Pat Lavin with the Alaska office of conservation group Defenders of Wildlife.

“To have any state kind of challenge that and claim that the state has the right to do whatever it wants … I think plenty of members of Congress saw that right away and that was all the noise,” he said. “Unfortunately, we lost the vote anyway. There’s plenty of folks in Congress who understand that and aren’t crazy about it but were willing to undo this regulation.”

Lavin agreed that ANILCA would help reinforce current management practices. Refuges around the country don’t always follow the strict state regulations, he said.

“It is true, and not only in Alaska but around the whole country, that as a general proposition in managing refuge lands, the Fish and Wildlife Service defer at least initially to the place they’re in, in a given refuge,” he said. “That’s kind of the default position, but on top of that, the refuge does things all the time that are specific to the refuge and may or may not be consistent with state regulations.”

Spraker said he was optimistic that with the new federal administration, a new Department of the Interior director and a new Alaska regional supervisor of the Fish and Wildlife Service, state and federal managers could collaborate on management more.

“I don’t think this is going to make a major change in how we do business, but I do think it’s going to increase the level of collaboration between the state and federal agencies,” he said. “And with new leadership, I think that will lend itself toward cooperation with the state.”

Trump Just Lifted A Ban On Shooting Bears And Wolves From Airplanes In Alaska

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Exposing the Big Game

https://www.buzzfeed.com/salvadorhernandez/trump-just-lifted-a-ban-on-shooting-bears-and-wolves-from?utm_term=.dtVExXm7AZ#.hjE5KB39XE

An Obama-era rule prohibited the hunting of predator animals like bears and wolves in Alaska’s national wildlife refuges.

Posted on April 3, 2017, at 7:57 p.m.

by Salvador Hernandez

Shooting wolves and bears from airplanes is once again legal in Alaska’s national wildlife refuges after President Trump signed legislation to allow the hunting of predator animals.

The legislation signed Monday repeals a federal rule put in place during the Obama administration that banned the aerial shooting or baiting of animals with food in order to curb the population of bears, wolves and other predators.

Put in place by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in August 2016, the rule prohibited the hunting of predator animals unless it was authorized by a refuge manager. It also outlined specific times when the ban could be temporarily lifted in order to reduce a predator population if the decision had been evaluated and other alternatives studied.

Former Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe, characterized the hunting tactics at the time as “a withering attack on bears and wolves that is wholly at odds with America’s long tradition of ethical, sportsmanlike, fair-chase hunting.”

Alaskan lawmakers disagreed.

“Not only was it a massive jurisdictional power grab, it clearly undermined the laws passed by Congress to protect Alaska’s authority to manage fish and wildlife upon all our lands,” Alaska Rep. Don Young, a Republican, said in a statement earlier this month when the Senate passed the resolution along a party-line vote. “Alaskans take the management of our lands and wildlife extremely serious.”

A map shows the 16 national wildlife refuges in Alaska.

National wildlife refuges cover nearly 78 million acres in Alaska, stretching from the Arctic in the north to the Aleutian islands in the south.

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the practice of “predator control” was implemented often to increase the population of other non-predatory species, including those that would be targeted by hunters in the refuges.

The ban also prohibited the killing of bears when they were near cubs or dens.

The Center for Biological Diversity criticized the legislation as it headed to President Trump’s desk for his signature.

“This isn’t hunting – it’s slaughter,” government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity Brett Hartl said in a statement. “Killing wolves and bears in this cruel, unsportsmanlike fashion is outrageous, especially in national wildlife refuges that belong to all Americans.”

The Sierra Club also condemned the lifting of the ban.

“Targeting cubs with mothers, baiting, and other extreme hunting measures promoted by this resolution have no place on our public lands,” said Alli Harvey, Alaska representative with the Sierra Club’s Our Wild America campaign.

Alaska’s congressional delegation, however, supported the bill’s passage through the Senate and House to overturn the hunting ban. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan applauded the change and criticized the Fish and Wildlife Service, which he said usurped the state’s authority.

“Alaskans have been able to maintain these strong and life-sustaining traditions through a rigorous scientific process that allows for public participation and ensures we manage our fish and game for sustainability, as required by the Alaska Constitution,” he said.

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