Rick Steiner and Kirsten Stade as posted on
CommonDreams.org
July 2017
Directives to Expand Hunting and Trapping Launch Long, Uncertain Legal Process
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 Alaska encourages lethal removal of predators
in order to increase the supply of game animals while the federal agencies
are charged with sustaining all native wildlife – including predators.
Traditional federal-state cooperation in wildlife management has broken down
in recent years and has been replaced with lawsuits from the state and
political acrimony.
“Alaska's national parks and wildlife refuges are required by federal law to
be managed not as private game reserves but to protect natural diversity,
including natural predator-prey dynamics,” said Rick Steiner, a retired
University of Alaska professor and PEER board member, pointing out that
lethal control on park boundaries are devastating in-park wolf populations.
“The State of Alaska’s unethical predator control practices have no place in
modern society, and certainly not on Alaska’s magnificent national parks and
refuges.”
What happens next is unclear. The Park Service will have to begin a lengthy
rulemaking process which will take years. Meanwhile the NPS 2015 rules
remain in effect. In addition, the factors cited by Ms. Johnson are
political in nature and not a legitimate basis for regulation. Further, the
NPS is constrained by statutory mandates that a Trump White House cannot
fiat away. Thus, assuming a new rule is promulgated before Trump leaves
office, it will almost certainly be swarmed by litigation challenging its
validity.
The path for the refuge rules is even murkier. Congress purportedly
rescinded these 2016 rules earlier this year through a disapproval
resolution under the Congressional Review Act. Under that law, FWS would be
forbidden from reenacting similar rules without congressional authorization.
Consequently, it is uncharted territory as to what, if anything, FWS can do,
absent Congress. Further complicating matters is an ongoing lawsuit
challenging the application of the Congressional Review Act to these refuge
rules.
“Team Trump says they do not want to give away federal lands but are
apparently open to having them mismanaged,” stated PEER Executive Director
Jeff Ruch, noting that the rules do not apply to subsistence hunting or
restrict the taking of wildlife for public safety purposes or defense of
property. “Like most Trump initiatives, this one is ill-considered and
likely ineffective but guaranteed to waste a lot of time.”
Ironically, this is unfolding even as the State of Alaska is conceding that
killing wolves is not a big factor in increasing the caribou population in
one large area — the stated goal of predator control. But Alaska is waiting
until next year to reconsider this program.
Rick Seiner and Kirsten Stade are with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) a national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals. PEER's environmental work is solely directed by the needs of its members. As a consequence, we have the distinct honor of serving resource professionals who daily cast profiles in courage in cubicles across the country.
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