“Yeah, life sucks in bear country,” Montana native Todd Orr said at the start of a video he posted to his Facebook page after being brutally attacked by a grizzly bear.
The attack occurred while Orr was out scouting potential hunting locations in the Madison Range of Montana when he encountered a mother bear and her two cubs. Without hesitation the enraged mother bear charged him.
After two brutal attacks, emptying an entire can of bear spray in self-defense, and miraculously completing the three mile hike back to his truck, Orr considers himself lucky to be alive, but many aren’t as fortunate. For every story of bear attack survival, as in the case of Todd Orr or the similar story of Alaskan man Kenny Steck, there are countless other stories of victims that didn’t live to tell the tale.
Interactions between predators and humans are a way of life in states like Montana and Alaska. Larger in number, but often unseen by humans, are the daily interactions between predators and prey.
Ecosystems demand balance and the more man tries to manage that balance, the more man needs to control that balance. In other words, when man intervenes to protect certain species and habitat, it requires more active management of those and other species. In states with these large predators, predator control programs are designed to reduce predation by apex predators such as wolves and bears. For example state law requires wildlife management agencies in Alaska to maintain populations of moose, caribou, and deer that are a needed food source for citizens
This is nothing new. Wildlife management principles are at work right now in every state in our country. Deer populations have to be managed to reduce Lyme disease, vehicle collisions, and damage to agriculture. Few realize the contributions that hunters make by gladly paying license and permit fees to serve as population control agents under state management and regulation.
And the beneficial effects of wildlife management are not limited to rural areas. Excess deer populations in suburban areas put too much pressure on natural sources of food, leading to starvation in the herd. Excessive populations of geese can menace children in parks and create unsanitary conditions with their droppings — nearly a pound per bird per day. That’s why suburban Maryland park authorities recently euthanized more than 300 geese, and donated the meat to shelters for the homeless. The science behind wildlife management is at work in all of our communities.
This success of wildlife management makes it even more shocking that on September 4, 2016 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) put into effect new, unprecedented regulations that ban nearly all predator management on national wildlife refuges in Alaska. The new rules limit or prohibit hunting practices related to predators (wolves and bears), directly conflicting with Alaska state regulations that dictate these practices. This closely resembles regulations adopted last year by the National Park Service for hunting on National Preserves in Alaska.
This is the most recent example in a long-standing pattern of federal overreach. Out-of-touch federal bureaucrats have spent the years of the Obama Administration handing down mandates to dictate how states should manage their wildlife populations. The FWS is calling the new mandate a “natural diversity” principle of wildlife management, but make no mistake, the negative impact of this method is enormous. It allows no action by Alaskan officials to prevent a predator population from overwhelming a prey population living on Refuge land. By corollary, humans will also be at risk from excessive predator populations that overwhelm the carrying capacity of the land and seek out new territory in closer proximity to humans.
In announcing the new rules, FWS Director Dan Ashe proclaimed, “[O]ver the past several years, the Alaska Board of Game has unleashed a withering attack on bears and wolves that is wholly at odds with America’s long tradition of ethical, sportsmanlike, fair-chase hunting, in something they call “intensive predator management.”
Ashe’s claim that Alaska is attacking bears and wolves is ridiculous, as the state seeks only to protect its people and its wildlife through balanced wildlife management. Ashe also directly targeted hunting advocacy groups like ours who have long supported sustainable, balanced wildlife management practices.
The price of such foolish regulations will be paid with the lives of predator attack victims like Todd Orr and Kenny Steck. These decision made by the out of touch political elite in Washington, DC put nature loving people and their families at greater hazard and should be left to state officials who know the wildlife and the land.
Chip Burkhalter is Director of Government Affairs and Science-Based Conservation for Safari Club International (SCI).
