Judge allows state to resume helicopter bear kills during lawsuit

Alaska Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman on Wednesday denied a request to halt the state's helicopter-based bear control program, allowing Alaska Department of Fish and Game to resume shooting bears from aircraft across 40,000 square miles of southwest Alaska even as a lawsuit challenging the program's legality moves forward.

The ruling allows the state to proceed with helicopter-based bear removals while the underlying case is still in court. The state killed 99 bears in less than a month in 2023 and 81 brown bears in one month in 2024 under the program, including cubs and females with cubs, according to Alaska Wildlife Alliance, which brought the lawsuit with the Center for Biological Diversity. The program is scheduled to continue each spring through 2028.

Alaska Wildlife Alliance won a 2025 court ruling that found the original Mulchatna bear control regulations unlawfully adopted and void. The Alaska Board of Game responded in July 2025 by reinstating a revised predator control program authorizing unlimited killing of black and brown bears over the same area. AWA sought an injunction to stop the 2026 spring removals while its challenge to the revised regulations proceeds; Zeman found the challengers had not shown the state acted without a reasonable basis for approving the program.

The program covers game management units 9B, 17, 18, 19A, and 19B in southwest Alaska, centered in the Wood-Tikchik basin, and aims to boost the declining Mulchatna caribou herd by reducing predation. ADF&G staff and contractors shoot bears from helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft under the state's intensive management law. Tribes and some Native organizations have backed stronger actions to recover the caribou herd, which many villages depend on for subsistence, while conservation and animal welfare groups strongly oppose the large-scale bear removals.

The lawsuit over the program's legality continues in Alaska Superior Court. No trial date has been set.