Park Service final rule allows bear baiting again in Alaska national preserves

The National Park Service on Friday issued a final rule allowing bear baiting again in Alaska's national preserves under state law, for sport and subsistence hunters alike. It takes effect Nov. 18.

The rule also undoes most changes the agency made to its Alaska rules in 2015, 2017 and 2024. It returns, with some updates, to the framework the Park Service adopted in 1981 to carry out the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, the 1980 law that created Alaska's 10 national preserves and allows hunting in them under state and federal law.

Baiting in the preserves was allowed under state law from 1982 until the Park Service banned it in 2015. The agency allowed it again in 2020 and banned it again in 2024, saying then that baiting encourages bears to become conditioned to human food, making negative encounters with people more likely. That ban applied only to sport hunting. Subsistence hunters had been limited since 2017 to natural or legally harvested remains as bait, and the new rule lifts that limit too.

The agency now says neither public safety nor its policy favoring natural wildlife behavior justifies a ban. It expects no more than 10 bears a year, two black bears and up to eight brown bears, to be harvested over bait across all the preserves, in line with the years baiting was allowed before. "Harvesting bears over bait has been regulated across Alaska since 1982 with no evidence of notable public safety incidents or population-level impacts," the agency wrote. It points to state rules requiring permits, registered bait stations, a baiting clinic and minimum distances from roads, trails, dwellings and public facilities.

The agency received 5,172 comments on its March proposal, including from groups representing more than 48,000 signers. A large number opposed baiting on ethical grounds and over risks to wildlife and public safety, and some objected to deferring to the state on wildlife management. Federal subsistence regional advisory councils called the initial 30-day comment period unreasonably short; the agency extended it by 15 days.

The rule also restores older procedures for closing parts of the preserves. Emergency closures affecting fish and wildlife harvest will again be capped at 30 days, down from 60 under the 2015 changes, and will require notice and a hearing before taking effect. Non-emergency closures to sport hunting and trapping will take effect only after the superintendent consults the state and affected users. Closure notices will again have to run in newspapers, go up at local post offices and be offered to local radio stations.

For subsistence users, the rule drops a 2017 permit requirement for collecting antlers, bones and similar parts for handicrafts. Collection stays allowed. The agency says the rule doesn't change the federal subsistence priority or reopen areas closed to harvest by statute. Falconers will again be able to collect live raptor chicks in the preserves under state permits, which the 2017 rule barred.

President Trump's executive order on Alaska directed the agency to undo the 2024 rule and restore its 2020 rule. The agency says it went further, citing a Safari Club International letter and an Alaska Outdoor Council petition that both asked it to review the changes that began in 2015 and restore the older rules.