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Yesterday, the Trump administration announced that gray wolves in the lower 48 were going to be stripped of their endangered species protections, turning over their management to state and tribal entities. State management of wolves in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming has already proven to be detrimental to the species, with liberated hunting and trapping regulations regularly enacted. Lawsuits against the …
A huge congratulations to AFW’s founder Jim Kowalsky, who was awarded the Alaska Conservation Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award last night! Jim’s passion and dedication has long been a bulwark in Alaska conservation. Prior to founding AFW, Jim served as the first executive director of the Fairbanks Environmental Center (now the Northern Alaska Environmental Center) and as a Friends of the …
In June the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed a new rule, with a host of regulations, that would allow sport hunting practices such as bear baiting in the Kenai Wildlife Refuge. Over 34,000 public comments on the changes were submitted over the summer, and in early October, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it will hold an …
The Alaska Wildlife Alliance, Friends of Chugach State Park, and Anchorage attorney Kneeland Taylor filed a petition to close the upcoming lynx hunting and trapping season in Chugach State Park. Lynx hunting and trapping have been closed in the park since 2014 due to low population numbers. Earlier this summer, however, the Alaska Fish and Game opened season on lynx …
Trump has long pushed to remove Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections from grey wolves. If removed, management of wolves is passed on to the state, as has already happened in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. What happens when states, who historically have had strong opposition to wolves due to ranching concerns, are left to manage the populations? When ESA protections were …
Another mining interest threatens industrialization of wild Alaska and its splendid wildlife miracle. The Canadian mining corporation Constantine Metal Resources has begun drilling in a private inholding in Lake Clark National Park. The inholding, known as the Johnson Tract, is owned by the Cook Inlet Region Inc. (CIRI), a regional native corporation. CIRI acquired the land, which is just south …
On August 31, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced that the Trump administration plans to remove endangered species protections from gray wolves across most of the nation.Wolves have recently rebounded in some parts of the United States, having been shot, trapped and poisoned to near extinction in the last century. Removing their protections will allow states to take over …
We’re suing the Trump administration! Alaskans for Wildlife is a co-litigant on a lawsuit filed by Trustees for Alaska on behalf of twelve additional clients. We’re suing the Interior Department and National Park Service for illegally adopting a rule that would open up national preserves in Alaska to inhumane hunting practices. Such practices include killing brown bears over bait (donuts …
On August 24th, the Gwich’in Steering Committee and allied groups sued Trump’s Secretary of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management over a leasing program that will sell sacred and public lands to oil companies. The Trump administration’s decision to sell off the entire coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, known as the Sacred Place Where Life …
Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has huge human rights and climate ramifications, but as the Trump administration has made clear that those matter little in the face of the Almighty Dolla’, let’s also look at the problem from an economic standpoint. So, how much oil is in the Refuge? We don’t know. The findings from the one exploratory …