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Zinke's Interior Dept Moves to Allow Alaskan Hunters to Bait Bears & Wolf Pups with Doughnuts, Bacon
The Trump administration, led by corporate-owned Ryan Zinke ruining the Department of Interior, is at it again. Previously in April 2018, they removed Endangered Species Act protections for Yellowstone grizzly bears after more than 42 years on the endangered species list.
The Trump administration is moving to reverse Obama-era rules barring hunters on some public lands in Alaska from baiting brown bears with bacon and doughnuts and using spotlights to shoot mother black bears and cubs hibernating in their dens.
Under the proposed changes, hunters would also be allowed to hunt black bears with dogs, kill wolves and pups in their dens, and use motor boats to shoot swimming caribou.
These methods were banned in 2015 by the Obama administration after decades of effort by concerned parties.
The practices the Obama-era rule prohibited included the killing of all black bears by dogs; the hunting of caribou from powered motorboats; hunting of wolves or coyotes and their pups during denning season months; and using "bait" to attract and shoot brown bears.
These and other hunting methods — condemned as cruel by wildlife protection advocates — were outlawed on federal lands in 2015. Members of the public have 60 days to provide comme
Ryan Zinke, the abomination of a Secretary of Interior, created a new advisory board to rewrite federal rules to expand hunting. That board is filled with trophy hunters themselves and Trump's friends and family so these rule reversal are obvious. Smart Dissent posted about this in March 2018.
Under the Trump Administration, the Interior Department has routinely emphasized its interest in weakening various regulations on hunting on national park land.
Zinke has met a number of times with representatives of the National Rifle Association as well as the big game hunting lobby, the Safari Club.
....Zinke, a former Montana congressman who displays a taxidermied bear in his Washington office along with mounted heads from a bison and an elk..... Zinke had appointed a board loaded with trophy hunters to advise him on conserving threatened and endangered wildlife, including members of the Safari Club.... a group that promotes big-game hunting. Trump's sons are also avid trophy hunters who have made past excursions to Africa and Alaska.
These rule change are not about animal management at all. Such a contention is a flat lie. It is about boosting profits.
Collette Adkins, a lawyer and biologist with the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity, expressed outrage at the rollback. "Cruel and harmful hunting methods like killing bear cubs and their mothers near dens have no place on our national preserves," she said.
The Humane Society of the United States said it would oppose the new rules. "These federal lands are havens for wildlife and the National Park Service is mandated to manage these ecosystems in a manner that promotes conservation," said Anna Frostic, a lawyer for the animal rights group. "This proposed rule, which would allow inhumane killing of our native carnivores in a misguided attempt to increase trophy hunting opportunities, is unlawful and must not be finalized."
"Allowing the killing of bear cubs and wolf pups in their dens is barbaric and inhumane," Jamie Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. "The proposed regulations cast aside the very purpose of national parks to protect wildlife and wild places," she said. "The National Park Service should not accept Alaska’s extreme predator control program as a suitable method of managing wildlife and their habitat.”
"There is no reason whatsoever to kill baby bears and wolf pups," said Tracie Letterman, vice president of legislative affairs at the Humane Society Legislative Fund.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/22/politics/interior-department-alaska-bear/index.html