The National Park Service is accepting public comments on its proposal to ease federal control in Alaska’s national parks and preserves by rolling back restrictive hunting and trapping rules imposed since 2015.

The change would return management of subsistence and sport harvesting to the state and ensure that every Alaska resident – not just those living in designated rural areas – has equal access to traditional resources in units of the National Park System.

For decades before 2015, Alaska’s parks operated under a regulatory framework that upheld the state’s authority and recognized that subsistence is a way of life for all Alaskans, regardless of zip code. Repeated revisions in 2015, 2017, 2020, and 2024 progressively tightened federal controls, including limits on methods such as bear baiting. The pivotal 2015 rule went further by limiting hunts inside park units to rural residents who qualify under the rural priority established in Title VIII of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

These federal restrictions created a two-tiered system, whereby non-rural Alaskans who also rely on hunting, fishing, and trapping for food and cultural traditions were shut out of areas they had used for generations.

The proposed amendment would revoke those post-2015 changes. In practical terms, this means hunting, fishing, and trapping in Alaska’s national parks and preserves would once again fall under state management.

Public comment on the proposed changes is open until Thursday, April 9. Comments can be submitted by clicking here.

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