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 hunting, trapping and certain harvest practices to the state and ensure that every Alaska resident – not just those living in designated rural areas – has 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.
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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, while keeping federal subsistence rules intact.
Public comment on the proposed changes is open until Thursday, April 9. Comments can be submitted by clicking here.
3 Comments
The proposal and ultimate change in the land use permission to actively employ the hunting and fishing definitely should happen and can be managed very well with the rules set to allow the change and a permit system on draws for game or fish during hunting and fishing dates set as the state has in place at this time with Department of Fish and Game. It should not restrict any management area from implementing the new rules and should take away all barriers and boundaries. It’s time for the Federal Government to move out of the way for the land and animal use of hunting and fishing without having to placate a thinking of subsistence only ion the new rules they would make up. The whole state needs to be used and treated well under new law. Where the game or fish is under federal control, in the past was a need for thinning and culling and by utilizing a good permit system, the state would eliminate an unworkable situation of management putting the process into a lawful life and activity events. Seasonal review would be an adequate and enforceable management tool. State should go with it and get it done with the feds. Remember, this is still a part of the endorsement with land use on “statehood land” issues. It should be and is a part of that agreement. Our land, wildlife and resources.
“The change would return management of subsistence and sport harvesting to the state” This is completely untrue! Title VIII of ANILCA gives a preference to rural residents in times of game shortages and when there is a food need. This only applies on federal land. That preference came from an act of congress and only an act of congress can take that preference away. An example of a conflict this proposal is attempting to resolve is bear baiting on Federal lands. Several years ago the Alaska Board of Game (BOG) passed a regulation that allowed bear baiting on federal land, in this example, the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. This is not unusual since fish and game agencies set hunting and fishing regulations on most all federal lands in the lower ’48. In an unprecedented action the Kenai Refuge overruled the BOG and banned bear baiting. This Proposal returns the management of Fish and Game back to the State of Alaska except when the Federal Subsistence Board rules there is a shortage of game and rural citizens have a food shortage.
Glad you said that. I’m all for then President of the IUSA revoking the status of the use of the Antiquities Act in Alaska back in the Ole Jimmy Carter days. If this President would do that and go to the US supreme Court, that would settle the matter of the power of the pen. And, would then turn that assumption into dust. ANILCA would have no need to exist and the “statehood lands” would again be in a legal entitlement to the state of Alaska as of statehood and the parks and rivers would be under the control of the State of Alaska.