Over the course of about three weeks, between May 10 and June 5, Alaska Department of Fish and Game (AKDFG) employees shot 81 brown bears and 14 wolves from a helicopter. In 2023, state employees killed 94 brown bears, five black bears, and five wolves. The aerial shooting was part of a “contested strategy” to restore the Mulchatna caribou herd, which has drastically declined since its high of 200,000 animals in 1997, according to Anchorage Daily News.

Today, there are about 13,000 members of the iconic herd. In 2021, Mulchatna caribou hunting has been prohibited as AKDFG works toward a restoration goal of 30,000 to 80,000 animals. 

AKDFG calls killing the bears “a last-ditch attempt” to save the herd from complete demise. To date, aerial sharpshooters have removed 180 bears along Southwest Alaska’s caribou calving grounds since the predator control program was approved in 2022. 

And current calf-cow ratios are showing that the effort may be working as AKDFG reported that summer calf survival “nearly doubled last fall compared to a 10-year average.”

“Based on last fall, I anticipate we’re going to see another pretty strong showing of calves pretty quickly,” said Ryan Scott, director of the state’s Division of Wildlife Conservation.

However, the Mulchatna caribou demise has also been linked to other issues that haven’t been addressed like disease and access to the low-growing lichens caribou prefer due to climate change. Even when the predator control program was approved in 2022, AKDFG biologists noted that “malnutrition and infection [were] bigger factors” in the overall decline of the herd – not increased predation. 

And, since the program rolled out, the state hasn’t gathered the necessary data to prove killing bears is actually helping caribou. Ken Whitten, a retired AKDFG wildlife biologist, said the “improved calf-cow ratios announced this month may reflect a population recovering from brucellosis” and added that “the state’s own data indicated that bear predation was not a serious problem for newborn caribou,” especially where the bears are being targeted.

Jim Dau, who retired as an AKDFG caribou biologist in 2016, noted that his peers found the “really aggressive” predator removal program was enacted without any knowledge or data on the number of bears that traveled through that area or any consideration of other reasons for the herd’s decline.

“The overriding concern for me is how climate change is affecting caribou worldwide,” said Dau. “If we just continue to throw our time and resources into hacking out bears and wolves, we could be missing a lot of other things.”

Scott noted that those factors could be influencing caribou numbers; however, he also said that there’s “very little we can do to impact that in a positive way, but we know that bears and wolves eat the calves and it’s the one lever that we can pull to try to make a positive impact.”

This year, AKDFG collared 55 caribou calves, and 40 of the collars are still active, according to Scott. In addition to the continuing with the predator control program, biologists are also looking at nutritional deficiencies and disease prevalence within the herd “to determine if further bear and wolf reductions during spring calving are warranted to further improve calf survival and herd growth.”

The predator control program is approved through 2028 and, according to Scott, “the state intends to conduct it for at least one more year.”