Trump Reverses Obama’s Federal Ban On ‘Controversial’ Hunting In Alaska–Handing Authority Back To The State
It’s another win for federalism under the Trump administration.
The Media(D) is outraged over the reversal of an Obama-era federal regulation that banned “controversial” hunting practices in Alaska on nature preserves.
Headlines about the Trump administration allowing bear-baiting and the slaughter of cubs with their nursing mothers in their dens have rankled the anti-hunting left.
But there’s a bit more to this story.
First, it’s about restoring the right of states to make regulations regarding hunting, and that’s a very good thing.
Effective July 9, hunting on nature preserves in Alaska will once again be controlled by the state rather than the federal government. The new rule, published Tuesday in the Federal Register, reverses hunting bans put in place in all National Parks by the Obama administration in 2015 following years of pleading by environmental and wildlife protection groups.
The rules, which many see as cruel and unnecessary, allow baiting of brown and black bears with human food, hunting of bears in their dens using artificial light, killing of wolves and coyotes in their dens during the season when mothers wean their young, using dogs to hunt bears and hunting of swimming caribou from boats. These actions were banned by Obama federally despite being permitted by the state of Alaska.
Source: CBS News
A federal rule doesn’t acknowledge that there are differences in the way things work from state to state. Alaska is vastly different from any other state in the country and will require different rules regarding wildlife just to meet the needs of the people that live there.
The second thing about the rule change is that the “controversial practice” was only permitted in very specific, remote locations, and this was primarily for where the practice is “customary and traditional” for food. According to Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game said that the harvest from these practices was small, and almost exclusively by Alaskan Native groups.
Alaska’s scale and geography are incomprehensible to most Americans. The state is enormous, largely without roads, and in many places as wild today as when its Native people first encountered Russian explorers some 275 years ago.
Grocery stores and jobs are scarce or nonexistent in Alaska’s rural communities. Lacking road access and affordable store-bought food sources, people in small communities scattered across the wilderness depend upon fish and wildlife for sustenance. It is for these Alaskans who “grocery shop” from the land that exceptions to standard hunting laws — both state and federal — are made.
The Alaska Board of Game, Alaska’s regulatory body for hunting and trapping rules, considers all regulations through an open public process. The board sometimes adopts exceptional regulations like those allowing harvest of black bears at den sites. The board allowed this only in a handful of remote locations where the practice is considered customary and traditional for obtaining food. The harvest is small and carried out mostly, if not entirely, by Alaska Native people who have taken bears in dens for thousands of years. The same is true of swimming caribou taken with rifles from boats, allowed only in two isolated game management units where caribou serve as a primary food source.
Source: Alaska Department of Fish and Game
This brings us back to the CBS News article that states that native groups, as well as Alaskan lawmakers, are praising the move.
Governor Michael Dunleavey says that it reaffirms state authority over managing wildlife on national preserve lands.
The Chief and Chairman of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, Victor Joseph, said that the old rule was implemented without adequate tribal consultation.
Lawmakers and native tribes in Alaska praised the law change, saying it puts the power back in the hands of the state.
The reversal “confirms the sovereign authorities the state has with respect to managing wildlife on our national preserve lands. This is a step towards acknowledging Alaska’s rightful control over fish and wildlife resources all across the state,” Alaska Governor Michael J. Dunleavy said last month.
“The previous rule was implemented without adequate tribal consultation, in disregard to rural Alaska’s dependence on wild food resources,” stated Victor Joseph, Chief and Chairman of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, which represents 42 tribes. “The previous limitations enacted in 2015 threatened our way of life and our centuries-long sustainable management practices.”
Source: CBS News
Yet, the leftist journos are still raging on because they don’t understand how conservation actually works.
They’d do well to read this:
Get Doug Giles’ book, Rise, Kill and Eat: A Theology of Hunting from Genesis to Revelation today!
If a person looked to Scripture and paid particular attention to the passages within the Bible that address the topic of hunting, then they’d walk away thinking not only is hunting animals tolerated but it is endorsed by God. And that’s exactly what this little book is about: proving that God, from Genesis to Revelation, is extremely cool with hunters and hunting. I’ll go out on a biblical limb and claim right off the bat that you cannot show me, through the balance of the Bible, that the God of the Scripture is against the responsible killing and the grilling of the animals He created. ~Doug Giles
In his killer new book RISE, KILL & EAT: A Theology of Hunting From Genesis to Revelation Doug carries on with his courageous war against the lunatic fringe who dare recommend Bambi solutions to the annual production of edible wildlife. –Ted Nugent
