News
Kenai National Wildlife Refuge
Originally published in The Hill Opinion on August 4th, 2020
Alaska’s Kenai National Wildlife Refuge has weathered many storms in the last 80 years. Its 2 million acres of forests and wetlands southeast of Anchorage are regularly wracked by natural cataclysms such as fires that can dwarf Lower 48 events. Our organizations have fought for years to protect this amazing refuge and its wildlife populations, but now a human-made disaster is in the works.
Alaska's Kenai National Wildlife Refuge has weathered a lot of storms since it was created in 1941 as the Kenai National Moose Range. Its two million acres of forests and wetlands Anchorage is regularly wracked by cataclysms that dwarf lower 48 events. When the 2019 Swan Lake Fire burned 168,00 acres, an area larger than El Paso, it triggered muscle memories in firefighters who quelled the 200,000-acre Funny River Fire five years earlier. Wildfires threaten humans but their regenerative benefits for wildlife are indisputable. The same can't be said of political storms.
Today, the Trump Administration announced a plan to allow hunters in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge to hunt brown bears over bait. The goal is to drastically reduce the brown bear populations on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula to artificially boost moose populations for the benefit of hunters. This change is in complete contrast to what the Refuge System was created for: natural biodiversity and integrity of wildlife populations. If allowed to go forward, this rule could threaten the entire population of brown bears on the Kenai Peninsula. Wildlife refuges are federal lands, and should be managed by the National Wildlife Refuge System to conserve wildlife species, including brown bears. The State of Alaska manages state lands in a different manner, but that does not negate that the Kenai NWR are federal lands and should be managed as such.
