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Protect Alaska’s bears from the cruel practice of bear baiting!

On his first day back in office, President Trump signed an Executive Order effectively directing the National Park Service to once again allow bear baiting on Alaska’s national preserves.  

The National Park Service is now beginning to carry out his order, and we need your help! Please join us in standing up for wildlife and opposing this disastrous decision. Bear baiting is extremely cruel—it involves setting out baits like dog food, donuts, rotting meat and fish scraps to attract brown and black bears—and then trophy hunters shoot the feeding bears. Baiting bears poses a considerable safety risk for people, too, especially hikers and campers, who may encounter bait stations, or because baited bears become habituated to human foods.

National preserves should be safe havens for animals, and we should be working to protect our nation’s wildlife there, not making it easier for trophy hunters to gun bears down. 

TAKE ACTION:
Please use the form to send a message to the National Park Service to ask them to keep the ban on bear baiting on national preserves in Alaska in place.

This action alert is for U.S. residents.

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Dear Regional Director Stricker,

I am writing to urge the National Park Service to keep in place the Alaska; Hunting and Trapping in National Preserves rule which was issued on July 3, 2024.  Without this rule in place, bear baiting will once again be allowed on 20 million acres in Alaska’s national preserves.

By large majorities, most Alaskans oppose the practice of bear baiting.  Allowing it to resume is simply pandering to a vocal minority of extreme trophy hunters that want to continue a practice most people find abhorrent. A March 2023 poll of 820 likely 2024 Alaska voters demonstrated that 75% opposed the baiting of bears so they could be trophy hunted, 75% opposed the baiting of bears because it concentrates wildlife and leads to larger bears preying on smaller bears, and 78% opposed the baiting of bears because it puts other recreationists at risk from a bear who is feeding at or defending their food sources.  

In 2023, the National Park Service found that bear baiting increases the “potential for significant human injury or even death” to recreationists in areas near bait sites.  

A 2024 study by biologist Diana Lafferty and her colleagues emphasized the dangers of baiting bears—because bears will defend a bait station just as they would defend a carcass. Bears who are baited, the study authors noted, have increased chances that they will be killed in defense of life or property as baiting changes their natural behaviors.  

On the flip side, over a million wildlife watchers visit Alaska each year and wildlife watching contributes billions of dollars to the state’s local economies—much more than the contributions of a handful of trophy hunters seeking to kill animals even by the cruelest of methods. A 2011 economic study for wildlife tourism in Alaska showed that residents and non-residents spent $2.8 billion watching wildlife compared with $1.3 billion in hunting. 

Baiting not only hurts bears, it harms non-target animals. Bait sites spread disease between animals who congregate at these artificial feeding places. Large bears prey upon smaller bears. Importantly, baiting grows bear populations—the opposite goal of what Alaska’s wildlife officials seek. 

Maintaining the ban on bear baiting is simply common sense. With thousands of Americans heading to National Park Service lands in Alaska each year for the chance to witness brown and black bears, wild and thriving, the ban on baiting bolsters ecotourism income for gateway communities and safeguards public health. Ensuring that this practice remains banned is the best way to guarantee Alaskans, and all Americans, safe wildlife watching opportunities for years to come.

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