The Interior Department has begun the process to remove Obama administration-era rules regarding the hunting and trapping of animals such as bears, wolves and caribou on some federal lands in Alaska to make them coincide with state law.
The National Park Service on Monday issued its notice of intent to amend the regulations imposed near the end of the second term of President Barack Obama in 2015. The public will have 60 days to comment.
"The conservation of wildlife and habitat for future generations is a goal we share with Alaska," National Park Service Regional Director Bert Frost said. "This proposed rule will reconsider NPS efforts in Alaska for improved alignment of hunting regulations on national preserves with State of Alaska regulations, and to enhance consistency with harvest regulations on surrounding non-federal lands and waters."
Some of the changes would allow hunters to use dogs to pursue bears, kill wolves in their dens and use motorboats to shoot bathing caribou.
The move was decried by environmental activists but hailed by state environmental officials.
"Cruel and harmful hunting methods like killing bear cubs and their mothers near dens have no place on our national preserves," Collette Adkins, a lawyer with the advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity, told NBC News.
The Safari Club International, a group that promotes big-game hunting, opposed the Obama-era rules. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, an ex-congressman from Montana, had worked to expand hunting on federal land until his resignation last year.
Alaska, which comprises more than 15% of the land mass of the United States, has 10 federal preserves covering nearly 37,000 square miles of the state’s 663,300 square miles.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game was “pleased to see the National Park Service working to better align federal regulations with State of Alaska hunting and trapping regulations," according the Maria Gladziszewski, the agency's deputy director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation, in an email to The Associated Press.
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