Look to the tundra—the truth of the Mulchatna bear killing program
By Madison Grosvenor
Note: This blog contains graphic images of dead bears.
Across the rolling tundra of southwest Alaska, an open expanse of moss, sedge, shallow lakes, and low brush stretches toward the horizon.
It is a place defined by movement.
Bear tracks dot snow within the Mulchatna caribou intensive management area in southwest Alaska in May 2026. (Photo by David Rossow/Alaska Wildlife Alliance)
In late spring, wildlife traverse vast distances as caribou gather in large herds, birds nest on the tussock, and bears amble on ancient trails carved out by generations of paws. The first flush of seasonal growth emerges across the lowlands.
This normally quiet foraging—head down in sedge, moving between riverbeds, pausing in patches of brush—grows urgent as the sound of rotors carries across open ground. The source of the noise arrives without warning, getting louder as it closes in. Bears break into a sprint, fighting to put distance between themselves and the sound above, between themselves and the machine pressing down on them.
There is nowhere to hide.
In this absence of refuge, the chase ends with gunfire.
From the air, trackers see the movement of bears in a landscape without trees or ridges and steadily gain ground to shoot them down. But on the ground the State of Alaska’s Mulchatna Bear Control Program looks differently.
It looks like bears—massive boars, sows with cubs, young bears on their own for the first time—running for their lives.
The visceral aftermath
In May, our clients, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, flew over the Mulchatna gunning program area to see and document what the program looked like on the ground.
They found two dead bears discarded on the tundra.
Shotgun slug cartridges are visible on the tundra near a deceased adult bear on state land within the Mulchatna intensive management area in southwest Alaska in May 2026. (Photo by David Rossow/Alaska Wildlife Alliance)
One, an adult brown bear rolled on his back, partially gutted with head and front paws removed. The other, a cub, eyes open and collapsed on their side.
They were found near the border of the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge. Had they been feeding on sedge a few hundred feet west, they would have been protected from this bear killing program.
Found unceremoniously scattered around the unsalvaged bodies were “Special Forces” short magnum slug casings and plastic sheath resembling a disposable blade cover.
“…seeing that cub on the tundra just hundreds of feet from the wildlife refuge border, so exposed, its paw the size of my hand…it was really hard to see that and not feel immense shame,” said Nicole Schmitt, executive director of Alaska Wildlife Alliance. “The trash near the bodies, the noise of aircraft buzzing around, the casings next to unsalvaged bodies—I grew up hunting, I still hunt, and I have never seen anything like this. I love this state more than anything, but that day I was not proud to be an Alaskan.”
A deceased bear cub is left intact on the tundra on state land within the Mulchatna intensive management area in southwest Alaska in May 2026. (Photo by Nicole Schmitt/Alaska Wildlife Alliance)
These aren’t isolated incidents. Since 2023, more than 200 bears have died this way, many of them cubs, some not even a year old.
The state’s program, named after the Mulchatna caribou herd, allows the Department of Fish and Game to kill an unlimited number of bears across nearly 40,000 square miles, without setting any population goals or limits. The state measures the “success” of the program by how many caribou calves survive, with no regard for what is needed to sustain healthy bear populations or whether predator removal is addressing the real cause of the herd’s low population.
Multiple studies have identified habitat degradation and disease as drivers of the herd’s decline. Researchers have documented poor body condition in female caribou, a sign of nutritional stress, as well as widespread brucellosis, a disease that causes reproductive failure, reducing the amount of surviving calves.
Brown bear family roams the beach in Lake Clark National Park. Photo courtesy of NPS.
Recent ecological studies have shown that the removal or significant reduction of large carnivores can destabilize the ecosystem, triggering a downward spiral toward ecosystem simplification that may harm the very species predator control programs claim to support, including moose and caribou. When bears and wolves are removed from an area, unchecked herbivore populations can over-browse vegetation, deplete food sources, alter habitat structure, and reduce the long-term ability of the lands to provide the food and space needed for animals like moose and caribou.
Bear biologist Sterling Miller, who studied Alaska brown bears for the department for 20 years, stated he doubts the state’s efforts will have any meaningful effect on caribou populations but believes they could cause significant harm to bear populations because, compared with caribou, bears reproduce much more slowly.
“I think that in Alaska, there’s a special responsibility not to repeat the mistakes made in the Lower 48,” Miller said, noting that brown bears there had been nearly eradicated by the mid-1970s, and that restoring their populations has required significant time, effort, and expense.
The Mulchatna caribou herd at the Telequana Corridor in Lake Clark. Photo courtesy of NPS.
Addressing habitat loss and disease in caribou herds is difficult, expensive, and requires long-term management. Apparently killing bears is easier than doing real science, so the State is spending $1.57 million on predator control that won’t work. The State had to pay a half a million dollars in attorney’s fees after losing a lawsuit challenging the program in 2025.
“Killing more bears is not going to put caribou in freezers,” said Nicole Schmitt, in a recent Anchorage Daily News article. “I think (the state is) gonna do this for five more years, it’s gonna be way too expensive, it’s not really gonna change anything, and we’re not gonna really know what the impact was on bears or caribou, and it’s just a bunch of waste all over.”
Those dead and discarded bears tell a brutal story about what happens when bad assumptions, politics, and agendas replace science with deadly results.
Double standards
According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s own reports, the hide and skulls of shot bears are removed. Hides are supposedly taken and shipped to Anchorage to be distributed to taxidermists.
The hides of the two bears found on the tundra were intact. The adult bear’s skull and front paws were removed. The cub’s body was fully intact.
Department commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang stated himself on the podcast Native America Calling that “[the meat is] donated to local villages. No animals are wasted. We can’t do that ethically as a department.”
An adult bear carcass, missing its head and front two paws, is left on state land within the Mulchatna intensive management area in May 2026. (Photo by David Rossow/Alaska Wildlife Alliance)
The department even warns hunters that “wanton waste of big game meat is a serious offense punishable by a fine of up to $10,000 and one year in jail.”
None of the meat from those two bears was field dressed and given away as food.
In fact, the rest of us cannot legally hunt bears with motorized vehicles or aircraft on state lands in Alaska precisely to uphold fair chase. Most hunters also cannot kill female bears accompanied by cubs or the cubs themselves. Yet, the department sees no problems with exempting hired shooters by flying low to flush out and shoot bears, including cubs, from helicopters along the borders of national wildlife refuges.
If any other hunter were to kill bears in this way, they would be faced with a hefty fine or even jail time by the very department leaving rotting, half butchered bears and cubs on the tundra.
Bears have been left with hides intact and meat abandoned on the open tundra, despite public assurances that nothing left of these animals’ lives is wasted. Instead, the agency responsible for enforcing wildlife laws that apply to the rest of us skirts them and betrays the public’s trust.
Constitutionally contradictory
The lands that border the area in which the Mulchatna shooting program operates are some of the most renowned bear habitat in the entire world. Lake Clark National Park’s bear coast, Katmai National Park’s Brooks Falls (home of Fat Bear Week), Togiak National Wildlife Refuge, the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, and McNeil River State Game Sanctuary (home of the world’s largest concentration of brown bears).
Annual hourly count index (annual mean of 7 highest daily counts) of brown bears at McNeil River Falls, McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, southwestern Alaska, 1993–2025. Graph courtesy of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game published their 2025 Annual Management Report for McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, where they report their hourly count index for the entire season. The hourly count index measures peak bear abundance at McNeil falls and is comparable throughout the years. The department is statutorily mandated to report this information to the Alaska Legislature.
Notably, a graph published by Fish and Game shows that since 2023 the counts have dipped significantly with the 2025 index being markedly lower than counts over the long-term index from 1976-2025 and the first time it dipped below 20 bears. The Mulchatna program began killing bears in 2023. Is there a correlation between the drop of bear sightings at McNeil falls and the program? At a minimum, it shows that bear populations in the region may not be able to sustain the Department’s killing spree.
As a reminder, bear populations are constitutionally protected in Alaska. The Alaska Constitution requires the Board of Game to ensure that bear populations targeted by predator control programs are managed sustainably. Over a year ago, the court held that the board needed credible scientific evidence documenting brown and black bear populations to comply with the constitutional sustained yield requirement.
The Board of Game has repeatedly demonstrated they are not interested in considering black and brown bear population data when enacting this predator control program. Board member David Lorring even stated that he knew the department did not know the “total number of bears out there” and had no concerns with the lack of information because he felt the “bear population is in pretty good shape.”
A cub of the year peaks above the grass near mom in McNeil River State Game Sanctuary. Photo by Madison Grosvenor.
Yet, according to the Department’s own report, the number of bears at McNeil are declining rapidly, suggesting that bear populations targeting by the Mulchatna bear control program are in fact not in “pretty good shape.”
Once again, the department is contradicting its own information to enact a program with no real scientific basis. They failed to look at bear population data despite a previous court order stating that such data is required by the Alaska Constitution.
There is no excuse for this information to be excluded when creating a program designed to kill an unlimited number of bears in a 40,000 square mile area neighboring McNeil State Game Sanctuary.
The State shoots bears across an area where people come to view bears in their natural habitats. Bears move from national wildlife refuges and national parks to state lands and across the area where the shooting program operates.
To say the shooting of all these bears will not impact the bear population or its sustainability defies common sense.
Look to the tundra
The images and information that Alaska Wildlife Alliance has documented highlights the lack of transparency that the Board of Game has showcased surrounding the program and the slaughter of bears in Southwest Alaska.
This program is unconstitutional. From the court rulings the State has defied, to the data it continues to dismiss, and to the bears it has gunned down just outside of a refuge, this is betrayal of public trust in an agency meant to manage ALL wildlife sustainably.
We went to court to stop the State’s shooting of bears. Last November, we filed a lawsuit against the Alaska Board of Game, challenging it as unconstitutional.
An aerial view of a female brown bear and her cub in Southwest Alaska. Photo by Ryan Hagerty, USFWS.
The program is wanton and is not supported by the facts or science. It is brutal and needless and a failure of state agencies tasked with managing wildlife.
The truth of this shooting program cannot be found in Board of Game minutes or agency reports or claims of intent. Look to the tundra instead, at the body of a headless bear left sprawled out, a dead cub left where it fell, spent shotgun casings and litter on the tundra, and at the sky where helicopters appear like thunder and gun down bears running for their lives.