Biden suspends Trump-era oil drilling leases in Alaska’s Arctic refuge

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/01/biden-suspends-oil-drilling-leases-alaska-arctic-refuge-trump-era

Interior department order follows a temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities imposed by president on first day in office

A polar bear keeping close to her young along the Beaufort Sea coast in the Arctic national wildlife refuge in Alaska. Photograph: Reuters

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About this contentJillian AmbroseWed 2 Jun 2021 10.21 EDT

The Biden administration has reversed plans approved by Donald Trump to allow companies to drill for oil and gas in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge, a remote region that is home to polar bears, caribou – and 11bn barrels of oil.

The decision to suspend the oil drilling licences follows the temporary moratorium on oil and gas lease activities imposed by Joe Biden on his first day in the White House, and serves as a high-profile show of his climate credentials after approving hundreds of requests to drill on federal lands in recent weeks.

Biden used his 2020 presidential campaign to oppose drilling in the remote, 19.6m-acre Alaskan refuge, which is considered sacred by the indigenous Gwich’in communities and is also home to polar bears, caribou, snowy owls and other wildlife, including migrating birds from six continents.

The region has long been an area of deep political contention between Republicans and the oil industry, which have long been trying to open up the oil-rich refuge, and the Democrats, environmental groups and some Alaska Native tribes which have been trying to block drilling since the mid-1990s.

But after a decades-long battle the first sale of the lease areas in the refuge earlier this year failed to attract interest from the oil industry’s biggest players, potentially making the decision to suspend the oil drilling licences an easier option for Biden’s officials which last week angered environmental groups by defending a major oil project on Alaska’s north slope.Advertisement

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The US Department of Justice said the Trump-era decision to allow the project in the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska’s north slope was “reasonable and consistent” with the law and should be allowed to go ahead. It added that opponents of the Willow project were seeking to stop development by “cherry-picking” the records of federal agencies to claim environmental review law violations.

The decision to green light the Willow project, spearheaded by $78bn oil company Conoco-Phillips, was heavily criticised by climate campaigners which claim that it flies in the face of Biden’s pledges to address climate change. It has also raised concern that the Biden administration is not willing to take a stand against US oil giants.

The Arctic is heating up at three times the rate of the rest of the planet and ConocoPhillips will have to resort to installing “chillers” into the Alaskan permafrost, which is rapidly melting due to global heating, to ensure it is stable enough to host drilling equipment.

By contrast, the suspension of oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge is unlikely to be opposed by the oil industry after the the first sale of drilling rights raised less than $15m (£11m) from two small oil drillers and failed to attract interest from companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

Kristen Miller, acting executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, hailed suspension of the Arctic leasing program, which she said was the result of a flawed legal process under Trump.

“Suspending these leases is a step in the right direction, and we commend the Biden administration for committing to a new program analysis that prioritises sound science and adequate tribal consultation,” she said.

More action is needed, Miller said, calling for a permanent cancellation of the leases and repeal of the 2017 law mandating drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain.

The drilling mandate was included in a massive tax cut approved by congressional Republicans during Trump’s first year in office. Republicans said it could generate an estimated $1bn over 10 years, a figure Democrats call preposterously overstated.

Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Nation steering committee, thanked the president and the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, and said that tribal leaders are heartened by the Biden administration’s “commitment to protecting sacred lands and the Gwich’in way of life”.

Agencies contributed to this report

Salmon Have Shrunk So Much That Whole Foods Redid Its Guidelines

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-27/salmon-have-shrunk-so-much-that-whole-foods-redid-its-guidelines?fbclid=IwAR0M_Vsl3auoFdrIBFyc4v6QDbBgTWiAgGG9skFS3giheS34NC953fybT40

By Kim ChipmanApril 27, 2021, 4:00 AM PDT

•  Climate change seen as threat to Pacific Rim’s ‘keystone’ fish
•  Wild salmon woes pose threats to Alaska’s $2 billion industry

A fisherman washes freshly caught salmon in Newtok, Alaska. Photographer: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

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At OBI Seafoods, a sprawling operation with outposts throughout Alaska, there’s all sorts of extra machinery for workers to master. At Whole Foods Market, there are new guidelines for purchasing salmon from wholesalers. And at Ivar’s, a fixture on Seattle’s waterfront for eight decades, the chef is sending back more and more salmon delivered to his kitchen.

Behind all these changes is an alarming trend that’s been building for years: The giant schools of wild Pacific salmon that can turn southeast Alaska’s ice-cold waters into a brilliant orange blur are thinning out, and those that do survive are shrinking in size.

It’s the shrinking part that’s causing the biggest logistical snarl right now. Many salmon are so small they’ve thrown off OBI’s fish-sorting process and no longer meet the purchasing specifications at Whole Foods and culinary demands at Ivar’s. There, head chef Craig Breeden snaps photos of the fish next to his knife to illustrate their diminutive size before shipping them back.

“It’s very irritating when the supplier sends it to me and I see the size of these fillets,” he said. “In the last eight to 10 years, the salmon sizes have started to get smaller and smaller.”

‘Critical Moment’

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These disruptions are, for now, more a nuisance than serious problem. But they almost certainly presage more costly changes to come and, much more importantly, raise alarm bells about the growing crisis in some key salmon populations that is being driven, according to many scientists, by climate change and more competition for food. Decades after the Atlantic cod fisheries collapsed, concern is now mounting among experts that wild Pacific salmon could face a similar fate.

“The whole thing is out of whack,” said Laurie Weitkamp, a U.S. fisheries biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Salmon managers are realizing that climate change is impacting their stocks and it is generally not favorable and it’s only going to get worse.”

Salmon are so vital that scientists call them a “keystone” species, since animals such as bears and eagles depend on them, and the fish indirectly spread nutrients into ecosystems including forests. A salmon’s life journey from freshwater streams to the ocean and back again to reproduce and die makes them especially vulnerable to warming temperatures and a shifting environment.

A bear and her cubs eat a sockeye salmon in Alaska’s Katmai National Park.Photographer: Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Alaskan salmon are getting smaller partly because they’re returning from the ocean at a younger age, though scientists don’t really know why. The trend is also playing out across the Pacific Rim, from the U.S. mainland and Canada to Russia and Japan.

“When the size and the numbers go down that’s a harbinger of change that is taken as a red flag among many scientists,” said Peter Westley of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, co-author of a study on salmon size published last year with the University of California Santa Cruz.

The scientists examined four of the five Pacific salmon species in Alaska. Chinook — pursued by anglers and valued by restaurants — had the biggest average decline, at 8%, compared with pre-1990 fish. All other species shrunk, with sockeye showing the smallest decline at 2.1%. The most rapid changes were in the past decade.

Dwindling sizes in other species signaled a fishery’s collapse, including Canada’s Atlantic cod three decades ago.

In Europe and New England, the memory of rivers teeming with wild Atlantic salmon is all but forgotten due to overfishing, habitat loss and dam construction that blocked spawning grounds, said David Montgomery, whose 2003 book “King of Fish: The Thousand Year Run of Salmon” warns that the Pacific species could face the same fate. “Sadly, the book is still current.”

Agriculture, mining and other man-made interactions have sent Pacific salmon numbers plummeting in places including the Pacific Northwest’s Columbia-Snake River Basin. In some parts of Canada and the U.S., they’re endangered. Key runs in Alaska and Canada’s British Columbia province are seeing some of the worst years.

B.C.’s Fraser River had record low sockeye run sizes in three of the last five years, with last season setting a new low, said the Pacific Salmon Commission, which oversees management of the fish in the U.S. and Canada.

Collapsing Fisheries

“We are seeing a march north on the declines and collapses of salmon fisheries,” said Guido Rahr, head of Portland, Oregon-based Wild Salmon Center. “Japan has almost no wild fish left. In parts of Russia, once massive salmon runs are collapsing due to overfishing.”

Russia and the U.S. make up 85% of the world’s remaining Pacific salmon.

Sockeye salmon school up in the Upper Talarik River in the Alaska Peninsula.Photographer: Bob Hallinen/Anchorage Daily News/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

Less weighty catches mean fewer dollars for the $2 billion industry. Last year’s haul garnered $295.2 million, down 56% from 2019, Alaska estimates show.

“Salmon is such a nuanced and interconnected species — one little tweak when they are young can make a big change,” said Arron Kallenberg, founder and chief executive officer of seafood retailer Wild Alaskan Co. “From an industry standpoint it certainty makes an impact.”

While salmon runs in some areas saw steep population declines, Bristol Bay — supplier of about half the world’s sockeye — has had booming harvests. Even so, signs of smaller fish abound, OBI Seafoods CEO Mark Palmer said.What on Earth?The Bloomberg Green newsletter is your guide to the latest in climate news, zero-emission tech and green finance.EmailSign UpBy submitting my information, I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service and to receive offers and promotions from Bloomberg.

Historically, 4-pound sockeye and larger — key for commercial fisheries — comprise as much as 70% of each season’s Bristol Bay catch, Palmer said. Today, those larger salmon are no more than half the catch.

“Your yields go down a little bit with smaller fish,” he said.

At southeast Alaska’s Klukwan village, 115 miles north of Juneau, fishing nets have told the tale of shrinking salmon for years.

“Something is out of whack in the ocean and we wish we knew a way to fix it,” said Jones Hotch Jr., a tribal council member of this community of 40 families along a river whose indigenous name means “winter container for salmon.”

They depend on annual salmon return, which is why Hotch Jr. is pushing for stronger environmental protections against mining and other threats to the Chilkat River.

“My drive for saving our river for salmon runs to the very marrow of my being,” the 70-year-old said. “I believe that when we save our salmon, we save and preserve our culture.”

Biden takes Day One action to protect Arctic lands and waters

January 22, 2021 By Tim Woody

• https://www.wilderness.org/articles/blog/biden-takes-day-one-action-protect-arctic-lands-and-waters?fbclid=IwAR3pjXyF02T46-WNzgnCzusZyXsMFahkIPLegohwdoGedW4C4p82lhl19ZQ 
• BIDEN TAKES DAY ONE ACTION TO PROTECT ARCTIC LANDS AND WATERS

The Hulahula River runs from Alaska’s Brooks Range to the cArctic Refuge’s coastal plain, which is the calving ground of the Porcupine Caribou Herd.EDWARD BENNETT/BENNETT IMAGES LLC

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After Trump’s sell off, the Arctic Refuge gets a reprieve

Just hours after being sworn into office, President Biden took a number of monumental actions to protect public lands, address the climate crisis and combat systemic racism, including an executive order that places a moratorium on all oil and gas activity in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

This occurred only one day after the previous administration issued leases for drilling in the refuge’s coastal plain in a rushed, flawed and likely illegal process.

Biden’s action was met with great enthusiasm, particularly by many Gwich’in and Iñupiat peoples who have depended on and protected the refuge for thousands of years and rely on the caribou and other resources in the refuge to sustain their communities and cultures.

“Mashi’ choo, President Biden,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee. “The Gwich’in Nation is grateful to the president for his commitment to protecting sacred lands and the Gwich’in way of life.”

The executive order also reinstated President Obama’s withdrawal of most of the Arctic Ocean and parts of the Bering Sea from oil and gas drilling—an order that had been reversed by the Trump administration. Protecting offshore areas from the threat of a major oil spill benefits not only marine species such as fish, seals and bowhead whales, but the coastlines of sensitive lands like the Arctic Refuge, too.

We are grateful to President Biden for his commitment to protect the refuge, address the climate crisis and respect the human rights of Indigenous peoples. We are also grateful to the millions of people who made today’s announcement possible by putting the climate and social justice first. This action is a result of years of advocacy from people across the United States, including members and supporters of The Wilderness Society, who refused to stay silent as oil corporations and their friends sought to put drilling rigs in the Arctic Refuge.

This action is a result of years of advocacy from people across the United States, including members and supporters of The Wilderness Society.

This does not mean the fight to protect the Arctic Refuge and the calving grounds of the Porcupine Caribou Herd is over. The moratorium is temporary. But it’s a huge first step in Biden’s plan to review the legality of the Jan. 6 Arctic Refuge lease sale and the issuance of leases to the winning bidders.

We will continue to work with our Gwich’in and Iñupiat partners—as well as the Biden administration and our allies in the Congress and the conservation community—as we explore all options for ensuring that drilling never occurs on the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge. We’ll also keep putting pressure on corporations like banks and insurers.

But today we rest, raise a glass and celebrate a new day for the Arctic.

Trump auctions Arctic refuge to oil drillers in last strike against US wilderness

Sales of drilling rights are the climax to one of the nation’s highest-profile environmental battles
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Emily Holden in Washington

Tue 5 Jan 2021 05.37 ESTLast modified on Tue 5 Jan 2021 11.21 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/05/trump-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-lease-sales

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 Rivers run through the lush tundra valleys of Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge. Photograph: Acacia Johnson

In one of its last strikes against the American wilderness, Donald Trump’s administration will on Wednesday auction off portions of the Arctic national wildlife refuge to oil drillers.

The lease sales are the climax to one of the nation’s highest-profile environmental battles. The lands on the northern coastal plain of Alaska are home to denning polar bears and migrating herds of Porcupine caribou that indigenous communities depend on and consider sacred. But the oil industry has long suspected that the ground beneath the plain holds billions of barrels of petroleum.https://www.theguardian.com/email/form/plaintone/4199Sign up for monthly updates on America’s public lands

Once the leases in the refuge, known as ANWR, are sold to energy companies, they would be difficult to claw back. The incoming president, Joe Biden, could, however, discourage development in the refuge by putting regulatory hurdles in the way of drillers.

The refuge has become central to America’s debate over how quickly to stop drilling for and burning fossil fuels as the climate crisis accelerates. Climate experts say there should be no new oil and gas extraction, as the world is already more than 1C hotter than pre-industrial times. Even if humans stopped using fossil fuels today, the planet would continue to heat.

Oil from drilling west of the refuge, at Prudhoe Bay, has fueled the economic development the state has depended on to fill its coffers and write annual revenue checks to residents. That extraction also led to the most damaging oil spill in history, when the Exxon Valdez tanker spewed millions of barrels off Alaska’s southern coast in 1989.

Prudhoe Bay“was the largest oil field ever discovered in North America. Since then we have had more than 1,500 sq miles of oil and gas development in the Alaskan Arctic … but [ANWR] has been off limits,” said Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League.https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2021/01/archive-zip/giv-3902Nn8p95KgWUMC

“For us, it symbolizes just what’s at stake here. If you can’t draw a line at the tundra and keep this one area of the Arctic off limits, then the question is, where can you draw the line and what protected part or wildlife refuge in the United States will remain off limits?”

President Dwight Eisenhower designated the Arctic refuge in 1960, and in the ensuing decades, the industry and Republicans pushed for drilling there, while the US was trying to reduce its reliance on suppliers in the Middle East. That push continues even though oil is now plentiful, and a fracking boom has made the US a net exporter rather than importer.

Republicans in the US Congress and in Alaska achieved their goal in 2017, when they inserted a provision authorizing drilling into Trump’s landmark tax bill.

 America’s last wilderness is about to go to the highest bidder for oil drilling

Kim Heacox Read more

Trump and congressional Republicans argued that the government’s earnings from drilling in the refuge could help pay for the proposed tax cuts, which favored corporations and wealthier Americans. They said development would generate $900m, although an analysis by the non-partisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, based on historical bid data, found that it would bring in just a fraction of that amount – no more than $27.6m. That would be split between the federal government and the state of Alaska.Advertisement

“The fact that this was being offered as an offset was definitely insincere at best, and we thought that was just kind of a joke,” said Autumn Hanna, vice-president of the group.

Taxpayers for Common Sense has argued the government should not be leasing any public land to oil and gas drilling now, while prices for the commodities are low and supplies are high worldwide. During the pandemic, oil demand has plunged as businesses have been shut down and people have driven less.

“We’re not opposed to oil and gas drilling, but we’re opposed to short-changing taxpayers,” Hanna said.

Industry interest in developing new oilfields is so low that some have suggested there might not be any bids for some tracts of land on the coastal plain. The former governors Frank Murkowski and Bill Walker have encouraged the state to bid on any unwanted tracts itself, and last week a state-owned economic development corporation voted to authorize bidding up to $20m.

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“If there are no bidders on the lease sales at all, Alaska will likely never be able to develop our oil and gas potential from ANWR,” Murkowski said in an opinion piece in the Anchorage Daily News, where he also noted the oil and gas industry had historically contributed 70% of the state’s revenue.

On Monday, the Trump administration also dramatically expanded the area where the government can lease public land for oil drilling to the west of ANWR.

The plan would allow drilling in 82% of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, an area bigger than the state of West Virginia, according to environmental groups, though the Biden administration could reverse that decision more easily than it could hold off drilling in ANWR.

 Anaktuvuk Pass, Alaska, a Native Alaskan community of around 300 people, near Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge. Photograph: Acacia Johnson

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Native groups in Alaska have fought ANWR drilling proposals with lawsuits. For the Gwich’in, indigenous Alaskans who have migrated alongside the caribou and relied upon them as a food source, the fight is personal. They formed the Gwich’in Steering Committee in 1988 to oppose drilling in the coastal plain, which they call the Sacred Place Where Life Begins.

“We come from some of the strongest people that ever walked this earth. They survived some of the coldest, harshest winters so that we can be here,” Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the committee, said during an AM radio segment last week. “I feel like this is my responsibility as a Gwich’in, to protect the caribou.”

Polar bear advocates say the habitat is also critical to a population in dire straits from development and rising temperatures that are melting sea ice. The Arctic is heating at a much faster pace than the rest of the world. Polar bear numbers in Alaska and western Canada declined 40% from 2001 to 2010, said Steven Amstrup, chief scientist for Polar Bears International.https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2021/01/archive-zip/giv-3902hQ5VtsPfnFJZ

“If we want to have the best chance possible of maintaining that population until the time that we stabilize greenhouse gas emissions, we need to protect them on the ground as best we can,” Amstrup said.

Ken Whitten, a former caribou biologist for the state of Alaska, said drilling was likely to displace wildlife. “It’s the core of the Porcupine caribou herd calving area. It’s the major onshore denning place for polar bears in the Beaufort Sea, which is becoming more and more important as the sea ice disappears.”

The plain is a narrow band of land between mountains and the coast, so animals do not have many options when they are forced to relocate, he said. Much of the surrounding area is already being drilled.

“We are a wealthy nation,” Whitten said. “We can afford to leave some areas alone.”

Jet hits brown bear mom, cub while landing in Alaska

1 hr ago

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/jet-hits-brown-bear-mom-cub-while-landing-in-alaska/ar-BB1b3RMM?ocid=msedgdhp

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Guinea’s Conde says there is no ‘witch hunt’ against opponentsKylie Bunbury explores ‘Blackness in a very white’ Montana in ABC thriller…Jet hits brown bear mom, cub while landing in Alaska

In a first in Alaska Airlines history, a jet struck and killed a brown bear while landing Saturday, officials said.© Provided by RADIO.COM

The Boeing 737-700 was landing at the Yakutat Airport in southeast Alaska when it struck both the mother and her cub, killing the mother and leaving the 2-year-old cub undamaged. None of the passengers or crew were injured.Works with every tool – Learndash Is OverkillUpload CaptivateEmbed RiseiFrame iSpringUpload RiseAdelearningfreak.com

According to Associated Press, although airport crew members had cleared the runway about 10 minutes before the flight was expected to land the jet landed in the dark and the staff didn’t see any signs of wildlife during their normal checks.

Only until after landing did the pilot spot the two bears, just as the jet slowed.

“The nose gear missed the bears, but the captain felt an impact on the left side after the bears passed under the plane,” Alaska Airlines said in a statement.

The pilots saw the bear lying about 20 feet (6 meters) from the center of the runway as the plane taxied to a parking area just before 6:30 p.m., the airline said.

The airport crew is accustomed to dealing with wildlife, plants have reportedly hit deer, geese, and caribou in the post, but never a bear. Employees are known to use pyrotechnics or vehicles to keep animals away from the runway.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game was expected to collect the remains of the bear.

The left engine cowling of the jet was damaged, and the plane remained in Yakutat Sunday.

“Our maintenance technicians are working to repair the plane, which will take a couple of days,” Alaska Airlines said.

Democrats say Interior botched polar bear study in pursuit to drill ANWR

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/507852-dems-say-interior-botched-study-of-polar-bears-in-pursuit-to-drill

BY REBECCA BEITSCH – 07/17/20 03:07 PM EDT 6144,433

Just In…

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© Getty Images

Democratic lawmakers are pushing back against Department of the Interior plans to drill in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR,) arguing the agency wasn’t thorough before concluding that drilling activity wouldn’t harm local polar bears.

A review of the environmental impacts of drilling in the area “makes the unsupportable conclusion that industrializing the entire Coastal Plain—including the most important terrestrial denning habitat for among the most imperiled polar bear population on the planet—will not jeopardize the survival and recovery of the species,” Democratic lawmakers on the House Natural Resources Committee wrote to Interior in a letter spearheaded by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.).

“This fundamentally flawed analysis ignores the overwhelming scientific evidence that identifies devastating impacts to polar bears from oil and gas activities,” they added.https://b28bdec9e40d5dff0a2190c2694e4e23.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-37/html/container.html

The so-called biological opinion produced on the topic came after the department in February made the unusual decision to open its research to public comment. The already peer-reviewed research looked at how seismic activity from the oil and gas industry affects polar bear “denning” as they raise their young cubs.

Environmentalists and scientists raised the alarm, calling it an attempt by the Trump administration to discredit its own government scientists.

“What it looks like to me is they’re giving industry the opportunity to negate the study,” said Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The 2017 tax bill opened the door to drilling in the arctic, something Interior noted in its response.

“Representative Huffman and the other Democrat members who signed this erroneous letter apparently don’t understand that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted in 2017 requires an oil and gas leasing program in the Coastal Plain. It would serve them well to have a better, basic understanding of the laws under the jurisdiction of the Committee,” the department said in an email.

A number of major banks, including Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, have already pledged not to finance any drilling in ANWR.

The department recently finalized another rule that would allow hunting tactics that make it easier to kill bear cubs and wolf pups in Alaska.

The rule, finalized in June, ends a five-year ban on baiting hibernating bears from their dens, shining a flashlight into wolf dens to cause them to scurry, targeting animals from airplanes or snowmobiles and shooting swimming caribou from boats.

Barbarism on the Rise: Hunting Mama Wolves and Bears and Their Cubs in Alask

Barbarism on the Rise: Hunting Mama Wolves and Bears and Their Cubs in Alaska

JUNE 18, 2020

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by EVAGGELOS VALLIANATOS

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Arctic wolf. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

When I was in elementary school, I had a slingshot for hunting birds. To this day, I find it impossible to explain why I indulged in such unsavory behavior.

However, since those youthful days, I never hunted again with either a slingshot or a gun.

I abhor the killing of wild and domesticated animals. They have as much right as we do to exist without fearing hunters may kill them.

I know humans have hunted and killed animals for food. Such open season lasted for millennia. Hunting of wildlife for food is probably still alive in some form or another in most countries of the world.

Hunting for sport is another, even more vicious, kind of killing of wild animals. Affluent European hunters decimated Africa’s wildlife in the nineteenth century.

Hunting for sport is probably just as ancient as killing wild animals for food. Members of the ruling classes in the past and now convince themselves they have divine rights to target wildlife at their convenience and pleasure.

This cruel and perverse habit is especially strong in affluent societies, where people with money and guns give license to their pathological instincts in killing wolves, bears, lions, tigers and other wild animals.

Human footprints

This killing, especially of important large carnivorous animals, adds more unnecessary instability in an already destabilized natural world.

Humans have been leaving their bloody and destructive footprints everywhere in the planet for a very long time.

Their industrialized farming has been producing unhealthy food while generating climate change. The effects are thoroughly unpleasant: insects, birds and small animals are steadily being driven towards extinction.

The logging of the world’s forests, no less than factory farming, disrupts and breaks down ecosystems, all but eliminating biological diversity and degrading land and life.

The damming of wild rivers unsettles water life and pushes countless species over the cliff.

As if these terrible practices, which “civilized” people do routinely, did not produce enough disruption and violence in the natural world, humans have been ravaging the land for petroleum, natural gas, coal, gold, silver, and other minerals.

War against the natural world in Alaska

It’s this political madness and ecological tsunami, the horror humans have been sowing in every wild land of the world, including the forests, rivers, and lands of the United States, that sets the stage for an additional and unusually horrific practice about to start in the parks of Alaska.

The Secretary of the US Department of the Interior, a Trump appointee by the name of David Bernhardt, signed a final rule June 11, 2020, that allows a dark age killing of bears, wolves and their cubs.

This is barbarism triumphant under the guise of restoring the authority of Alaska to do as it pleases with our national treasure of wildlife.

Hunters will be filling buckets with bait to attract bears in order to shoot them.

This reminds me of a story a friend told me of a similar barbaric practice in Michigan. Owners of gasoline stations attract deer with large carrots. Drivers buying gasoline shoot the deer from the comfort of their cars.

Listening to this story I thought he was making things up. But, no, he assured me, he witnessed such shameful affair. This put me in a bad mood.

How could these people be so cruel, so stone-dead in their feelings and emotions? Where did they grow up?

The evolving cruelty in Alaska confirms my friend’s story. The roots of violence against wildlife are deep and widespread.

Local and tourist hunters will soon be killing bears, wolves and their offspring in the vast national parks of Alaska.

This is a gift of the Trump administration, which made it legal to hunt these persecuted animals during the denning season.

Imagine TV-like explorers-hunters loaded with war pistols and guns and high tech flashlights entering holes in the ground or caves to shoot mama wolves and bears and their cubs.

What a tragedy, a charade, and paradigmatic act of utter stupidity. Could we say this is hidden hatred of compromised armed people for the animal emblems of wild freedom? Are these hunters hunting their nightmares or civilization itself?

Theresa Pierno, President and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, criticized the Trump administration, but she failed to express the anger of a person dedicated to protecting the threated animals. She was too diplomatic in describing the extraordinary vicious turn of policy:

“Amid the global pandemic, the Trump administration is declaring open season on bears and wolves, through their sport hunting rule on national parklands in Alaska….

“National preserve lands at Denali, Katmai, Gates of the Arctic… [in Alaska] are the very places where people travel from around the world, in hopes of seeing these iconic animals, alive in their natural habitat. Through this administration’s rule, [officials of] such treasured lands will now allow sport hunters to lure bears with greased donut bait piles to kill them, or crawl into hibernating bear dens to shoot bears and cubs.”

Trump above all  

This shameful and uncivilized behavior does fit the pattern of Trump, his administration, and his Republican Party and evangelical supporters. They are operating as if in a conquered territory.

Like the French monarch Louis XIV, Trump said I am the state. I can do anything I want. There’s no climate change. Corporations are right about the environment and pollution. I will follow their guidance.

In about 3.5 years, he reversed the modicum of theoretical and real environmental and public health protection Americans enjoyed.

He put this national dangerous policy into effect in the glare of television and lots of additional publicity. Most large media gloated over the tragic spectacle of a president ordering the demise of America. Yet, for the most part, these national televisions and newspapers have been treating him like a king.

I did not see demonstrations by either environmentalists or public health experts or citizens concerned with the rising pandemics of cancer, neurological disease, and the extinction of species. Climate change, the giant among environmental threats, did bring thousands in the streets of Europe and fewer in America.

This means TV advertisements, business practices and propaganda, and poisons in the food, drinking water, and air have diminished the intelligence of Americans – and people throughout the world. Otherwise, it’s impossible to explain these suicidal tendencies.

I consider the threats to our health and the health of the natural world the highest priorities of any civilized society. And yet, in the US House of Representatives “impeachment” of Trump, these existential threats directly linked to the Trump administration were ignored.

This undemocratic politics explains why Trump feels at home with both the virus pandemic and, potentially, ordering the military to take over the country. Like any other billionaire, Trump feels contempt for democracy.

As long as soldiers are in their barracks, Trump wants to be reelected. He is pleasing trophy hunters and Alaska elites that aspire to the total control of public wealth.

It is possible, though hard to document, that the projected visit of the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., to Alaska for hunting mother grizzly bears and wolves and their cubs had something to do with the demolition of the slight protection these vulnerable animals enjoyed under previous administrations.

Trump’s son goes out of his way to kill wild animals. He even went to Mongolia where he hunted an endangered sheep.

The meaning of vicious hunting

The spectacle of the US government encouraging outrageous attacks on wildlife in Alaska tells us much more than the perverted habits of trophy hunters and the myopic and self-destructive politics of Alaska.

Killing animal mothers and cubs is an act of desperation. The killers have lost their humanity and a sense of living among other citizens under the rule of law. They have become what the Greeks defined as barbarians: people of incomprehensible speech and alien to civilization.

I like to think that Americans will have at least the sense of electing Joe Biden as our next president. His work will be much more difficult than I ever thought. He will be governing a country nearly unhinged by the Republicans, evangelicals, and their commander-in-chief, Trump.

Biden will have to tone down the Wall Street ideology of “me” for “us,” and, no less significant, embrace the environment and wildlife as foundations of our civilization.

Fight climate change and ban killings of mama wolves, grizzly bears and their cubs.

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Letters: Allowing animal cruelty in hunting is a new low

 (6/13/20)

Peter Kuper, PoliticalCartoons.com

By DP OPINION | openforum@denverpost.com

June 13, 2020 at 8:28 a.m.

Allowing animal cruelty in hunting is a new low

Re: “Banned hunting techniques revived,” June 10 news story

One may question how much lower can this present government stoop? The small article in Wednesday’s Denver Post may give many people yet another glimpse into the inhumane and deplorable policy change regarding hunting on federal land, primarily at this point in Alaska.

According to the article’s information, the president, Donald Trump Jr., the Safari Club International, Alaskan state leaders, and hunting advocates have succeeded in reversing the Obama-era restrictions on barbaric hunting methods. Two of the many cruel methods listed in the article are “using spotlights to blind and shoot hibernating black bears and their cubs in dens, and gunning down swimming caribou from motorboats.” Maybe we don’t need to question how much lower some human beings can go.

Linnea Wilkinson, Aurora

Trump administration opens Alaska’s national preserves to cruel practices like trophy-hunting denning bears and wolves and their cubs; proposes disbanding protections on Kenai Wildlife Refuge

By Kitty Block and Sara Amundson

June 10, 2020 0 Comments

Just today, the Department of the Interior proposed another rule, again to overturn the prior administration’s rule that barred baiting of brown bears on two million acres of public lands in the state’s Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Photo by Dacia Doroff/iStock.com

https://blog.humanesociety.org/2020/06/trump-administration-opens-alaskas-national-preserves-to-cruel-practices-like-trophy-hunting-denning-bears-and-wolves-and-their-cubs-proposes-disbanding-protections-on-kenai-wildlife-refuge.html?credit=blog_em_061020_id11455&utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=humanenation

The Trump administration has given trophy hunters the green light to commit some of the worst sort of carnage on 20 million acres of Alaska’s pristinely beautiful national preserves.

Under a new rule finalized this week, trophy hunters can, starting next month, kill hibernating mother black bears and their cubs in their dens with the aid of artificial lights, shoot wolf and coyote pups and mothers at their dens, use bait like donuts and meat scraps to attract brown and black bears, shoot vulnerable caribou while they are swimming (including with the aid of motorboats), and use dogs to hunt black bears.

This is yet another dastardly move from an administration that, from the start, has carried out a no-holds-barred assault on America’s—and the world’s—most precious wildlife. From weakening protections for native American wildlife covered by the Endangered Species Act to allowing trophy hunters to import the trophies of endangered animals likerhinos and lions, the Department of the Interior, under Trump, has consistently played into the hands of trophy hunters and other corporate interests to dismantle the progress we’ve made for wildlife over decades.

A lot of this, including the National Park Service rule finalized this week, has involved reversing protections for wildlife put in place by the Obama administration.

And they’re not done. Just today, the Department of the Interior proposed another rule, again to overturn the prior administration’s rule that barred baiting of brown bears on two million acres of public lands in the state’s Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Hunting of brown bears over bait is an extreme practice and biologists have been raising alarms about the loss of brown bear populations in Alaska.

We already know what the carnage sanctioned by these rule changes will look like. Before the 2015 rule, thousands of bears and wolves were shot from the air, killed over bait barrels, clubbed or shot in their dens and hunted down with lights at night. Many of these cruel practices professed to reduce numbers of iconic predators in order to boost prey species for hunters, but science has shown that nature cannot be manipulated this way without terrible results.

We have seen brown bear numbers across Alaska dwindle because of intensive management. State lands, where the egregious practices now permitted by the NPS rule are already allowed by the Alaska Board of Game, have seen sharp drops in wildlife populations. Alaska state officials should prefer their wildlife alive rather than dead because the tens of thousands of wildlife watchers who trek into the state each year put far more money into the state’s coffers than a handful of trophy hunters seeking to kill the animals do.

The Humane Society of the United States, along with a coalition of organizations, is currently in federal court defending the Obama-era NPS and Kenai rules. These changes are unlawful because Congress requires that the Department of the Interior conserve and protect wildlife in national preserves and national wildlife refuges. By opening season on the animals it’s supposed to protect just to appease a few trophy hunters, the agency—and this administration—have not only shown themselves to be extremely poor stewards of our public lands, they have let down a majority of Americans who would never sanction such cruelty against our native wildlife.

Sara Amundson is president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund.

Trump administration to ease rules for hunting bears and their cubs in Alaska

2:02 a.m.

AP File Photo/Mark Thiessen, File

https://theweek.com/speedreads/917001/trump-administration-ease-rules-hunting-bears-cubs-alaska

The National Park Service is rolling back Obama-era regulations that banned hunters in Alaska’s national preserves from using food to lure black and brown bears out of their dens.

The new rules will also let hunters use artificial light to attract black bears and their cubs, shoot caribou from motorboats, and hunt wolves and coyotes during the denning season, the Anchorage Daily News reports. The Obama administration enacted the regulations in order to prevent the destabilization of Alaska’s ecosystems.

This change is “amazingly cruel,” Jesse Prentice-Dunn, policy director for the Center for Western Priorities, told The Guardian, and is “just the latest in a string of efforts to reduce protections for America’s wildlife at the behest of oil companies and trophy hunters.”

Several Native American tribes criticized the original rule, opposing it due to rural Alaskans needing wild food sources. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) cheered the reversal, saying it was necessary “not only as a matter of principle, but as a matter of states’ rights.” Catherine Garcia