The Federal Government Just Made It Legal to Shoot Bears in Alaska

For decades, the official message from the National Park Service has been the same: don’t feed the bears. Put your food away. Use bear canisters. Bears that associate humans with food become dangerous bears. Dangerous bears get killed.

On October 16, the Trump administration finalized a rule that effectively inverts that logic — and critics are not being quiet about it.

The National Park Service rule removes all restrictions on bear baiting at Alaska’s national preserves, giving sport hunters the legal authority to set out food to attract black and brown bears, wait for them to show up, and shoot them at close range. The bait list, pulled directly from Alaska’s own hunter education website, includes donuts, dog food, syrup, honey, molasses, old bread, and popcorn. The rule takes effect 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register on October 19.

This Has Happened Before — Several Times

Bear baiting was first prohibited on Alaska’s national preserves under the Obama administration in 2015. It was allowed again in 2020 under Trump’s first term, banned again under Biden in 2024, and is now being reinstated. A bear born in Denali in 2015 has now lived under four different federal positions on whether it can legally be shot over a pile of pastries.

On his first day back in office, Trump directed the Department of the Interior to rescind the 2024 rule as part of a series of wildlife-related executive orders. The Park Service formally proposed the rollback in March 2026 and finalized it last week.

What Animal Welfare Groups Are Saying

The criticism from wildlife and conservation organizations has been pointed. A 2024 peer-reviewed study by National Park Service and external biologists — the government’s own researchers — concluded that bears defending bait sites pose a “moderate to high” risk of causing injury or death to park visitors. Critics say the rule ignores that finding entirely.

“Baiting bears with piles of donuts, meat scraps and dog food to lure them into shooting range and gun them down is indefensible and inexcusable as a federal policy decision,” Humane World for Animals said in a statement following the announcement. The group, formerly known as the Humane Society of the United States, argues that the practice makes bears lose their natural fear of people, puts visitors at greater risk, and ultimately leads to more bears dying.

Jim Adams, Alaska regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, called the rule “outrageous” and “disheartening,” saying it puts sport hunters’ desires over wise and sometimes urgently needed decisions to ensure the long-term health of wildlife in national parklands in Alaska.

The Other Side of the Argument

Supporters of the rule, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, frame it as a matter of respecting Alaska’s sovereignty over its own wildlife. Alaska’s national preserves — distinct from national parks — are open to hunting under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and bear baiting has historically been allowed for subsistence hunters.

The argument from the Park Service is that Alaska’s existing state hunting regulations already provide sufficient safeguards, and that the federal government should defer to state management rather than layering on additional restrictions. Alaska requires bait stations to be registered, limits how close they can be placed to roads, trails, and buildings, and requires hunters to complete a bear baiting class before registering a station.

The National Park Service estimates that no more than 10 bears will be killed over bait annually across all the preserves — two black bears and up to eight brown bears.

The Visitor Safety Question

What concerns critics most isn’t the number of bears that will be shot. It’s what happens to bears that eat the bait and don’t get shot.

A bear that learns donuts and dog food appear near humans is a bear with a fundamentally altered relationship to people. It no longer treats human presence as something to avoid. That’s the animal that wanders into a campground, approaches hikers on a trail, or investigates a family’s tent at night. The Park Service’s own research flagged this risk. The new rule proceeds anyway.

Some of the bait items on Alaska’s approved list — including certain processed foods — are also considered potentially toxic to wildlife, an issue animal welfare groups say the rule fails to address.

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