Right now, in a remote stretch of southwest Alaska, state agents are shooting bears from aircraft. Not one or two. An unlimited number. Across nearly 40,000 square miles. And among the dead: cubs.

Since 2023, nearly 200 bears have been killed under the Mulchatna predator control program — a state-sanctioned effort that Alaska officials claim is necessary to help the Mulchatna caribou herd recover. An Alaska Superior Court recently reauthorized the program, allowing the killing to continue through at least 2028.

Conservation groups disagree with the premise. The Alaska Wildlife Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity are challenging the program in court, arguing it has no scientific basis and causes irreversible harm to bear populations — including in areas near Katmai National Park and McNeil River, places celebrated around the world for their wildlife.

Killing cubs from the air is not conservation. It is not management. It is the wholesale destruction of a bear population in one of the last great wild places on earth, justified by claims that have not been independently verified.

Alaska's constitution includes a sustained yield clause — a requirement that wildlife be managed as a protected public resource maintained permanently. The Mulchatna program, by authorizing unlimited killing with no population cap, appears to directly contradict that mandate.

We are calling on Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to immediately suspend the Mulchatna predator control program pending an independent scientific review of its effects on bear populations and its legal compliance with the state's sustained yield requirements.

Nearly 200 bears — including dozens of cubs — are already gone. Sign this petition and demand the killing stop.