Alaska panel enacts measure to protect bears

ANCHORAGE — The McNeil River brown bears — famous for going about their business of catching salmon within a few yards of admiring tourists and photographers — won’t be hunted during the next two years on state lands adjacent to the state game sanctuary.

The Alaska Board of Game made that decision recently, temporarily ending a controversy that attracted comments from across the country.

The board, however, took several steps that could allow people to kill the bears on nearby lands as soon as 2007 if it doesn’t get what it wants from the National Park Service.

The panel asked the Department of Fish and Game to work up a proposal for hunting the bears just in case the federal parks officials needed coaxing.

Board member Ron Somerville of Juneau said it would be a way to push the federal agency to resume talks with the state about trading the land for certain Katmai National Park parcels closer to Naknek, a request important to hunters in that community.

The McNeil River sanctuary, located across Cook Inlet from Homer, next to Katmai National Park and Preserve, is one of the best places in the world to watch brown bears. Access is strictly limited to people who draw spots in a lottery to walk with a ranger to view the bears that sometimes pass by within touching distance.

Board member Ted Spraker of Soldotna challenged the many people who oppose bear hunting around the bear sanctuary to “put pressure on the Park Service” to approve the land trade.

State biologists presented information that showed that the same brown bears wander all over that area, including areas now open to hunting in the Katmai preserve and the land the board said it may open to hunting.

The move surprised the Park Service and the state Department of Natural Resources — the two agencies that would negotiate such a trade.

The state has no active proposals to trade that land, and staff is already swamped with other issues, such as the proposed natural gas pipeline corridor, said DNR spokeswoman Nancy Welch.

The Park Service has talked with the state about the land between Katmai park and the McNeil sanctuary for two decades and would be willing to talk again, Park Service spokesman John Quinley said. But he said the Game Board didn’t have to threaten a bear kill to get things rolling.

“We would have been willing to go back to the table with the state if the state had approached us and said, ‘Let’s see if we can make a deal,’ ” Quinley said.