The Alaska Board of Game has approved new tactics -- including the use of snares for trapping and helicopters for access -- to catch and kill bears as part of the state's politically charged predator control program.

Predator control means killing wolves or bears in order to boost the numbers of other game animals such as moose and caribou available for hunters. Wildlife-protection groups want the state to scale back the hunts, saying they're unscientific and unproven, while sportsmen's groups say the program works but they need more tools to get the job done.

The board tackled several competing proposals over the weekend and Monday, voting to expand predator control by:

• Allowing hunters to place snares on the ground -- or in buckets attached to trees to nab black bears by the paw -- in an area north and west of Cook Inlet.

• Letting hunters fly into hard-to-reach bear-baiting and snaring camps in the same region using private helicopters.

• Authorizing state employees to use poison gas to kill orphaned wolf pups in dens.

• Renewing existing wolf-kill programs, including programs along the Kuskokwim River and east of Fairbanks.

The new tactics drew quick criticism. "Those are all big expansions based on just the desperate nature of the Board of Game and the (Department of Fish and Game) to be successful," said Defenders of Wildlife spokesman Wade Willis.

"Their backs are against the wall. Really how much farther can you go?" he said.

Board vice chairman Ted Spraker said it's not fair to say the board only boosted predator control at the 11-day meeting, which covered rules for hunts in Southcentral and Southwestern Alaska.

"Overall it's really reduced it, rather than increased it," he said.

The board trimmed the wolf-kill program in the Kuskokwim River area by more than a third. It removed an unsuccessful grizzly hunt in the Eastern Interior, and while the bear snares are new, the bear-kill program across Cook Inlet now targets a smaller overall area, he said.

Shooting from helicopters?

The board rejected one of the meeting's most electric predator control ideas Monday: A plan by the Department of Fish and Game to allow private hunters to shoot wolves from helicopters east of Fairbanks, along the Canadian border.

Letting private hunters do the flying may have been cheaper than having the state shoot the wolves, but could have cost more in the long run fighting inevitable lawsuits from opponents, board member Bob Bell told the group.

It was just last year that voters shot down an effort to limit aerial shooting of wolves, Spraker said.

"We just had an initiative that, you know, thankfully we won as hunters," he told the board. But the issue could quickly return if the Game Board tried to add too many changes all at once, he said.

The board voted 5-2 to ditch the helicopter proposal but renewed the existing wolf-kill program in the region for another five years.

It also voted to allow private pilots to use helicopters to pick up wolves killed by private hunters in fixed-wing planes.

The Game Board meeting came two months after a group of former board members called for Gov. Sarah Palin to appoint more "non-consumptive users" such as wildlife viewers to the board. In February, Defenders of Wildlife targeted Palin in an Internet commercial starring actress Ashley Judd.

The group, which calls aerial wolf hunting an example of Palin's "wider anti-conservation agenda" launched a Web site called Eye on Palin that includes a ticker showing the number of wolves killed in "Alaska's aerial slaughter."

A group called Sportsmen for Habitat Alaska, which proposed more aggressive control measures at the meeting, has now started its own rival Web site and filmed its own Internet commercial, organization board member Craig Compeau said in an e-mail Monday.

The commercial, which shows a Native man saying wolves and bears are killing game while villagers move to the city, may run on Fox News this week, said Compeau, who owns a boat and snowmachine dealership in Fairbanks. The site includes a counter of its own, showing the number of moose and caribou killed by wolves.

SNARES

The state started a predator control program last year in Game Management Unit 16B -- west of Cook Inlet and home to an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 black bears, said Fish and Game spokesman Bruce Bartley.

Defenders of Wildlife and other groups opposed the addition of snares and other changes to the program, saying it would "commercialize" predator control of bears by allowing the skins to be resold by wholesalers and not requiring hunters to keep the meat.

It's a waste of one game animal to theoretically increase the availability of another animal, Willis said.

Bartley said it's not unusual to forgo salvage requirements for bears and that virtually everyone who participated in the black bear predator control effort last year salvaged the meat.

Using snares is a first for a predator control program aimed at killing bears rather than moving them, according to the state. Late Monday, the board voted to add snaring in the McGrath area too, for both brown and black bears, Bartley said.

The Game Board was expected to finish meeting Monday night in Anchorage. Next, the board tackles Western Alaska hunting rules in November, he said.

Find Kyle Hopkins online at adn.com/contact/khopkins or call him at 257-4334.

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