Hunting is big business on Wildlife Refuges in Alaska. A ten-day guided hunt for Dall sheep, Grizzly bear, or moose can sell for $10,000 not including airfare or trophy fees. With such sums at stake, it is not surprising that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) permitting guidelines come under close scrutiny. The FWS is charged with deciding who hunts, and where. Permits are good for ten years, and are distributed to those operations that achieve high rankings pursuant to FWS criteria. This year the FWS is revising its criteria for selecting guides, and some of its proposals have sparked criticism from conservationists and hunters alike.

Commercial operations are allowed by the Wilderness Act "to the extent necessary for activities which are proper for realizing the recreational or other wilderness purposes of the areas." (emphasis added) Both private and commercially guided hunting has always been allowed in Wilderness. However, while the ability to hunt remains unchanged, the methods and ethics adopted by some commercial hunting operations have undergone drastic change. In a time when results are everything and competition is fierce, many operations feel pressured to ensure their client a "trophy" kill. Special amenities, more suited for urban tours than Wilderness hunts, have become commonplace. Game is spotted by aircraft, hunters sleep in heated tents and snack on gourmet food, and kills are cleaned and turned over to the taxidermist.
Sadly, the ethic of fair chase is being lost in this rush to please the consumer. This trend was recognized by Jay Hammond, the former Governor of Alaska and a licensed big game guide since 1947. Hammond noted the changes in the guiding industry, stating that "Compounding the decline in both the perception and practice of guiding was the introduction of tundra-tire equipped, high performance, small aircraft. Any drugstore cowboy able to saddle a Super Cub not only could compete with, but exceed, the old-time guide’s capacity of securing a trophy." Hammond likewise noted that these "hunts" had little to do with Wilderness purposes, writing that commercial guides were catering to "a clientele that seemingly had no interest in seeing the country and possessed no reverence at all for the game."

Though charged with protecting the wilderness character of the refuges, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s proposed hunting guide selection criteria places more weight on client satisfaction than on actions aimed at Wilderness protection. While positive client evaluations can earn a guide 20 points, demonstrated knowledge and concern of resource impacts is worth only 10 points. A guide’s efforts to curb unnecessary aircraft use and impacts are likewise devalued, as are measures to ensure proper waste removal and to limit the number of clients a guide takes on. This is in direct opposition to the themes expressed in the proposal’s General Guidance section, which emphasizes "positive hunting values and hunter ethics such as fair chase" and "less interference from or dependence on mechanized aspects of the sport." Strangely, the agency seems to violate its own mandate by assigning low import to hunting practices that limit impacts to Wilderness.

The use of aircraft by commercial guiding operations poses a significant threat to the wilderness character of the refuges. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) states that aircraft access to Wilderness is "subject to reasonable regulations by the Secretary to protect the natural and other values of the conservation system units." Unfortunately, some guiding operations use aircraft for purposes other than accessing their base camps. Trophy animals are spotted from the air and, after the regulation time has passed, hunters are dropped off in the immediate vicinity. After a kill is made, aircraft is used to taxi the hunter back to base camp. Such techniques violate the concept of fair chase and have some refuge units sounding more like airfields than Wilderness.

Recognizing the threats posed by the FWS’s selection criteria, Wilderness Watch’s Alaska Chapter submitted comments proposing that the agency redistribute points to place importance on Wilderness protection over client experience. We stressed the importance of ethical hunting, expressed so eloquently by Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac :

"…there is value in any experience that exercises those ethical restraints collectively called ‘sportsmanship’. Our tools for the pursuit of wildlife improve faster than we do, and sportsmanship is a voluntary limitation in the use of these armaments. It is aimed to augment the role of skill and shrink the role of gadgets in the pursuit of wild things"

Working with other concerned conservation groups, Wilderness Watch helped raise awareness of an issue with far-reaching consequences for Wilderness in Alaska. Our editorials appeared in papers in Anchorage and Fairbanks, calling on ethical hunters, the general public and conservationists to express their concern with the FWS’s proposal. It is our hope that the agency will heed those voices that call for Wilderness protection rather than those who would let greed destroy both the ethics of hunting and our last wild places.