Tonight the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge will host a meeting in regards to the proposal to close the refuge to sport brown bear hunting this season.
Refuge Manager Andy Loranger said the regular brown bear season will not be affected, the proposal would just close the KNWR to sport brown bear hunting from September 1 to May 31.
Loranger: “So this is a proposal to temporarily close the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge to sport hunting of brown bears and that would be effective September 1 so we’ll be going over just what the closure would entail and the basis and the reasons for that proposal and we’ll be taking public testimony on the proposal at the public hearing.”
As we previously reported, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition on August 11 seeking to permanently ban sport brown bear hunting on the KNWR stating that “Kenai Peninsula brown bears are genetically unique and physically isolated, making them more vulnerable to decline”.
Loranger said that petition has nothing to do with this federal temporary closure proposal.
Loranger: “Our proposal for a temporary closure really isn’t addressing or in relationship to that petition, we have not been dealing with that petition at all to this point.”
That meeting will be held tonight, August 27, at 6 pm at the Soldotna Regional Sports Complex.