Trophy hunting groups asked, and the Trump administration delivered. On October 16, the National Park Service finalized a rule that will once again let trophy hunters pile up donuts, bacon grease, and other human food on Alaska’s national preserves to lure black and brown bears in close and shoot them. The Park Service says it considered a 2025 letter from Safari Club International, one of the country’s largest trophy hunting groups, in writing the rule, and it says it went “further” than the President’s executive order required.

The rule is expected to take effect in about a month, overturning bans put in place under both the Obama and Biden administrations. It applies only to sport hunting, meaning it exists for people who kill bears for trophies, not for food.

These aren’t private hunting grounds. National preserves are part of the National Park System, including places like Denali and Wrangell-St. Elias, and they cover roughly 20 million acres of land that belongs to all Americans.

The Park Service’s own record makes the case against this rule. A 2024 peer-reviewed study by Park Service and outside biologists found that bears defending bait sites pose a moderate to high risk of injuring or killing park visitors, and when it proposed the ban in 2023, the agency itself warned that baiting raises the potential for significant human injury or even death.

The rule doesn’t stop at bears. It also ends a 2017 ban on taking live raptor chicks from national preserves for falconry.

Tell Secretary Burgum and the National Park Service: our national preserves are not trophy hunting grounds. Rescind this rule now.