https://mustreadalaska.com/alaska-hunters-win-again-in-ninth-circuit-ruling/Looks like the 9th is coming around quite a bit. This is a big ruling and very unlikely to be appealed.
DECEMBER 31, 2019AUTHOR: SUZANNE DOWNING2 COMMENTS
Alaska hunters win again in Ninth Circuit ruling
Even the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was not willing to take away the rights of Alaskans to manage wildlife through predator control in the 16 wildlife refuges in the state. On Monday, the judges decided against the radical environmentalists, and for the hunters.
The case had been brought by the Center for Biological Diversity. It challenged the Congressional Review Act that gave Congress a way to review and disapprove regulations made during the waning days of the Obama Administration.
One of those regulations that was rescinded was a rule that prevented Alaska from applying certain state hunting regulations and game management practices on federal wildlife refuges.
The Center for Biological Diversity sought to force the Department of Interior to reinstate the rule against Alaska. The lower court had dismissed the lawsuit, and the CBD appealed it to the Ninth Circuit, which is the most liberal appeals court in the nation.
But a panel from the Ninth Circuit found invalid the Center’s arguments that Congress violated a constitutional balance of power.
Read the ruling here:
AlaskaHunting-9th Circuit RulingDownload
“Because Congress properly enacted the joint resolution, and therefore validly amended Interior’s authority to administer national wildlife refuges in Alaska, Congress did not prevent the president from exercising his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws,” U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta wrote. “Indeed, the president now has the constitutional obligation to execute the joint resolution.
“Congress’s efforts to exercise oversight of federal administrative agencies by means of the CRA are consistent with the ‘structure of this government, and the distribution of this mass of power among its constituent parts,’” she wrote on behalf of three judges.
The rule that was rolled back pertained to predator control. The Center for Biological Diversity characterize it as using bait to kill grizzly bears or killing wolf pups in their dens. Indeed, Alaska state game managers do use predator control to ensure healthy populations across the board. There are an estimated 53,500 grizzly bears in Alaska, or about one bear for every seven humans.
When President Barack Obama took over wildlife management of federal wildlife refuges, his regulations created a patchwork of management practices for wildlife — animals that moved freely between those state and federal jurisdictions.
In 2017, the Republicans in Congress overturned those federal rules. The Center for Biological Diversity was challenging the right of Congress to overturn those 11th hour regulations that occurred under Obama. The Center will likely not appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, since they have lost in the most liberal court in the land.
