On Monday, the National Park Service issued a notice of its intent to ease regulations for sport hunting and trapping in national preserves. The proposed changes would allow hunters to hunt black bears with dogs, kill wolves and pups in their dens, and use motor boats to shoot swimming caribou. These and other hunting methods, like baiting brown bears with bacon and doughnuts or using spotlights to shoot mother black bears and cubs hibernating in dens, have been condemned as cruel by wildlife protection advocates. They were outlawed on federal lands in 2015. Members of the public have 60 days to provide comment on the proposed new rules, reports The Associated Press. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a former Montana congressman who has a taxidermied bear in his Washington office, as well as mounted heads from a bison and an elk, has made expanding hunting rights on federal lands one of his priorities.
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