Unalaska, AK – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has decided that it will not conduct a wolf kill on Unimak Island as part of an effort to grow a dwindling caribou herd.

An environmental assessment released this January suggested three predator control options - including aerial wolf hunts - as possibilities for protecting the caribou herd at Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. But Fish and Wildlife rejected these options and instead chose a "No Action" alternative after receiving 95,000 comments on the matter.

Bruce Woods is a spokesperson for Fish and Wildlife, and he says that the No Action alternative was the option most in line with federal policy. He says that the laws governing wilderness lands require that natural diversity be maintained with minimal intervention by man, and that the predator control options would have been a break from established policy.

"In the modern era, I don't think that there's been any aerial predator control in any refuge," says Woods.

Management of the Unimak caribou herd has been a point of tension between the federal government and the state for about a year. Over the past decade, the caribou population on Unimak Island has dropped from about 1,300 animals to just 300 and has been closed off to subsistence harvesting. Last May, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game proposed a wolf kill in an effort to protect the herd, and the State of Alaska filed a lawsuit against the Fish and Wildlife Service in an effort to allow hunters onto refuge land. A federal judge denied that request.

When Fish and Wildlife released its environmental assessment this winter, conservation groups expressed surprise that predator control was still on the table. Rebecca Noblin is the Alaska Director at the Center for Biological Diversity, and she says the group is happy that the Fish and Wildlife Service is choosing "science over politics." She adds that not enough is known about the cause of the caribou decline.

"There really wasn't any scientific basis for killing wolves," says Noblin. "Obviously, when you don't even know any wolves you have or what's going on with them, it's a risky proposition to go in and start killing them."

Right now, Fish and Wildlife will continue its surveys of Unimak caribou and its research on the herd's decline. Woods says that they're also considering a plan that would bring bulls from the Alaska Peninsula to Unimak Island in an effort to increase calf production.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game was not able to offer immediate comment on this story.