A judge has ordered the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to pay $115,220 in attorney's fees to a retired Anchorage lawyer and wildlife advocate who successfully sued the state over a wolf-killing policy on the southern Kenai Peninsula.

Anchorage Superior Court Judge Una Gandbhir found the state violated the Alaska Constitution when it reauthorized a predator control policy first approved over a decade ago without considering new scientific population estimates for animals in the area. The order is the latest in a series of Alaska court rulings challenging state rule-making procedures over predator control programs designed to boost populations of moose or caribou by eliminating wolves and bears from game units.

The order was handed down in October and reaffirmed in December.

Plaintiff Kneeland Taylor was awarded the money on Dec. 17 as part of a summary judgment in his favor. He and other critics of Alaska's predator control programs say the state could face mounting costs if officials opt to keep vigorously contesting legal challenges to predator control — especially nonurgent programs like the one on the Kenai, which has been defunct for over more than a decade.

The predator control program was originally approved in 2012, intended to boost the moose population for hunters by shooting wolves from aircraft. But the program hasn't been used for years because moose populations in the region are healthy.

Still, Fish and Game not only sought to reauthorize the wolf program after it expired, but did so without conducting the basic scientific and technical work required by the law for such predator control operations, according to Gandbhir's Oct. 7 decision. The decision found that Fish and Game "violated ... the Alaska Constitution when they reenacted (the program) without conduction a review of the population objectives for game and wolves."

Taylor, who describes himself as an advocate and "a voice for non-consumptive users of Alaska's wildlife," has been involved in efforts to stop or curb predator control since a 1996 effort launched to curb aerial wolf hunting.

"Sometimes the laws and the facts matter. And this is one of them," he said Monday.

Taylor sued the state on constitutional grounds, arguing that Fish and Game, as well as the Board of Game, essentially rubber-stamped the Kenai wolf program without doing due diligence. The program had already expired in 2022 by the time the Board of Game voted in favor of the department's request to extend it in 2023, according to filings in the case record.

What's more, the lawsuit contended, the state did not bother to do new surveys of moose or wolves in a broad area known as Game Management Unit 15C.

Both parties in the case agreed that the number of moose in the area, which stretches roughly from Kasilof down to Kachemak Bay, is currently within the target range of 2,500 to 3,500 animals. The law is hazier on specific requirements for wolf numbers. A 2011 survey cited by the department estimated 44 to 52 wolves in the upper part of the game management sub-unit.

According to a draft of the predator control plan from 2012, the goal was to kill wolves through trapping, hunting and aerial gunning to get their numbers down to around 15.

For more than a decade now, the populations of both species have been close enough to managers' goals that there's been no aerial wolf hunting at all.

Still, in 2023, the department told the Board of Game it wanted the program reauthorized just in case.

"I explained that the regulation would remain on the books in the event it may be needed in the future; the wolf control program for Unit 15C was inactive because moose harvest and population objectives are being met," wrote Ryan Scott, Fish and Game's director for the wildlife conservation division, in a 2024 affidavit submitted as part of the case.

According to his testimony, wildfires on the Kenai Peninsula over recent years have made for good browsing conditions that have helped the ungulates thrive. There were enough moose that hunters have regularly harvested the 200 to 350 animals deemed sustainable by wildlife managers in recent years.

"No predator control activities are anticipated in the foreseeable future," Scott testified in his affidavit.

In an email Tuesday, Scott said it's not uncommon to keep inactive predator control programs on the books as a backup measure.

"We routinely reauthorize plans so we have them in place if the time comes and we need to use them," he wrote. "The process for new regulations takes some time and if a need arises we hope to be able to act sooner than later, which would be the case if we had to go through the regulatory process again."

Taylor, the plaintiff in the case, pointed out the state lost a similar lawsuit against a bear-culling program in Southwest Alaska to try reviving the Mulchatna caribou herd. The case centered on procedural issues with how the Board of Game and the Department of Fish and Game handled public notice for a dramatically expanded intensive management strategy, which has so far killed close to 200 bears and was reauthorized in summer 2025 by the board.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Mulchatna case claim they are due around $500,000 in attorney's fees for prevailing against the state, according to court filings. No final judgment on that request has been rendered.

Taylor said he found the state's vigorous defense against his case to be "foolish," and a poor use of public resources.

"It's ridiculous that they went to this extent to fight back," he said, adding that litigation is risky, expensive and time-consuming. Had he lost, Taylor said, he would have been required to pay the state's attorney fees, which would have meant mortgaging his home.

It wasn't immediately clear how much the state has spent on the Kenai wolf lawsuit, beyond legal fees ordered paid to Taylor earlier in December. A spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Law did not respond to questions Tuesday about the cost of staff time.

Michelle Bittner, another attorney, has sued the state over wildlife management policies, including the Mulchatna bear program. She said such lawsuits have consumed months of her time, and likewise the state has expended enormous numbers of staff man-hours defending what she described as shoddy regulations.

"It's a lot of resources for the attorneys bringing the lawsuits, but also for the judges and everyone involved," Bittner said.

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