Alaska wildlife agents can resume shooting and killing black and brown bears — including from helicopters — as part of a plan to help recover a caribou herd that was once an important source of food for Alaska Native hunters, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Two conservation groups, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance and Center for Biological Diversity, sought to halt the program while their lawsuit challenging its legality plays out. But Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman said the groups had failed to show that the state acted without a reasonable basis for approving the plan.

The timing of the ruling is important: The Mulchatna caribou herd in southwest Alaska is expected to begin calving soon. The babies are particularly susceptible to being eaten by bears or wolves.

State officials see the bear-killing program as important to helping the caribou herd recover. The herd, which once provided up to about 4,770 caribou a year for subsistence hunters from dozens of communities, peaked at around 190,000 animals.

But the caribou population began declining in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and by 2019 numbered around 13,000 animals. Last year, the population was estimated around 16,280, according to the state Department of Fish and Game. Hunting has not been allowed since 2021.

The state killed 180 bears from 2023 to 2024, most of them brown bears, plus 11 more last year, according to the conservation groups' lawsuit. According to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, 99 bears, including 20 cubs, were killed by the state from the air in less than a month in 2023.

The groups argue that the Alaska Board of Game last year authorized reinstating the program without key data on the bears' population numbers and sustainability.

Cooper Freeman, Alaska director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement the groups want to see the caribou herd thrive, "but the state simply hasn't shown that the unrestrained killing of bears is going to help us get there."

"We need to stop this disgraceful waste of the state's limited resources and work based on science to protect all our wildlife," Freeman said.

State attorneys have said that officials took a "hard look" at factors related to bear numbers in adopting the plan. Alaska is home to an estimated 100,000 black bears and 30,000 brown bears.

"The herd has persisted at low numbers but started showing a positive response since 2023, when bear removal during calving seasons began," they wrote in a court filing.

The Alaska Department of Law welcomed Zeman's decision "to allow this management program to continue during the upcoming caribou calving season, a crucial time for herd recovery," spokesperson Sam Curtis said by email. The department represents the board and Department of Fish and Game.

"Continuing this program makes sense in light of the scientific record," Curtis said.

Attorneys with Trustees for Alaska, representing the conservation groups, are reviewing the ruling and "will consider all available options," spokesperson Madison Grosvenor said by email.

The program has been the subject of ongoing litigation. A judge last year, in a case previously brought by the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, found fault with the process in which it was adopted and concluded the state lacked data on bear sustainability.

Emergency regulations implemented by the state were later struck down. A subsequent public process was announced surrounding plans to reauthorize the program, which the board did last July.

According to the Alaska Wildlife Association, a group of state biologists in 2020 determined that the main reasons for the herd's decline were disease and a lack of food and "bear predation isn't even in the top three identified causes of mortality among the Mulchatna herd."

"We are concerned that big game management in Alaska has become a process whereby population objectives for wild ungulates are established based on public demand rather than on habitat capacity, promoting unsustainable management," the alliance says in a position paper.