More wolf news, this time from Alaska:
The state Department of Fish and Game on Saturday began killing the wolves in hopes of boosting caribou numbers in the Fortymile herd that ranges from the Steese Highway to the Canadian border. At least 30 wolves have been killed so far.
The goal is to shoot as many as 150 wolves before they get too many caribou calves and before the snow and the wolf tracks disappear.
But Park Service officials, who learned of the plans late last week, questioned the state's approach. Among the concerns raised in interviews and in Park Service documents:
What will the shooting mean for wolves that travel between state land and a neighboring, 2.5-million-acre national preserve? What if the state overestimated how many wolves live in the area, and kills too many?
"We don't want to see the wolf population, or those packs that frequent the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, be eliminated or reduced significantly," said Debora Cooper, the Park Service's associate regional director for natural resources.
These wolves are being shot from helicopters by state employees, the federal park service is concerned about the program as wolves are protected in federal parks and studied and tracked there. The state game board also approved last week the use of poison gas to kill orphaned wolf cubs in their dens. (The cubs are orphaned after their mothers are shot.) This is the new expanded predator control program to increase the numbers of caribou in the state for subsistence hunting (as in "protecting our way of life").
There is also this story, which broke just a couple of days ago, about arrests for "wanton waste":
Alaska State Troopers opened an investigation in July after counting at least 120 caribou killed about 25 miles east of Point Hope.
About half of the animals had been fully or partially wasted, investigators said. Troopers have called it "by far the worst case of blatant waste" they have ever seen.
The animals were part of the Western Arctic Caribou Herd, which has more than 375,000 animals and is a major subsistence food source.
Troopers investigating reports of waste came across the carcasses scattered along a 40-mile trail about 25 miles east of Point Hope.
The equation here would be, kill wolves to increase caribou for hunters to kill. But the whole caribou slaughtered and left to rot really throws this whole thing out of whack. Wolves, in theory, can not be allowed to hunt in the wild as they don't eat the whole caribou, or eat too much caribou or just are too damn good at hunting. (We're talking 300 wolves max in the Yukon-Charley Preserve area - and the state wants that number down to 80 so there can be between 50,000 and 100,000 wolves.) And yet - the humans aren't so good at the careful hunting thing either.
But wait, there's more (this from yesterday):
John Strongheart and John Murphy pleaded guilty Tuesday to killing a moose during a closed season and using a motorized vehicle to harass and herd big game.
They were fined more than $4,000, they lost hunting privileges for five years and their weapons were seized.
Alaska State Troopers say that a game officer on patrol with a plane Sunday issued a summons for the men.
Troopers say the men used snowmobiles to chase a moose near their village, then shot the animal and failed to salvage it.
This from a couple of weeks ago:
Wildlife troopers say Steve Eckroate also notified them when he inadvertently shot a female musk ox when he had a permit for a bull only.
Troopers say Eckroate failed to salvage any of the animal and left the carcass in the field during the early January hunt northwest of Nome. The meat spoiled.
Eckroate is charged with wanton waste of a big game animal and taking a cow during a closed season.
It's easy to demonize Gov. Palin in all this but the truth about Alaskans and how they view wildlife is much more complicated. But then again before anyone in the Lower 48 thinks they have the state all figured out, consider this recent action against dogs in North Carolina:
A Superior Court judge this morning ordered that 127 pit bulls seized in a raid of a breeder of fighting dogs should be euthanized.
Judge Ed Wilson entered the order after hearing arguments from Wilkes County officials, from the prosecutor and from The Humane Society of the U.S. that the dogs are dangerous and would pose a risk if adopted into homes.
A number of animal lovers and animal advocacy groups have offered to adopt the dogs.
The dogs were seized Dec. 10, 2008, during a raid on Wildside Kennels in Wilkes County.
The dogs were put down on February 19th. Some of them were puppies - born in the animal shelters after the seizure. They were killed because of what they were, not what they had done.
Makes you wonder what it is that we want from animals if we are destroying them merely for existing, or for daring to survive in the wild.
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March 19
2009
05:13 AM
Okay. This is really upsetting.
Really upsetting.
I've never understood how anyone at all could hold a gun and aim at an animal and be okay with what happens next.
I lived once, when I was a child, and briefly, in Fort McMurray, near the tar sands. I've been reading your posts with interest.