The Obama campaign should be playing this coast to coast. >> Link
And hunters should be denouncing this violation of the basic tenets of Fair Chase.
To be clear, these wolves are not predating on farm stock, nor are they living close to human settlement.
These wild wolves live so far from human settlement that it is necessary to get in an airplane to find them. >> To read more
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7 comments:
According to the Alaska Fish & Game website.
This is indeed Predator control. Not to increase livestock. But to increase Moose/Caribou levels in 9.4% of Alaska where the CITIZENS of Alaska have provided public commentary that they are not able to harvest enough Moose/Caribou.
I agree that "hunting" via arial tactics are in violation for fair chase. But this is NOT about "hunting" it's about predator control.
And Sarah Palin didn't pull this out of her arse (lol).... this was the recommendation of Alaska Fish & Game.
This is an outrage. These numbnuts don't understand how wolves and other predators keep herds of deer/moose/elk etc healthy by preying after the weak, sick and old?
I have never heard of a human hunter purposely culling out these types of animals the natural predators do.
Sarah Palin, so wrong on so many fronts. Eight years of a Bush administration raping this country's natural resources via our national parkland etc, wanting to roll back on the endangered species act is horrific. Put this lunatic in power and I shudder to think what will happen. She epitomizes that things could, indeed get worse.
M. Evans
Actually, the aerial wolf hunt IS is "pulled out of the ass" of Alaska politicians (to use your colorful phrase).
A little background: Alaska Fish and Game folks are political appointees; if you had read the full text of the link at the end of the post, you would know that.
Commissioner Denby S. Lloyd was appointed by Sarah Palin in February, 2007 (see >> http://www.adfg.state.ak.us/commissioner/commissioner.php) .
Alaska Fish & Game Commission Lloyd has to do what Sarah Palin says, or he's toast -- same as Trooper Monegan and everyone else in Alaska government.
POINT TWO is that "predator control" is not needed in Alaska. There is more than enough big game, small game, and fish (large and small) in Alaska to take care of everyone's pantry needs.
Remember that this is a state with only 600,000 people living in over 570,000 square miles of wilderness. If you cannot fill your freezer in Alaska, you are not trying very hard!
But of course, shooting wolves is not about taking care of the wild-meat needs of Alaska residents, is it? It's about taking care of the trophy needs of a few thousand rich Americans (and some foreigners) who fly up to Alaska every year to shoot moose, bear, wolf, elk, and caribou.
The numbers tell the story here: While Alaska residents bought 7,025 resident big game tags last year, nonresidents purchased 16,219 big game tags. See the last line at >> http://www.admin.adfg.state.ak.us/admin/license/10yr2007sold.pdf
Bottom line: Aerial shooting of wolves in Alaska is not being done to help residents put meat on the table; it's being done so that a few hundred professional guides can sell "guaranteed" hunts to rich folks from down south. And it's not being dictated by "sound science" (there is none to support the aerial wolf hunt) but by political appointees who serve at the humor of a Governor who is already famous as a Vendetta Queen.
As for what Alaska residents want, that too is not up to debate. Alaska residents are sick and tired of the aerial wolf shoot. They have TWICE approved ballot measures that would require sound science to show shooting wolves makes sense as a game management tool, and they have TWICE voted to ban anyone but state wildlife biologists from doing the actual shooting of wolves if any shooting is actually needed anywhere (i.e. no paid-tourist wolf-shoots would be allowed).
Governor Frank Murkowksi overturned the results of the first vote, and current Governor Sarah Palin overturned the second. Democracy? Not in Alaska!
So, to return to your statement: Is the aerial wolf hunt in Alaska "pulled out of the ass" of Alaska politicians?
You betcha!
No wonder it stinks to high heaven!
Patrick
http://www.wc.adfg.state.ak.us/index.cfm?adfg=control.predator_prey
There does seem to be some science attached to these numbers. I have not read the actual papers...but that will be a good job for the next rainy day.
Also.....http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/wildlife/wolves/story/469720.html According to this story there are actual Biologist shooting wolves. In Caribou calving grounds. And the numbers they quote in the article for caribou herd reductions due to wolf predation are compelling.
Your comment re size vs. population....only makes sense in this debate if we looking at alaska in the whole. But in fact it is a VERY small portion 9.4% of Alaskan herd grounds. So that does indeed streghten the argument of predator control.
I would agree with you in regards that this is not solely about putting meat on the table. That there is an economic impact of 'trophy' hunting (of Moose/Caribou) at stake....but does the money gained from a strong outside hunting trade not benefit local economy? I would argue and am sure that the white paper exists out there that it is a viable "trade" for Alaskans (outfitting).
I don't know the answer Mr. Burns. But certainly there are compelling numbers out there that show a true decline in herd populations....and that 80% of those numbers is attributed to wolf predation.
This issue is not as black and white as it is made out to be. It will be interesting to see what CNN's Anderson Cooper reports on this as his staff is reportable looking into it.
I maintain that hunting and animal control are two different things.
Thank you for you time and thoughts....Tami
P.S. All state Fish and Game heads are appointed by Governors are they not?
Studies have been done again and again involving the results of these ridiculous wolf "controls". Very often it has the opposite effect, as wolf packs get split up and scattered, and without the dominant pack members suppressing the subordinate wolves from breeding(the dominant animals often the ones killed in these hunts), MORE wolves breed than usual, and the population can actually quickly rise! Best leave wolf control to the experts--THE WOLVES! L.B.
Tami: I stand by my point: No new work was done by Alaska Fish and Game.
NONE.
In fact, the National Academy of Science report (1997) mentioned in the first paragraph at the link you include was COMPLETELY IGNORED by Alaska officials, and if you look at the footnotes on the page you give a link to, you will find NOT A SINGLE RELEVANT STUDY is cited after the 1997 National Academy of Science report.
My case is made by your evidence!
So what did the 1997 National Academy of Sciences study find? I could not find the National Academy of Science study on the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game web site (it should be there, why is it not?), but I found it on the National Academies Press web site and I have downloaded the summary (12 pages) to >> http://www.terrierman.com/alaska-predator-summary.pdf (PDF) so that it's easy for folks to read.
The summary notes that:
"The goal of predator control efforts in Alaska is primarily to increase prey populations for human harvest," which is exactly what I said.
In short, wolf-shoot advocates in Alaska Fish and Game are treating the boreal forests of Alaska (mostly National Forest land) as if they are a moose and caribou farm, not as if it are an eco-system.
Recommendation #6 of the National Acadamy of Sciecen Report (page 11 of the summary) says: "Wildlife policy makers in Alaska should be more sensitive to signs of overharvest and more conservative in setting hunting regulations and designing control efforts, particularly with moose, caribou and bears."
What's that mean?
It means exactly what I said in my previous response: If Alaska residents more moose and more caribou in Alaska, they need to stop selling so many out-of-state big game tags to people from the Lower 48.
The NAS report goes on to note that the folks at the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game have NOT done adequate habit studies for moose and caribou browse, and that wolf control had NOT been shown to increase moose and caribou herds outside of island situations. See page 5: "[D]ata to support the judgments that habitats in the control area could support increased moose and caribou populations for more than a few years were limited. Several control experiments failed to increase ungulate populations, possibly because predation rates by bears were high, habitat quality was poor, or the area and duration were insufficient."
The National Academy of Science report goes on to note that to properly evaluate wolf shoots in Alaska, three questions have to be answered. Those questions are biological (Do wolf shoot work to raise ungulate populations?), economic (Is the cost of a wolf-control program worth the benefit of a few more moose in an area?), and political (What do people in the state want, and what do people outside of the state want?)
The National Academy of Science report notes that while wolf control has NOT been shown to demonstrably increase ungulate populations in Alaska, that the financial costs of wolf control are high and rising with incresed oversight and public attention to the issue. The NAS notes that the marginal economic benefits to be had from wolf control in Alaska are far from clear, while the potential economic loss to the state of Alaska from a tourism boycott could be HUGE. Finally, the report notes that wolf control in Alaska is both unpopular within the state (as I noted in my earlier comment, both previous state-wide ballot initiatives found Alaskans OPPOSE the wolf shoots), and outside the state as well (since 60% of Alaska lands are Federal lands, this is not a small concern).
Bottom line: The wolf shoots in Alaska have been pulled straight out of the hind end of a handful of far-right Republican politicians like Frank Murkowski, Ted Steven and Sarah Palin. The Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game is a POLITICAL ARM of the Governor and especially THIS Governor who is the most vicious back-stabbing, science-be-damned flat earth kind of lunatic ever put in office anywhere. And finally, as I noted in my previous posts, there is NO SCIENCE to support these wolf shoots. The points made in the 1997 National Academy of Science report (read the whole thing) still stand. Should we do more research? Sure! But clearly, the weight is on the side of caution, and that caution would clearly include dialing back on out-of-state Moose and Caribou tags (see previously cited data to see how out-of-skew they are right now).
Patrick
"I don't know the answer Mr. Burns. But certainly there are compelling numbers out there that show a true decline in herd populations....and that 80% of those numbers is attributed to wolf predation."
Really.
For that to be the case that wolves are responsible for this, one of the following needs to be true:
There are a hell of a lot more wolves in the state of Alaska than we're being told there is.
The wolves are a hell of a lot better at catching food than the wolf biologists give them credit for.
The herds were never very big to begin with, and that hunting by humans has a negligible impact on them.
Alaskans know better than anyone else how to manage what's in their own state, but if the people don't think the wolf hunt is even needed, then there's no reason to carry it out, other than it's easier to blame the Big Bad Wolf than it is to lay off the herds for a few years to allow any needed recovery to take place.
Seems that Palin thinks the people of her own state are incapable of understanding because she thinks they're too stupid to understand.
[Message to Palin: It does not follow that being a hunter somehow makes you an expert in wildlife management any more than opening a science textbook and conducting in-class experiments makes me an expert in nuclear physics.]
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