The state of Alaska sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Friday, seeking a court order allowing it to go ahead with a controversial predator control program.
Last week, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced it would begin shooting some wolves on Unimak, the eastern-most island in the Aleutian chain, to protect caribou calving grounds as part of its aerial predator control program.
While the program is in place in at least six locations around Alaska, it would be the first time in recent history that aerial predator control would be used inside a national refuge in Alaska.
The department planned on using two biologists and four pilots to kill wolves.
The feds responded Monday, cautioning the state that killing the wolves without a special use permit would be considered "a trespass on the refuge" and immediately referred the matter to the U.S. attorney.
The state has interpreted that as federal officials blocking the program. The lawsuit, which names U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acting director Rowan Gould, his agency and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, seeks a court order allowing the state to kill seven wolves while the litigation continues.
Even after living in Alaska for my entire life I STILL find myself amazed at the bloodthirsty attitude these dickless morons have toward one of the most successful predators in the state.
And don't think for an instant that this "predator control" will be handled in a competent and scientific manner. Only last month these trigger happy buffoons slaughtered an entire wolf pack in March. Which included two wolves that were wearing tracking collars.
NPCA officials issued a statement Thursday saying "state gunners in helicopters killed the entire Weber Creek wolf pack from Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, including two collared wolves from a 16-year National Park Service scientific study."
Gee, no wonder the Feds are telling the mto knock it off!
As I have stated before the wolf control effort is NOT based on sound science and it simply continues to portray Alaska as a land of ignorant barbarians who place a higher priority on killing than in respecting the creatures with which they share this great land.
Contrary to what the State of Alaska may want you to believe, controlling the number of wolves is NOT to keep the caribou herds healthy! It is to ensure that there are more of them available for the hunters flying up from the lower forty eight to kill, so that they can mount the heads on their walls and feel like REAL men.
Yep,"ignorant barbarians" eager to slaughter anything they can is just the image being sent to everyone outside Alaska.
ReplyDeleteI don't get it. Alaska's primary draw for tourism is the environment - which, by the way, these morons don't seem to get - include wildlife, all wildlife including and particularly predators.
They do indeed project an image of "dickless" brutality. If that is the only way men can express their manliness, then they are pretty sorry excuses for men.
Gryphen - you may have already seen this, but here's a piece of good news:
ReplyDeleteInvestigators with the Stanislaus County District Attorney’s office found no evidence of wrongdoing — on either side — in the discovery of documents associated with Sarah Palin’s June 25 visit to California State University, Stanislaus.
In a release dated Wednesday but issued Friday, District Attorney Birgit Fladager said university police had asked her office for help looking into a complaint that documents had been illegally taken from the office of Susana Gajic-Bruyea, the Vice President for University Advancement and the executive officer of the university’s private Foundation Board.
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/05/28/2784661/stanislaus-county-da-no-charges.html#ixzz0pLc1kQsI
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/05/28/2784661/stanislaus-county-da-no-charges.html
Carol
California Immoral Minority Fan
You said "...portray Alaska as a land of ignorant barbarians who place a higher priority on killing than in respecting the creatures...".
ReplyDeleteWell, it is the land that elected Sarah Palin. I'm just saying...
What amazed me was that the State AFG can not say exactly how many wolves there are, only that there are to many of them.
ReplyDeleteFeds didn't tell them they couldn't do predator control only that there was special permits they would have to obtain first. Which the State probably couldn't do because it has absolutely no knowledge of how many wolves there are and are the wolves the reason for the decline in the caribou population.
the title is missing a word so it's confusing, probably should be
ReplyDelete[it] is suing
to refer back to State of Alaska
Your article is very interesting...
ReplyDeleteI find that their logic behind killing these wolf populations to be deeply flawed, after all, how do they explain the wolf population's origins? They fail to understand any underlying matter...
Gryphen I have been following this as a Alaskan wolf advocate...
ReplyDeleteThis island is huge! 300 days out of the year impossible conditions for planes. Now the FEDS (USDFWS) have offered to give a permit to AF&G to do studies collar wolves and caribou to find out what is happening there. The man I spoke to said if need be they would trans-locate some caribou there to replenish the herd.
He said they would no do aerial hunting on federal lands and if the SOA does they will get a injunction and it will become a DOJ issue. I would think sarah & Co would not want a bunch of dept of justice snooping around.
Now the BOG yesterday extended the "sports hunting" season for wolves to the end of june however as previously stated it is almost impossible terrain there and he told me basically the people who live there just want the state to do predator control.(lazy)
Now just think how much it will cost the state to sue the FEDS (another frivolous lawsuit) and bring Helios & airplanes out to shoot the wolves plus risk FED fines and legal expenses for losing the case. They should just spend the money to give the 62 people in question meat if they need it. Now there are 30 wolves, State wants to kill 20. 300 caribou (way down) and 62 people.
I would ask people not in Alaska to Boycott Alaska this summer. Call parnell and tell him why.
Hopefully the newly elected gov will not be a murdering Neanderthal that includes palin & co.
Now comments on the adn are very funny. "We don't need fed money" "kill the wolves"
First off,Shannyn has said on her show many times Alaska gets $1.75 for each FED dollar and Alaska just couldn't survive without federal funds. A great percent of Alaska is FEDERAL lands, the wolves and animals that live there are ALL of OUR WOLVES, BEARS, CARIBOU etc. The NPS, USDFWS has a agreement with Alaska to allow for sports hunting, & subsistence hunting in/on Federal Parks and Refuges but this does NOT ALL SOA TO PRACTICE PREDATOR CONTROL!
Now I tried to contact BOG/AF&G yesterday at around 3:30 PT and no answer, now I know why.
Also..too, they released this Pressor after hours....sounds like how palins stuff got released after hours on a fri/holiday weekend.
As you say Gryphen, this is nothing more than pure killing blood lust, b/c the State will be in deep shit, but they got away scott free killing the Pack from Yukon-Charley and they think they can smoke a pack in a Refuge...
It would be great if they get put in jail.
But they are set to kill 20 wolves and its damn near impossible to stop them...
http://j.mp/9sqbxU
A sidebar to all this is something ADF&G has not publicized and you will see why in a moment.
ReplyDeleteFrom 2000 to 2008 about a dozen caribou were taken via subsistence hunting. From 2001 to 2008 90 caribou were taken by trophy hunters.
F&G has been aware of the situation on the island for that entire period, obviously, but suddenly in an election year (when having a campaign issue about fighting those nasty ol' feds can really get some votes) it has become an emergency.
USFWS reports in 1975 there were 5000 caribou on the island. By the 1980's it was down to a few hundred. These sorts of wild fluctuations are not uncommon in isolated populations such as this and so FWS is not overly concerned.
Meanwhile, ADF&G, to whom the answer to every problem is "kill the wolves" is going to try their "surgical precision" predator control when they don't even know how many wolves there are? Sounds about par for them, anymore.
Note to State and Feds: Nature has a way of taking care of itself without our human intervention. Let Nature take its' course and stay out of it. The wolves and the caribou will find a happy medium. It's been that way for a long time; way before man became "civilized" and began sticking our noses into other species business.
ReplyDeleteI've hunted ungulates on remote islands before and Unimak is a very large Island. It can be very difficult to locate a herd especially given the size of Unimak, its well known that herds tend to split up from time to time and it's entirely possible this is the case on the Island. The State did not report on brown bears on the Island, why? Well because bear trophy hunts run about $20-50,000 profit that's why, so anyways the state needs a scape goat to keep some one rich, poor wolves. Corey Rossi is a big game guide, did any one know that? He ran an outfit called "Great North Safari" I don't know if he still does but to have him in there managing our wildlife resources with a background like that? Well that just seems unjust.
ReplyDeleteDon't you find it just a bit 'odd' that the very same people who preach from the rooftops about the controlling evils of government intervention over their population are the very same people who want to impose THEIR control over wildlife populations via government intervention?
ReplyDeleteConservative advocates just keep contradicting themselves. It's a wonder they aren't all deaf from the constant clashing and banging.
Good luck progressives - fingers crossed for you downunder.
-OzMud
anon@7:39 PM
ReplyDeleteYou are very correct here! When I talked w the Feds the fact that "predator" control is conducted by independent sources...well I did not get to address that "issue"...which is why they can afford $30K to kill a few wolves and why they are so desperate to do that! He did mention the Grizzly hunting....which runs for $10-@20K a pop.
Hey anyone want to kill a mama Griz?
"Satire" alert!
I will be calling them on tues but he did tell me they do not have Law enforcement manpower to stop them but they can get a injunction to stop them. You have to wonder why Palin & Co are so intent on "smokin' a pack"? She just said THAT in a recent facebook....
What a Bitch!
Boycott ALASKA 2010
Alaska is a big place and one would assume that there are places that are in need of natural predators to control herds.
ReplyDeleteSo why wouldn't the state have these areas identified so if a wolf population became too large it could be relocated? I'm no expert and it could be that a wolf pack can't be relocated so that's why I pose the question instead of coming off as a noneducated know-it-all.
Regardless, there has to be ways to take care of the situation where no animals are slaughtered. That should be the last and final option, especially coming from people who's stewardship of nature is their job.
A really good article:
ReplyDeletehttp://community.adn.com/adn/node/151864
"Common sense says that this expanded season is simply another form of wolf control, but apparently it’s more palatable to the FWS than helicopter gunships, since the agency, I’ve been told, has decided not to contest the BOG’s vote to proceed with this newest “dire emergency” response. Did I mention that this effort will occur while wolves are raising pups, and that some Unimak pups may therefore be orphaned and/or starve when their parents are killed? A couple of board members worried about the political fallout from that, but so it goes.
I should also mention that Fish & Game and the BOG insist the wolf kill is necessary because of the caribou herd’s importance as a subsistence resource. They made this determination despite the fact that only a dozen caribou have been harvested by local residents since 2000, while guided nonresident hunters killed 90 caribou between 2001 and 2008, when both the subsistence and sport hunts were shut down because someone finally recognized the herd was in trouble. This information (supplied by the FWS) merits repeating: 12 kills for subsistence, 90 for trophies. So who’s going to benefit the most if and when the herd recovers and hunting is again allowed? Locals? Uh-uh. Big-game guides? You betcha.
Beyond that, residents of False Pass, Unimak’s only community, have told FWS employees that they do most of their caribou hunting on the Alaska Peninsula, not the island they inhabit, because of Unimak’s challenging terrain and difficult access to the hunting grounds. It’s also noteworthy that the diets of False Pass and other regional communities consist mostly of marine foods. So where is the subsistence crisis? I would argue there is no such crisis, except as manufactured by state wildlife officials."
Guess those folks didn't watch "Cry Wolf"
ReplyDelete