The long-simmering dispute between the state of Alaska and the National Park Service over how to manage wildlife in northern ecosystems has erupted again with Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve upset about a 50 percent drop in wolf numbers since fall 2012.
Wolf numbers usually fall significantly over winter due to natural death from starvation, injuries and territorial wars between packs, but the Park Service noted in a press release that the latest drop "is substantially more than normal and coincides with predator control efforts by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game near the preserve."
That's a polite way of saying the state agency has been killing wolves around the perimeter of the preserve to try to give moose and caribou a better chance at survival. The state is engaged in what it calls an "intensive management program'' to maximize moose and caribou numbers. The park service favors what it calls a more natural situation in the 2.5-million-acre preserve.
Federal biologists argue state wolf control has now depressed the Yukon-Charley wolf population. They say a 50 percent decline in numbers is the largest they've seen in 20 years. The previous high was 37 percent.
Gee cannot imagine how an "intensive management program," ie aerial wolf slaughter, could have anything to do with the decline in the wolf population can you?
But hey just so long as people can still get the chance to fly in from out of state to kill a real live moose without having to worry about some indigenous predators eating them to survive the winter, who cares that the population has been cut virtually in half?
No wonder people in the lower forty-eight think we are a bunch of barbarians!
