AR-News: Game Board meeting draws howls

[jim robertson]

Game Board meeting draws howls
Board is likely to approve aerial wolf hunting plans today


By JOEL GAY
Anchorage Daily News

(Published: November 4, 2003)


Three dozen protesters howled and prowled the sidewalk outside the Alaska 
Board of Game meeting in Spenard on Monday, hoping to raise enough ruckus to 
stop the board's planned resumption of aerial wolf kills.

"Just in case the world thinks wolves in Alaska are safe, we're here to tell 
them they're not," said organizer Maury Mason of the Alaska Wildlife 
Alliance.

As demonstrators waved signs proclaiming "The world is watching" and "Board 
of Game, Board of Shame," volunteers chained four large, wolf-like dogs on a 
patch of grass and dressed them in mock-bulletproof vests.

The body armor signified a need for protection that wildlife advocates 
around the world thought Alaska wolves already had, Mason said. Alaska 
voters basically banned airplane-assisted land-and-shoot wolf hunting in 
ballot measures in 1996 and 2000. The federal government halted sport 
hunting from airplanes in 1972.

Nevertheless, the Game Board today is expected to authorize the first aerial 
predator control program in Alaska in more than 15 years, using a new state 
law that allows private pilots to participate.

Hence the bulletproof vests, Mason said. "Nothing else seems to be working."

The state has shot, trapped, transported and sterilized thousands of wolves 
since statehood in 1959. Many hunters, biologists and game managers maintain 
that killing or removing predators from small areas at the right time can 
help moose and caribou stocks rebound.

But public opposition to wolf killing has grown during the same period. 
Aerial shooting went virtually unnoticed in the early 1980s, but a proposal 
in the early 1990s drew a national tourism boycott. A state wolf-snaring 
program concentrated in an area south of Fairbanks was abandoned in late 
1994 after newspaper and television news programs showed photographs and 
video of a state-snared wolf that had chewed a paw off to try to escape.

The wolf-control plan before the Game Board today could bring a firestorm, 
if previous programs are any indication. Starting as early as 8:30 a.m., the 
board is expected to approve plans to shoot around 40 wolves in a 
520-square-mile area around McGrath this winter.

Pilots chosen to participate will get federal permits, no longer available 
to sport hunters, because the program is an approved predator-control 
effort. For the same reason, the voter-approved limits on land-and-shoot 
hunting don't apply either, according to state attorneys.

The McGrath effort is part of an experiment to reduce predation from a small 
area to see how it affects moose survival. Earlier this year, Alaska 
Department of Fish and Game biologists tranquilized about 90 black and brown 
bears and flew them up to 250 miles away so they would not eat so many moose 
calves. Biologists say the summer survival rate was higher than normal as a 
result.

The wolf-kill plan is part of the same experiment. Originally the state had 
proposed that its biologists shoot the wolves from helicopters, but Gov. 
Frank Murkowski nixed the plan. Sen. Ralph Seekins, R-Fairbanks, then pushed 
an amendment to state law allowing private citizens to participate in 
state-sponsored predator control.

This week the board could also authorize a similar plan for a much larger 
area, game management units 13A, 13B and portions of 13E, in the Nelchina 
basin east of Anchorage. Other areas in line for such programs are unit 16B, 
which includes the Skwentna/Rainy Pass areas, and unit 19B near Aniak.

Protesters on Monday largely ignored the legal fine points of the new 
program. They see private citizens killing wolves from airplanes.

Alaskans voted twice on that issue, said Cat Stephenson of Anchorage. 
"They're just thumbing their nose at the power of Alaska voters."

Stephenson said subsistence should be the highest priority use of moose and 
caribou, but believes aerial wolf control is aimed to benefit sport hunters 
more than subsistence.

"Those moose are being taken for a lot of reasons," she said, "but I don't 
think we need to decimate wolf populations just to make life easier on us."

Karen Deatherage of Defenders of Wildlife was more blunt: "This has nothing 
to do with subsistence," she said. "The bottom line is that the (sport 
hunting) guides and transporters are coming out there in unprecedented 
numbers. That's what this is all about."

Wolf-protection advocates also challenge the science and politics behind the 
state's plans. Wildlife census surveys are often out of date, population 
goals for moose can be changed by a board vote, and even the subsistence 
needs of communities are largely speculative, they say.

Organizers on Monday displayed some of the 500,000 signatures they say they 
gathered in support of Alaska's wolves before and after the 2000 ballot 
initiative. The signature-gathering will begin anew, said Mason, of the 
wildlife alliance.

"We're getting a million," he said.

As protesters walked and chanted in the morning sun, the Game Board was 
inside Spenard's Millennium Alaskan Hotel, methodically considering more 
than two dozen proposals to amend hunting and trapping regulations in 
Western Alaska and the Arctic.

Among the proposals are several to help moose stocks rebound on the lower 
Kuskokwim River and near Kotzebue. Others seek more liberal seasons or bag 
limits on wolves and brown bears, ostensibly reducing predation on moose.

"It's local people trying to solve local problems," said Fish and Game 
official Wayne Regelin.

The board meeting resumes today at 8:30 a.m. at the Millennium.

Daily News reporter Joel Gay can be reached at jgay at adn.com or at 257-4310.




"Vegetarianism...is my protest against the conduct of the world."
Isaac Bashevis Singer

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