AR-News: Fish and Wildlife Protection changes are hurting Alaska

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

Outdoors in Alaska, by Howard Delo
Editor's note: This is the first in a two-part column examining Fish and 
Wildlife Protection Division changes. Howard Delo, the author, is a retired 
fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
On Aug. 4, 2003, the Fish and Wildlife Protection Division of Alaska's 
Department of Public Safety ceased to exist. The former "brownshirt" troopers were 
incorporated into the Alaska State Trooper Division, issued blue uniforms, and 
placed in a subsection of the AST now known as the Alaska Bureau of Wildlife 
Enforcement, or ABWE.
The ABWE troopers have the primary responsibility of enforcing Alaska's fish 
and game laws and regulations. The AST troopers' primary concern is the 
enforcement of the state's criminal code.
Public Safety stated that this consolidation would not impact the level of 
fish and game enforcement that previously existed and would save the state money.
Before we explore that claim, a little background is in order. Troopers in 
the defunct FWP division, now ABWE, have always had the same training and 
enforcement authority as the troopers from the AST division. In fact, the ABWE 
troopers received an additional two weeks of training in dealing with the specifics 
of wildlife enforcement that the AST trooper trainees never received. 
However, after the current trooper class at the academy graduates, this extra 
wildlife-specific enforcement training is being eliminated as a cost cutting measure.



full story:

http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2004/01/26/news/opinion/opinion5.txt



"The world is a dangerous place,
not because of those who do evil,
but because of those who look on and do nothing.",
Albert Einstein

          /\  /\            
>' .' < 












    
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/attachments/20040126/74d7c6d3/attachment.html