Sarah Palin's support for aerial wolf killing may have merit

During her bid to become vice president, Sarah Palin became a target among conservation groups for her support, as Alaska's governor, of the aerial killing of wolves in Alaska.

(To view the Defenders of Wildlife video advertisement, click here.)

Perhaps rightly so. The practice is cruel and not at all sporting. But the practice apparently is working. Experts, citing the removal of predators as a major factor, say more caribou in the Southern Alaska Peninsula herd are surviving.

Craig Medred, outdoors reporter for the Anchorage Daily News, in a story today, points out that surveys completed in October counted an average of 39 calves per 100 cows, compared to only one calf per 100 cows in 2006 and 2007.

The recent removal of 28 wolves from the region is largely credited.

The caribou herd had shrunk from nearly 5,000 at the start of the decade to about 600 last year, and the state would like to see it maintained at about 3,500. It requires a 20% or better calf survival rate just to keep from declining further.

Overall, under an aerial hunting program that began more than five years ago under Gov. Palin's predecessor, about 700 wolves have been killed, many by ordinary citizens.

And though the program may be working, it's hardly ideal. After biologists shot 14 wolves in three packs last spring, they discovered they'd left 14 pups without parents. Those pups were euthanized to spare them starvation.

Animal rights groups contended the pups should have been placed in zoos.

--Pete Thomas

Photo: Caribou roam the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge in this U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service file photo

Comments

[jstacey]

Unless a person is vegetarian, criticising Palin for predator control is hypocritical. Fresh meat is very expensive in Alaska due to shipping costs. While 10's of millions of factory raised animals are slaughtered each year, so costs remain low, folks in Alaska struggle to support their families. I wonder if all the commentators who condmned, and ridiculed, Palin for shooting wolves from helicopters, thought twice about chowing down at KFC.

[Cate, San Francisco, CA]

I just hope that the biologists are monitoring the wolf population as closely as they are monitoring the caribou population. Regardless I would not consider Palin an environmentalist by any means. She doesn't care any more about the wolf population than she does about Polar Bears surviving. Palin is suing the US Government for declaring the Polar Bear an endangered species. This is not about being a vegetarian or a meat eater. This is about making sure that species survive the high population of humans.

[brown eyes]

You know what I find interesting is this:

People disagree with Palin on not killing a human fetus but give her crap about killing animals? What? Does anyone else see a higher regard for animal life over human?

Environmentalists argue that the wolf pups should be spared and sent to the zoo, yet many of these people are the same ones who disagree with her stance on the human right to life?

Wow.

That's so incomprehensible to me. It seems that if an animal is this important, human life would be 100 times moreover.

[Cate, San Francisco, CA]

brown eyes:
What I find "interesting" is that so many people who are anti-abortion--because they hold human life in such high regard--can at the same time hold the life of all other living things on the planet with such low regard in some cases. I call myself PRO-LIFE, but I mean that in the sense that I am PRO-LIFE of the entire planet--to protect all living things, not just humans. Of course humans are improtant, but no more important than other living beings. Perhaps if we all considered all life sacred we could come to some point of agreement.

[apesca]

I suppose if you wanted to maintain the caribou herd, you could try NOT HUNTING THEM... I'm officially pro-choice if only because I would sooner die than be seen as agreeing with that complete dullard of a woman.

[Lynne]

Published Sunday, August 3, 2008

The slaughter of 60 or more caribou in Northwest Alaska last month was quite simply a jaw-dropper.

Those pictures of caribou calves trying to suckle from dead cows will live on as examples of the worst kind of wildlife slaughter — such a waste, such a tragedy. And now it is an indelible vision tied to the tundra.

http://www.newsminer.com/news/2008/aug/03/protecting-wildlife/?opinion

What was the point of that? Seems wolves aren't the only target, seems to me that the wolves are being set up so that the public will agree with upcoming wolf slaughter and wolf pup slaughter. This "woman" emphasis on man, is just totally disgusting in my book.

[Jon K.]

Palin is an idiot. Worse, she a narcissistic idiot. I'm fine with people being fools, but a narcissistic fool can do a lot of damage in this world.

If they need to keep wolf populations down, then they can find a better way than decimating their populations from helicopters in winter with no cover. As Pete noted, it's "cruel" and even more important "not at all sporting."

[Laura]

Palin is many things but an idiot she is not. The worst that can be said about her is that she is a bit flamboyant and that isn't always a bad thing.
I agree with the posters about the fact that most weirdo's want to abort any baby they can and some of them even feel abortion is one tool that should be available to halt human population increases and support more wildlife and environmental policies.

If caribou are not sustainable, then the wolf pups would have died of starvation anyway. 600 caribou are not much of a population to feed 28 wolves for very much longer. An overabundance of predators creates something called a predator sink which apparently was happening in the area where the 28 wolves were killed out. This is a temporary situation and wolves will return into the area slowly, hopefully slowly enough that the caribou population will have increased enough to sustain another small pack then the whole cycle will have to start all over again.
The whole balance of nature premise is false, it is feast and famine and survival of the fittest, at least until the food supply runs out then the fittest, wolves, would have eaten each other. If you don't believe that you are naive.

People need to grow up, there is no global warming, it is mythology created to make money off government grants and to make sure environmental issues continue to terrify the general public for another generation. To list an animal as endangered simply due to a theory is asinine and Palin is correct to challenge that listing and any others that will harm her constituents and set faulty precedent.

[Crash and Burn]

Yeah I can see that Palin's method for controlling the wild animal populations are much more successful than those employed by God for the last 500 million years. Ecosytems, shmeakosystems. Where's the fun in "balance of nature" and stuff like that. Man is far more superior in determining how to manage an ecosystem. If you killed all of the wolves, you would have plenty of Caribu like in California right. Look how good we are doing at planetary temperature control.

[Sharon]

My brother lives in Alaska and is working for the parks there. There is no scientific basis for the wolf slaughter, which it is - slaughter, and senseless. No scientific basis that the killing of these wolves is helping the caribou population to thrive. Obviously, the caribou are facing reduced habitat and are threatened by climate change, which very simply means that during the calving season, for instance, if there are large masses of water in place of snow or ice, calves are left by their mothers, who both can't keep up with the herd. As for the wolves, these animals are social beings, like us, and have difficulty surviving if members of their clan are destroyed. Comparing wolf slaughtering to abortion is like comparing genocide to killing off all the polar bears. It's a specious argument that only succeeds in drawing people's attention away from the real issue. As for putting these animals in zoos, I wish the Los Angeles Times would consider how an LA'er would feel if someone from an Anchorage newspaper started taking debates on California forest fires out of context and quoted someone as saying that fires are a good thing, in that they create new growth and make people realize that they really are destroying the environment.

[Francis llarnia]

Palin IS an idiot.
What a cowardly diespicable act it is to shoot a wolf from a helicopter!
How self-serving to attempt to sue the government because polar bears are now endangered due to global climate change!
And I won't go into the ways she proved her lack of intelligence over and over during the presidential campaign.
This woman is dangerous.

I agree with apesca. If you're worried about the Caribou population, stop hunting them! Let the wolves and the carribou live out the cycle as nature intended. Wolves eat caribou and that is the way it should be.

[Gary]

NOW, you're coming out with this story? What's next, that tape showing Obama and Ayers partying together?

I would say either declare your partisanship, like ideologically honest blogs/publications, or be prepared not to be taken seriously as a supposedly unbiased news source.

[Britney]

I don't understand how anybody could say that these killings are justifiable! They are so inhumane and any smart person would know how cruel it is! Oh wait, this is Palin we're talking about, that makes more sense then. Palin is such a stupid witch! Also, if people in Alaska are worried about the meat, then maybe they should, oh I don't know, use all the money they are using to slaughter these poor animals to buy the meat... Just a thought.

[Luke Thomas]

With nearly seven billion people in the world-that in itself will destroy the world. Our planet cannot possibly support so many humans: I know the government covers this up, but we have a serious fresh water supply shortage. Global warming is drying up our planet and there is drought everywhere. Many scientists throughout the world has pointed the MAIN source of this global warming-which Palin wants to still deny exists-is due to human beings' lust for MEAT. Billions of farm factory animals excreting TONS of methane to the atmosphere is the most efficient trapper of heat. I know nobody cares and poo poo this. But you will care when the next world war will be not over politics or the economy--BUT THE STRUGGLE TO ACQUIRE FRESH WATER. And trust me-IT WILL HAPPEN. Because desperate people do desperate things. and they will fight over fresh water.

[Luke Thomas]

Actually what Sarah Palin can do is kill off the entire wolf population, then there won't be anything left to protect so no more fuss!