Alaska begins aerial wolf hunt to boost caribou population

Alaska's aerial hunt for gray wolves, decried by many animal activists (and, famously, by actress Ashley Judd in a Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund video), is now in full swing. 

At least 30 wolves have been killed by hunters wielding high-caliber guns in the program that began in earnest last weekend.  Our colleague Kim Murphy at the Greenspace blog has the details:

The predator control effort has run into opposition from the National Park Service, which manages the nearby Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, where biologists have been radio-collaring wolves in a long-running study of how predators and prey interact in the 2.5-million-acre wilderness near the Canadian border.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game, aiming to boost the survival of caribou calves, wants to kill up to 328 wolves, leaving behind at least 88 to 103. Killing them, state officials say, will allow the Fortymile caribou herd, ravaged by three years of bad weather and heavy snow, to expand from its current level of 40,000 animals to as many as 100,000.

There are several problems with that, according to the park service. First, park officials believe there aren't nearly as many wolves as state officials estimate and that killing so many could devastate the packs. Second, the Fortymile herd hasn't approached 100,000 since the early 1900s. And preserve Supt. Greg Dudgeon fears some of the preserve's collared wolves, along with others that typically make the preserve their home, could be shot.

"They [the state] have a mandate to provide for maximum sustained yield. They want to provide more moose and caribou for people to harvest," Dudgeon said. "Our mandate is to manage and provide for healthy populations of wildlife. So we don't place the value of a wolf over a caribou, or a caribou over a moose."

Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, of course, is crying foul -- and the group places the blame for what it calls a "sweeping wolf massacre" squarely on the shoulders of Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin.  "Removing such huge numbers of predators from a region will do untold damage to all the wildlife that depends on that habitat. Governor Palin is recklessly pursuing policies that could turn America's last frontier into nothing more than a large game farm," said Rodger Schlickeisen, the group's president.

--Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Dennis Davis

Comments

[Your Daily Cute]

This is so incredibly uncool.

[jongleur]

Sarah Palin's lack of regard for science is typical of the people she chooses to align herself with. Predators such as wolves work to benefit the overall health of their prey populations by selecting out those animals that are less able to escape, often the older or infirm animals. This in turn means that the healthiest animals are not competing as heavily for precious food resources.

Human hunters on the other hand, tend to select out the healthiest animals, those that would normally offer the herd the greatest benefit when it comes to passing their genes along.

In the end, what Palin's misguided initiative will do is to create a population of caribou that are smaller and less attractive to the hunters; as well as being less able to fend for themselves. Over grazing of the range is also a distinct possibility, the current problems are already related to lack of food for the caribou. Taken to its extreme, what can happen is that the caribou population can simply crash, with too many juvenile caribou unable to breed the next generation competing for too few food resources.

Of course, the 'reasonable response' to that will simply to reduce the wolf population to zero, thereby affording hunters their chance at killing the last few caribou left as opposed to having to lose a few of them to the wolves.

[Jim]

Is it part of the American national psyche to kill?

Or is it because Americans have done so much killing that it now comes, Oh so naturally, to them?

[Trose]

This is ridiculous. Someone actually wanted the woman who governs this state to be our vice president? I don't think so. Haven't these people seen what happens when humans try to mess with nature and animal populations? It never ends well.