ALASKAN WAR ON WILDLIFE
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:
JUNEAU––Alaska governor
Tony Knowles has pledged to veto a bill
setting a bounty on wolves, passed by
the legislature––but that’s about the only
good news for wolves in Alaska.
On May 3, wildlife biologist
Gordon Haber, monitoring Alaskan wolf
populations for Friends of Animals,
found the last of the Headwaters pack
dead in snares––”nearly three weeks after
he end of trapping season,” wrote
Alaskan freelance journalist Tim Moffatt.
“Along with the body of a pregnant
female,” Moffat said, “were four pups,
two of them skinned; a coyote snared by
its back legs; a yearling moose; the
remains of another moose; and a cari-
bou,” possibly killed as bait. Haber docu-
mented the site and called the Alaska
State Troopers, Moffatt added.
The Headwaters pack, once 12
strong, lived in Denali National Park, but
were killed about 100 yards beyond the
park boundary. Until 1992 a buffer zone
around Denali was closed to trapping.
The Alaska Board of Game erased the
buffer to encourage wolf-killing, so as to
make more moose and caribou available
to human hunters. Alaska’s own wolf
control program was halted late last
November after Haber obtained video of
the prolonged snaring-and-shooting
deaths of another wolf family, but Board
of Game efforts to encourage private wolf
slaughter continue.
Ironically, on April 11––as the
trapping season ended––the National Park
Service banned “same-day-airborne”
hunting, trapping, and/or capture of
wildlife within Alaskan national parks.
The ban would not have protected the
Headwaters wolves outside the park, but
reinforces the safety of both wolves and
caribou inside Denali. The ban became
necessary, said Jeanne McVey of the Sea
Wolf Alliance, due to “an emergency sit-
uation created by the passage of proposals
during the November 1994 Board of
Game meeting to allow same-day-air-
borne hunting of certain caribou herds.”
Ducks under fire, too
On another front, the U.S. and
Canada on April 25 began fast-track nego-
tiations toward amending the 1916 migra-
tory waterfowl treaty to permit regulated
spring and summer hunting by rural
Alaskans and Canadians–– both native
and non-native. About 12,000 Alaskans
and 20,000 Canadians already hunt ducks
and geese in spring and summer illegally;
about three million hunt them legally each
fall.
“We’re talking about legalizing
an existing harvest, not a new harvest,”
said Robin West, Alaskan regional water-
fowl coordinator for the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. Favoring the amend-
ment are the State of Alaska, the National
Audubon Society, and the California
Waterfowl Association; Ducks Unlimited
is neutral; and the Alaska Waterfowl
Association is opposed.
“It’s another example of special
rights for a certain group of people. When
you do that, it’s going to lead to trouble,”
objects Anchorage attorney and AWA
president John Hendrickson.
