From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:
ANCHORAGE– Alaska Superior Court Judge William F. Morse on
March 14, 2008 obliged the state to suspend an aerial wolf-killing
program for 10 days, ruling for Friends of Animals, Defenders of
Wildlife, and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance that the Alaska Board of
Game bypassed required steps when it expanded the wolf-killing into
two areas beyond the original scope of the program.
“The Alaska aerial predator control program is in its fifth
year,” recalled Associated Press writer Anne Sutton. “Pilot/gunner
teams have killed more than 750 wolves. The goal is to reduce wolf
populations in each of the specified areas by as much as 80%. The
program has also included bears.”
Alaska voters in Nov-ember 2008 will have the chance to limit
aerial wolf control to so-called emergency hunts by state biologists.
Meanwhile, the Alaska Board of Game held an emergency meeting to
amend the rules governing predator control. Wolf-killing resumed on
March 25.
“Pilot/gunner teams have reported killing 81 wolves in five
control areas thus far this winter,” wrote Tim Mowry of the
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. “The program will be suspended when
conditions deteriorate to the point that pilots can no longer land
planes to collect the wolves.”

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2008:
WASHINGTON D.C., YELLOWSTONE–More than 1,400 bison were
killed after wandering out of Yellowstone National Park into Montana
in early 2008, the largest bison massacre since the 19th century
heyday of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
Cody and other hunters hired to kill bison to feed railway
builders shot North American bison to the verge of extinction. Cody
later helped lead the long effort to rebuild a few token herds. The
recovery of bison became the inspiration and template for attempted
restoration and recovery of hundreds of other species, worldwide.
The science of restoration ecology began with protecting the
last handful of wild bison, found hiding deep within Yellowstone,
the first U.S. National Park. The reintroduction of wolves to
Yellowstone in 1995 was touted as affirming the success of the bison
recovery by bringing back the major wild bison predator,
exterminated in the Yellowstone region about 60 years earlier.
Wolf population management in the Yellowstone region was
returned to the state level on March 28, 2008.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2008:
WEST YELLOWSTONE–Bison defenders fear that the winter of
2007/2008 will become one of the bloodiest in decades of trying to
protect Yellowstone National Park bison who stray into Montana,
seeking forage.
“With heavy snow falling, and the end of winter weather possibly
months away, the death toll this year is fast approaching the 1,016
bison killed during the winter of 2004/2005,” Associated Press
writer Matthew Brown observed on February 26, 2008.

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