I have sent an email and it was my choice but I emailed the Governor of Alaska to show my support because we are kind of going through the same thing here with the wolf and were up against a brick wall.
Its all to bad that we get told what to do by outsiders that dont have a clue whats going on at ground level.
Yes its made me very upset as you can tell and I`am fed up with activist perriod!!!
You can contact the govenor Frank Murkowski via email or write him with your support.
Governor Frank Murkowski
P.O. Box 110001
Juneau, AK 99811
Wolf activists howling mad over kill plan
By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian
Protests in Missoula, elsewhere to urge tourist boycott of Alaska
Hoping their howls are heard in the 49th state, wolf advocates will gather in three dozen cities, including Missoula, this weekend to protest the aerial shooting of wolves in interior Alaska.
They'll play tape recordings of wolves howling, encourage their dogs to follow suit and maybe even join in themselves, said Suzanne Garland, a spokeswoman for Friends of Animals.
The howl-ins are the opening salvo in a campaign by the animal-rights group to encourage tourists to boycott Alaska until the state rescinds its wolf-killing program.
"The heart of the protest is to get as many people as possible to say we're going to boycott Alaska," Garland said Friday.
Protesters will distribute 50,000 "Boycott Alaska" postcards - all addressed to Gov. Frank Murkowski - during the howl-ins.
A similar boycott in 1992 created enough of a stir to help end another such eradication of wolves. And in 1996 and 2000, Alaska voters approved referendums against aerial wolf shooting.
"Now Governor Murkowski has allied with hunting interests and ignored his constituency," Garland said. "Now he wants to send people up in helicopters with automatic weapons to wipe out these animals. It's barbaric and unnecessary and totally uncalled for."
The three-year, three-phase plan would begin this winter with predator control across 520 square miles near McGrath, 200 miles northwest of Anchorage in the interior of Alaska.
By killing wolves, hunters would help to protect moose calves during their critical first months of life, state officials believe.
Up to 60 percent of the young moose are killed by wolves and bears; thus, the state's wolf-killing plan. The goal: to increase moose numbers so hunters can take 130 to 150 animals a year.
Native Alaskans have told the state Fish and Game Department that wolf numbers are out of control in the McGrath area. Villagers depend on game animals for food, so rely upon a healthy moose population.
Moose meat, the villagers say, is necessary for their very survival.
But Friends of Animals disagrees with the wolf-killing program and believes the state of Alaska has not accurately surveyed moose numbers in the McGrath area.
The group also considers aerial shooting unethical.
"The state will issue permits to selected private fixed-wing and helicopter pilots to do this killing," said Gordon Haber, a wildlife scientist and wolf advocate with the organization.
"Their passengers will then shotgun the wolves from the air," he said. "It is likely that in some cases, the aircraft will not be able to land to retrieve dead wolves and put dying wolves out of their misery. This will continue for at least two or three winters."
This weekend's protest in Missoula is planned for 10 a.m. Sunday at the Raven Cafe, 130 E. Broadway. Similar events are planned in Chicago, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Atlanta, Rockefeller Center in New York City and Albuquerque, N.M.
"And we're starting to pick up worldwide attention," Garland said. "The Wolf Society of Great Britain and Barcelona, Spain, have signed onto our boycott. They want to get involved as well."
"We just don't understand the state of Alaska's rationale," she said. "Wildlife watchers outnumber hunters 3-to-1 in Alaska. Nationwide, the ratio is 5-to-1."
"The numbers are on our side on this one," Garland said. "But that doesn't seem to hold any sway over the governor of Alaska."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268.
Its all to bad that we get told what to do by outsiders that dont have a clue whats going on at ground level.
Don't know if you could call them outsiders or not but here in Mo. we get the same thing from KC and St. Loius, Just a bunch of city slickers trying to tell us in the country how to live and what we can and can't do.
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THE NRA, WHERE WOULD YOU AS A GUN-OWNER BE WITHOUT THEM.
GUN-OWNERS, UNITED WE STAND DIVIDED WE FALL.
While I do not agree with boycotting Alaska I do feel that we need the predators just as much as we need "game" animals. I also know that both must be controled so that there will be healthy populations of all animals. Alaska residents should have been controling the numbers of the wolves along with the moose so that they didn't get out of control to begin with.
In no way shape or form should we just go in and start killing off wolves just because they are killing some of the animals that we want to eat also. They need to eat also and are only doing what they are meant to do. This is just as bad as PETA's thinking but at the opposite end of the spectrum.
Control them but do not just go in and start irradicating them. That won't do any one any good.
How many permits are being issued and how many do they need or want to get rid of? Are they going to kill them until they "think" they have killed enough or do they have a specific plan specific numbers based on specific populations in specific areas?
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"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency........... Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."
These attempts to stop this wolf control failed, and they are currently ridding of the over populated pests. Moose hunting is off limits to non-residents, and highly restricted to residents in an area that use to have some of the healthiest concentrations in the state. Same problems with the caribou, sheep and other game animals in other areas of the state due to over predation by both wolves and bears. Currently the wolves are the hot topic because their main predation on animals happens in the winter. During the spring, bears are the real problem and we are trying to bring the first grizzly bear baiting areas to help calf survival rates.
Bigbulls, we have these problems today because we finally just ridded ourselves of 8 years of liberal minded, bunny hugging government that decides our board of game, who ultimately decide on wolf control, or in their case, lack of predator control, and had beligerantly abused the system right before his final term by implementing buffer zones. Actions like that are why these populations of moose, caribou and sheep are in such dire straights right now. Our old governor, Knowles, would of given into this group, our current governor is not as gullible to these little groups that bark loud.
They are targeting 40 wolves, there are 3 permited parties of pilots/shooters and they are all working together. This is highly regulated and being watched closely. This is not a hunt, this is predator control, and it is being done like it should be... finally.
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view my hunting and family photos at:
That's great Arctic. Glad to hear that they are going about it the right way and not just going in and shooting. Thanks to us humans all animals, predator and prey alike, need to be controled now. Letting them just go on by themselves will not work any more.
__________________
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency........... Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."
Dontcha just love the twisting of facts by the eco terrorists. Of course there's 5 times the watchers than there are hunters in Alaska. That's cause of a very low population vs a very high visitor rate. Ask it another way and I bet Alaska RESIDENTS have the highest ratio of hunters in the country. After 24 years of visiting that great state and having good freinds living there I bet the locals can live just fine if they never get another tourist dollar from animal rights pushers. How about the rights of the moose, caribou and local residents? The good people I have met there are most likely to group moon any organized protest so let them have at it.
I'll be my first to pull my britches down on the group moon!
The main differences that we are going to see with the newly revised board of game is that this new board of game plans to manage wildlife on biology and common sense, the former board of game managed wildlife based on political correctness (I use that term loosly), and pressure from these eco-terrorist groups.
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view my hunting and family photos at:
I`ll throw this article in because I feel it has a lot of truth in it.
WOLVES AND HUNTING
By T.R. Mader, Research Director
Abundant Wildlife Society of North America
I'm convinced, based on several years of wolf research, that hunters will bear the brunt of wolf recovery/protection regardless of location.
There is no language written in any wolf recovery pan to protect the hunter's privilege to hunt. Wolves are well known to cause wild game population declines which are so drastic hunting is either eliminated or severely curtailed. And there is no provision for recovery of wild game populations for the purposes of hunting. It simply will not be allowed.
Example: A few years ago the US Fish and Wildlife (USFWS) and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) agreed that the state should take over the responsibility of wolf management. The DNR felt wolves were impacting their deer populations and wanted to open a short trapping season on the wolf.
The environmentalists sued and won. The USFWS could not give wolf management back to Minnesota in spite of a desire to do so.
The problem with wolf recovery is that most people, especially hunters, have not looked "beyond press releases and into the heart of the wolf issue."
It must be stated clearly that the wolf is the best tool for shutting down hunting. The anti-hunters know this. Most hunters don't. Thus, wolf recovery is not opposed by the people who will be impacted most.
In order to understand the impacts wolves have on hunting, let's look at some biological factors of the wolf and compare some hunting facts.
The wolf is an efficient predator of wild game and domestic livestock. Due to its ability as a predator, the wolf was removed from areas of the US where man settled. There is no such thing as peaceful coexistence between man and wolf - one has to give to the other since both prey on the same wildlife/ungulate populations.
Did the removal of the wolf cause it to become endangered? No, there are 40,000 to 60,000 wolves on the North American continent. The animal is doing quite well. During the years of wolf control, the wolf's territory was eliminated throughout most of the lower 48 states. That factor is the reason the wolf is on the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
A wolf requires five to ten pounds of meat per day for survival, thus the wolf requires a considerable amount of meat in one year - nearly a ton of meat per year per wolf. A wolf is capable of consuming great quantities of meat, up to one fifth of its body weight, at one time. Thus, a wolf does not have to kill each day to survive.
Wolves hunt year around - 365 days a year. That means predation is not limited to two weeks, one month or whatever a hunting season length may be, it is year around.
Wolves are opportunistic hunters, meaning they kill what is available and convenient. For years, hunters have been fed the line, "Wolves kill only the weak, sick and old." Worse yet, hunters have believed it.
It is true, wolves do kill old animals, but so do hunters. Those are the big bulls or bucks prized by many who hunt. In fact, biological studies have shown wolves kill older male animals more than any other adult member of a wild game population.
Regarding sick animals, there are not many sick wild animals today. Hunters and trappers are directly responsible for healthy wild game herds today.
In the cyclic "balance of nature" of years past (no hunting by man), ungulate populations would thrive until they overgrazed their habitat and starved. This malnutrition made the ungulate populations susceptible to disease. Consequently, disease was more common. Lewis and Clark wrote of such herds. (The other major factor contributing to the decline in wildlife populations was predation.)
Hunting controls this cycle so that herds are kept at proper levels for habitat, preventing malnutrition and susceptibility to disease. Hunting dollars went into habitat improvement and biological studies which, in turn, help maintain healthier herds of ungulates.
Even agriculture plays a part in the dispersal of salt and other minerals to domestic livestock. Wild animals access these nutrients as well. Thus, disease is not as rampant as when nature regulates it naturally. It is also interesting to note that where disease is a problem today, such as Yellowstone Park, hunting is not allowed.
Trapping completes the cycle of game management by controlling the predator. The predator is to wildlife what weeds are to a garden. They must be controlled or they will take over. Additionally, predators are disease carriers. Some people are aware that predators carry rabies since reports of rabid animals or some person being bitten by a rabid animal are often in the news, but few realize that predators also carry deadly diseases to other wild animals, i.e. raccoons carry a deadly fowl cholera. And finally, trapping benefits the predator by keeping their numbers in check. This keeps the population healthy. If predators do overpopulate, they become more susceptible to rabies, mange and other diseases.
Wolves do not not eat sick animals unless forced to do so. We have found this true in many cases.
Example: A Conservation Officer for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) found a moose with a brain worm. Brain worm completely destroys an animal's instinctive and natural behavior. This moose had wandered out on a frozen lake in winter and was slowly starving to death. Wolves came by, check the moose out and went on their way. Tracks in the snow verified it. They did not kill it even though it would have been extremely easy to do so.
Wolves do kill the weak. Weak animals are not sick animals, they are simply the "less strong" of the herd. Wolves target these animals - the young and pregnant - due to their inability to escape. This is an important factor in limiting wildlife numbers. Wolves prey directly on the recruitment and reproductive segments of ungulate populations.
While doing research in British Columbia, a wolf biologist from the British Columbian Ministry of Environment took the time to show me how wolves could impact hunting so severely. Here's his example.
In this particular example he used a number of 300 females in a herd of elk. In his region wolf predation is often 90% on the young (100% mortality rates due to predation are common in the north). If 300 females gave birth in an area of wolves, the approximate loss would be about 270 young calves killed during the summer months, leaving the 30 yearlings to serve as replacements. A regular die-off rate on such a herd is about 10%. So the 30 yearlings would balance out the regular mortality rate of the female segment of the herd.
But overall there is a decline in the elk herd due to the fact that the 30 yearlings are usually sexually split in half (15 females and 15 males), thus the reproductive segment of the herd declines although the numbers appear to balance out. Without some form of wolf control, the rate of decline will increase with a few years.
There were approximately 100 males in this herd of elk. Figuring the regular mortality rate and compensating with the surviving young leaves 5 animals (males only), which may be harvested by man.
Now if this herd of elk were in an area of no wolves, there would be approximately 60 - 70% successful reproduction (calves making it to yearlings) or 200 young. Half of those surviving young would be male (100 animals). After figuring a 10% mortality rate, 90 older animals could be harvested without impact to the overall herd numbers. In fact, the herd would increase due to additional numbers of the reproductive segment (females) of the herd.
Now you have some insight of the impacts wolves can have on hunting.
In spite of the negative publicity generated by the anti-hunting, anti-trapping movements, hunting and trapping are some of the best wildlife management tools.
Hunters' harvest can be limited through numbers of licenses issued, bag limits, length of season, and specification of sex of the animal harvested. Thus, only the surplus of an ungulate population is generally hunted. If the need arises that an ungulate population needs reduction, it is easily accomplished by allowing an "any sex" hunt and increasing license numbers. Additionally, hunters will pay for the opportunity to hunt which in turn pays for wildlife management.
Wolves do none of the above. They simply kill to survive and for the sake of killing. Studies have shown that ungulate populations cannot withstand hunting by man and uncontrolled predation by wolves for any length of time. One has to give to the other. In this day and age, the wolf will be the winner and the hunter the loser.
A point which should be stressed is that wolves kill for the sake of killing, not just to survive. Many are convinced wolves kill only what they need to eat. That simply isn't true.
Remember the moose with brain worm the wolves didn't eat? In the same area, the same winter and only a couple months later, the same Conservation Officer followed two wolves after a spring snow storm and found that the wolves had killed 21 deer. Only two were eaten upon.
The snow gave the wolves advantage. These deer were autopsied and many were found to be pregnant. The total number of deer killed in 2 days by these wolves was 36.
Such incidents of surplus killing are common. For example, Canadian biologists came upon an area where a pack of wolves have killed 34 caribou calves in one area. Another example came from Alaska. In the Wrangell Mountains, a pack of five wolves came upon 20 Dall rams crossing a snow-covered plateau. All 20 rams were killed by the wolves. Only six were partially eaten by the wolves.
Dr. Charles Kay, PH.D has lectured on the impacts of wolf recovery. To illustrate the impacts of wolves on hunting, he did a comparison of moose populations in British Columbia versus Sweden and Finland. Both areas have comparable amount of moose habitat.
Dr. Kay stated, "During the 1980's in Sweden and Finland, the pre-calf or the wintering population of moose was approximately 400,000 animals and was increasing. While in British Columbia, it was 240,000 animals and decreasing."
"In British Columbia where they have a population of 240,000 animals and after calving season they killed only 12,000 animals whish is a 5% off take. In Sweden and Finland on the other hand, they have 400,000 moose and guess how many they killed in the fall? They killed 240,000 moose in the fall which is a 57% off take rate."
"Now the two main differences. I don't want to imply that there's not vegetation differences and other things, but the two main differences is that British Columbia has somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 wolves, all sorts of bears, grizzly bears and black bears which are also important predators, and mountain lions. Sweden and Finland have none of the above."
Veteran wolf biologist John Gunson, Alberta Ministry of Environment, summed it up when he said, "Really, there isn't any room for harvest by man if you have a healthy wolf population."
Hunters. please understand the impacts of wolf recovery on hunting and the role wolf recovery plays in the anti-hunters' agenda. Natural predations, especially wolf predation, can replace your hunting rights.
Troy R. Mader is Research Director for Abundant Wildlife Society of North America (AWS), an International Wildlife Organization dedicated to the preservation of the Great North American Traditions of Hunting, Fishing, and Trapping. For more information write:
Abundant Wildlife Society of North America
P. O. Box 2
Beresford, SD 57004
Phone: 605-751-0979
I just wondering 12 000 animals out of 240 000. there is something wery wrong about that. I know this finland sitsuation because I shot 2 of those 240 000 last year. There must be other reasons than in that quote. I know that we don't have that much wolves but we do have predators like few hundred wolfs and gluttons(??I don't know is that the right word), about thousand bears and (300 000 Hunters). So there must be some other reason than just predators.
Quote:
"Now the two main differences. I don't want to imply that there's not vegetation differences and other things, but the two main differences is that British Columbia has somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 wolves, all sorts of bears, grizzly bears and black bears which are also important predators, and mountain lions. Sweden and Finland have none of the above."
I don't say that predators are compiting the same game but 5% and 57%. ouch.
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-Lassi
Support, Alaska`s Governor
