What is happening to our state? It was with a profound sense of sadness that I read the April 10 article "Cull of the Wild." Between "hunting" bears, trapping wolverines and killing wolves, we have turned our great state into nothing more than a glorified slaughterhouse. Predator control has nothing to do with it. If you want to call it predator control, than address the true source of the shortage: humans.
Whether it is from hunting, people moving farther into the animals' natural habitat, or that occasional moose that has a really bad run-in with a motor vehicle, I would wager that humans are for more destructive than natural predators are to moose and caribou populations.
We have come a long way as a people, to the point where most people do not need to hunt to survive. Tradition holds no bearing on the argument because tradition implies a sense of respect and there is absolutely no respect in killing thousands of animals for no better reason than to allow us to kill more animals that we don't need to be killing in the first place. Soon there is going to be a lot of Big Wild Dead Life in our state and we are going to lose one of the things that made this a great state to live in.
---- Melanie Truba / Anchorage | 
