This is in regard to Melanie Truba's letter printed April 27 ("If we keep slaughtering our wildlife, we'll soon need a frank new slogan").
Humans and wolves are both natural predators. Wolves are not and will not be at risk of extinction in Alaska with the amount of land available to them if their numbers are lowered. There are only enough moose and caribou to provide for a finite number of predators. Why should we preserve the wolves and decrease the amount of moose and caribou that humans can harvest? This requires that we consume more domesticated meat such as beef, which places more of a burden on the planet to raise than wild moose or caribou. The moose population in Alaska can double or even triple without a burden to the land they graze upon.
Since it would be difficult to cause wolves to become extinct in Alaska, even if we tried, why not decrease their numbers, which allows humans to prey on more moose, which requires less consumption of domesticated meat, which decreases the burden to the planet? Or, we can put a fence around Alaska for the visitors from states that have no wildlife left due to poor wildlife management and overgrazing of land by domesticated animals.
---- Joseph M. Ross / Anchorage | 
