The last time a ballot issue was held on aerial gunning (which is what Burris is getting at) a petition of over 100 Fairbanks hunters was submitted opposing this "management" method. Not the anti-hunter bogeymen or animal rights ghosties Burris suggests but hunters. The last two times the issue has been put before Alaskans, aerial hunting has been banned. Not by anti-hunters and animal rights folks but by Alaskans, hunters and non-hunters....all Alaskans.
Burris and the group to which he belongs, the Alaska Outdoors Council, keep trying to turn this into a pro-hunter/anti-hunter issue but it fails on that point when the facts are examined. He and the AOC also try to make it an Alaskan vs outsider fight but again when looking at the past two votes that tactic falls apart.
At some point Burris et al are going to have to face the fact they are proposing something most Alaskans will not allow and do not see as either a valid biological tool or an ethical method of managing our wildlife, wildlife which belongs not to Burris and the AOC but to all Alaskans, hunter and non-hunter, equally according to our state constitution. |
