To the editor:
Regarding the News-Miner's July 19 article titled "Biologists kill wolf pups to help caribou herd," I wonder how long Alaskans will allow the state government to ignore the will of the people. We have twice voted to eliminate aerial hunting in our state. We are not only chasing wolves to exhaustion and slaughtering them from on high - they would now have us believe that a bullet to the head is a "humane" way of "dispatching" the 14 orphaned wolf pups left in their wake. What they did was a massacre pure and simple.
The entire project was flawed from the start. Choosing to undertake this project during the spring denning season was a deliberate, premeditated and cruel act. Doug Larsen, director of the state Division of Wildlife Conservation stated, "As we got on the calving grounds, we took adults and in the course of taking adults we found there were pups." Of course there were pups; it was spring.
Larsen knows that what they did was wrong, that is why it took an extra few weeks for the media to learn of the massacre of the wolf pups.
The reason Gov. Palin, the Board of Game and our Legislature continue to push for aerial hunting is because the commercial hunting industry is quite powerful in Alaska. This small special interest group would love to eliminate nature's predators in order to artificially inflate moose and caribou numbers so they can continue to cater to the wealthy, out-of-state hunters seeking a trophy.
I believe it is time the residents of Alaska insist that our interests and reputation be protected. Once again, let us vote "Yes" on No. 2 and end the unethical and appalling slaughter of our wildlife as practiced under the guise of "predator control."
Linda McNamara |
