Call of the Wild

The program exists in large part because the state's intensive game management law puts a premium on efforts to "restore the abundance or productivity of identified big game prey populations as necessary to achieve human consumptive use goals." The "big game prey" in question are the approximately 1 million caribou and 175,000 to 200,000 moose in the state. Subsistence hunters are a major priority in wildlife management in Alaska, although a subsistence hunter is hard to define. Clarke offered some statistics: About 20 percent of Alaska's population, or roughly 135,000 people, is classified as rural. About 92 percent to 100 percent of rural Alaskans use wild fish for food to some extent, and 79 percent to 92 percent use wildlife. Palin, herself a hunter, might live in too urban an area to be included in these statistics, but she has said she eats moose and other game.
 
State law is so favorable to hunters that it requires the state to have a hunting season before school starts in fall "[f]or the purpose of encouraging adults to take children hunting."

Leader of the Pack
The tension in the state between those who object to aerial shooting of wolves on moral grounds (the concept of "fair chase" doesn't exist in predator control) and those who want to limit these predators so hunters will have plentiful targets, has given rise to frequent changes in the law. After the Airborne Hunting Act was passed at the federal level, Alaskans initiated a permit program that allowed aerial hunting for predator control, and some became fans of practices like "land and shoot," meaning they could use their planes to chase down the animals, land their aircraft and then shoot them.

But the burgeoning environmental and animal welfare movements, the 1980 signing by President Jimmy Carter of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, several high-profile cases of hunters violating aerial hunting regulations and other factors put pressure on state government. A tourism boycott was in the works, and lawsuits were filed against the state.

The Alaska Board of Game's adoption in 1992 of an extensive wolf-control program in several areas, with the goal of reducing wolf populations there by 80 percent, went over poorly with many in the state and the rest of the nation. Aerial hunts were canceled, then reinstated, then canceled again in 1995. Voters approved a 1996 ballot initiative that essentially banned predator control by airplane, resulting in the state's same day airborne hunting law. But the Legislature, in 1999 and 2000, rewrote the law, reversing what the referendum had done. Later in 2000, though, another ballot measure passed, restricting airborne wolf control to Department of Fish and Game personnel only.

The volley ended, at least for now, in 2003, when the Legislature reinstated airborne wolf control by private pilots and gunners, which is the program that exists today. (Alaskans voted on yet another ballot initiative to restrict the aerial hunting program to state government personnel last month. This time it failed.) Under current law, the Fish and Game Department may start a predator control program only if it finds that populations of big game have fallen below predetermined desired numbers, that "predation is an important cause" of the decline and that elimination of predators can be expected to lead to more big game. Nearly 800 wolves have been killed over the last five years through aerial hunting in order to increase the numbers of moose and caribou. The goal in some areas is to cut the wolf population by 80 percent.

The practice of killing some animals to artificially manipulate the populations of others, of course, remains controversial. Some groups, such as Defenders of Wildlife, accuse the state of exploiting a loophole in the law. Other recent objections have come from scientists. The American Society of Mammalogists has sent several letters of concern and in 2006 passed a resolution questioning the scientific basis of the program. In 2007, 172 scientists wrote to Palin also questioning whether the program was grounded in solid research, including accurate surveys of animal populations, and whether unrealistically high target numbers of prey had been adopted. The scientists urged that the conservation of predators be considered on an equal basis with the goal of producing more moose and caribou for hunters.

That would likely require a change in Alaska law. But Clarke insists there's no danger of a significant decline in the wolf population in Alaska. "We want wolves," he said. "We want healthy, sustainable populations."

Predatory Ad?
Is the aerial hunting – or predator control – that takes place in Alaska brutal, cruel, unethical savagery, as the ad says? That's a personal judgment call we'll have to leave to our readers. Alaskans themselves remain deeply divided on the issue. "We have knock-down, drag-out debates even within the [Fish and Game] department on these things," said Clarke.

Republished with permission from factcheck.org.

Update, Sept. 26: Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund has sent us a letter defending their ad and laying out their arguments against Alaska's "predator control" program in detail. As a courtesy to DOW and as a service to our readers we have posted their letter in full as a supporting document.

Correction, Sept. 25: In the original version of our story we misidentified the part of the plane to which the wolf carcass is tied in the ad. It's a wing strut, not a runner.