Conservation news snapshot Jun 2006

ALASKA: By early May, the Alaskan Board of Game was complaining that only 153 wolves had been shot by gunners in aircraft instead of the expected 400. The Board laid most of the blame on high aircraft fuel prices ($4 per gallon) and bad weather. Other contributing factors were the suspension of shooting during the Iditarod sled dog race, a brief pause in January caused by a court daring to rule that Alaska’s war on wolves was in breach of the law and the fact that a wolf pelt is only worth a mere $200. Alaska’s war on wolves to boost moose numbers for fun-hunting continues.

The animal welfare group Friends Of Animals has been running advertisements in magazines and major newspapers campaigning against the slaughter with the slogan "If you shoot wolves to save moose and then you shoot the moose, you're either out of your mind or in Alaska," and is considering filing yet another lawsuit to impede and hopefully stop the killing.

In early May, the Game Board held yet another meeting to consider expanding their war on predators with measures which included allowing snow-mobile hunting of both wolves and bears together with a massive increase in the area over which these activities would be permitted.

Contempt and loathing for wolves among Alaskan hunters is traditional and originates largely from Russian influences early in the state’s history.

ARIZONA / NEW MEXICO: The Mexican Grey Wolf is back on the extinction line after U.S Fish and Wildlife Service agents accidentally killed most of a twelve-strong pack. Although the wolves have nearly four and a half million acres to roam, the majority of this area – the Blue Range – is used by ranchers for untended grazing all year round and in these areas, the ranchers have all the political power and most of the money. Efforts to stabilise and increase the number of Mexican wolves in this area have been highly unsuccessful as the ranchers will have none of it and insist upon the government killing any wolf they happen to take a dislike to – which amounts to any wolf.

You might think that Native Americans have more sympathy with wolves but not all tribes do. The wolves which died in May were being removed (from the Fort Apache Indian Reservation) and or destroyed at the request of the White Mountain Apache Tribe after losing a handful of cattle in one year. A captive breeding program is just about managing to keep a viable gene pool in existence and occasional releases into the wild are all that is keeping the species from extinction in the wild.

Michael Robinson of the U.S Center for Biological Diversity believes that the fact that the Mexican wolf re-introduction program is such a shambles is no accident. He firmly believes that the US government is deliberately and covertly attempting to remove all Mexican wolves from the wild to curry favour with the influential ranching lobby of the Southernmost states.

There are probably less than 30 Mexican Grey wolves left in the wild now.

YELLOWSTONE: A US government report issued on March 10’th confirmed that the wolf population in Yellowstone has reached 1000, including about 100 breeding pairs and this is sufficient for Yellowstone wolves to be removed from the protection of the US Endangered Species Act. Pretty well everyone is happy for the protection to be removed but it cannot be taken away until all three states which comprise the Greater Yellowstone area (Montana, Wyoming and Idaho) submit a management plan acceptable to the government. Montana and Idaho already did so two years ago (after many false starts and much compromise) but wolf-hatred runs so deep among Wyoming’s militant, fundamentalist ranchers that it still hasn’t produced a plan which amounts to anything more than a re-extinction agenda.

Wyoming’s ranchers want the right to shoot any wolf on sight outside the central, protection area (called the Yellowstone-Grand Teton region) but this permission would be the thin end of a highly predictable wedge. Everyone, including the ranchers, knows that wolves roam and if you allow arbitrary killing anywhere near a protected area, you will eventually kill all the wolves in the protected area as they wander out of it at some time.