Kill, Baby, Kill

“Abraham knew exactly what the land was for:” observed ecologist-philosopher Aldo Leopold, “it was to drip milk and honey into Abraham’s mouth.” Alaska Governor Sarah Palin knows this, too. So does the state legislature, the governor-appointed Board of Game, and the Palin-stacked leadership of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Standing in for Abraham these days are the imagined beneficiaries of the state’s war on predators—urban-based and out-of-state sport hunters.

Persecution of wolves has been going on in Alaska since the Gold Rush. Palin has escalated the war. And now, in addition to wolves, the state is facilitating the slaughter of large numbers of bears—blacks as well as grizzlies, both of which occasionally include a newborn moose or caribou in their omnivorous diets. Even cubs and lactating sows are being targeted. Palin’s seven-person Board of Game—which hatches regulations and sets policy for the state Department of Fish and Game—has been more than happy to do her bidding. Six members belong to an anti-predator, trophy-hunter-funded outfit called the Alaska Outdoor Council, and the seventh is Palin’s close friend.

In 1971 Congress passed the Airborne Hunting Act, which prohibits shooting or harassing wild animals from aircraft except by federal or state permit for the protection of livestock, humans, or wildlife. Claiming that moose and caribou need protection from their natural predators, Alaska has traditionally allowed pilots who haven’t been busted for a wildlife violation and have some experience with a predator-control unit to shoot wolves from their fixed-wing aircraft. But in March, Palin’s Board of Game authorized aerial gunning from helicopters. It also authorized managers to gas wolf pups in their dens.

For now wolves and bears are safe provided they stay on units managed by federal agencies other than the Bureau of Land Management. But on six state predator-control areas covering 70,000 square miles they’re dying en masse. In virtually all of this area wolf populations are to be reduced by 80 percent and held there indefinitely. In the 11,105-square-mile Predator Control Unit 16, west of Anchorage across the Cook Inlet, black bears are to be reduced by 60 percent.

At its March 10, 2009, meeting the Board of Game legalized the long-banned practice of “same-day airborne hunting,” in which hunters take the “fair” out of “fair chase” by locating bears from the air, then landing next to them and blazing away—this in the 8,513-square-mile McGrath predator-control unit near the Kuskokwim River in interior Alaska. Junk science, gross even by Alaska standards, has been under way here for a decade. In 2000, relying on anecdotal information from hunters, Fish and Game announced that there were only 869 moose left in the McGrath unit—an emergency threatening famine for local humans and calling for enough wolf removal to boost the moose population to 3,000 to 3,500, at which point there would be plenty of meat for everyone. Before predator cleansing got under way, however, then Governor Tony Knowles instructed the department to go back in and, for once, do a scientific survey. This time it found 3,660 moose. In 2003 Fish and Game, now under Governor Frank Murkowski, rejected its previous determination that 3,660 moose were more than enough to feed the declining human population, asserting that the necessary figure was actually 7,200. It therefore initiated draconian predator removal. Now, under Palin, wolf and bear cleansing is even more aggressive.

Also on March 10 the board granted permission to private hunters and trappers, including supervised children as young as 10, to use wire loops to snare Unit 16 black bears and grizzlies by the feet. The lucky bears get shot before they starve. For the first time ever hunters may transport themselves and their equipment by helicopter. And they may now shoot Unit 16 bears over bait, such as rotten hot dogs and rancid bacon fat (“garbaging for bears,” as  the practice has been called)—even in summer, when sows are nursing cubs. The lucky cubs get shot along with their mothers.

Directing the escalation are two recent Palin appointees to Fish and Game. One is deputy commissioner Patrick Valkenburg, fresh from the board of the Alaska Outdoor Council. The other is the governor’s close friend Corey Rossi—previously a spokesman and state board member for an even more extreme anti-predator organization called Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife/Sportsmen for Habitat. His position, a new one created for him by Palin, is Assistant Deputy Commissioner. According to a Fish and Game press release, Valkenburg and Rossi will help “expand our abundance-based wildlife management programs.” No sooner were these two men ensconced than they began forcing the governor’s agenda down the throats of biologists and managers, many of whom oppose Palin’s game-farm vision for Alaska.

“We have lots of vocal folks who think if it’s got long, shiny white teeth, it ought to be killed,” Sean Farley, a wildlife research biologist with Fish and Game, told me. “As a biologist I don’t agree with that. I think it’s a throwback way of trying to do wildlife management. Unit 16 is very unusual in my experience because two high-level people [Valkenburg and Rossi] bypassed the command structure. When people at that high level reach directly down to someone in my position or the equivalent, it’s hard to be too insubordinate. I will say that our regional staff and our director are protecting us as much as they can, recognizing that where it’s not supported by sound science it’s a political decision that’s driving stuff.”

Former Fish and Game biologist John Schoen, who worked on bears (not bear removal) during 10 of his 21 years with the agency and who now serves as senior scientist for Audubon Alaska, offers this: “Unit 16 is large, and I don’t think there are good data on the number of bears there. Bear snaring doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve written letters to the Board of Game on behalf of Audubon asking them not to be so aggressive. It’s a sad state of affairs. Bears have low reproductive rates.”

In 2007 the Palin administration proposed a $150 bounty for every left foreleg hacked off a wolf, calling it an “incentive” because the bounty system has been anathema to the wildlife management profession since it was rejected half a century ago. The “incentive” was promptly nixed by a court ruling that such decisions must be made by the Board of Game (as this one doubtless will be).