By Glen Wunderlich Outdoor Columnist Member Professional Outdoor Media Association
Senator Diane Feinstein and another Democrat from Maryland, Benjamin Cardin, have introduced legislation aimed at curtailing aerial shooting of wolves in Alaska. It’s mind boggling how a couple of city slickers such as these two could conjure up a scheme to manage wildlife better than the experts in the Alaska Division of Fish and Game, Wildlife Conservation, but they’re giving it their best shot.
You’d think that Alaska’s wildlife biologists might want to have a say in the matter, and they do: “Wolves and bears are very effective and efficient predators on caribou, moose, deer and other wildlife. In most of Alaska, humans also rely on the same species for food. In Alaska’s Interior, predators kill more than 80 percent of the moose and caribou that die during an average year, while humans kill less than 10 percent. In most of the state, predation holds prey populations at levels far below what could be supported by the habitat in the area. Predation is an important part of the ecosystem, and all ADF&G wolf management programs, including control programs, are designed to sustain wolf populations in the future.
The Alaska Board of Game approves wildlife regulations through a public participation process. When the Board determines that people need more moose and/or caribou in a particular area, and restrictions on hunting aren’t enough to allow prey populations to increase, predator control programs may be needed. Wolf hunting and trapping rarely reduces wolf numbers enough to increase prey numbers or harvests.”
Feinstein, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and Defenders of Wildlife counter this way: “Shooting wildlife from airplanes is not sport…It undermines the hunting principle of a fair chase…”
Fair chase can be defined as a snarling pack of wolves running down a defenseless infant moose. That’s about as fair as it gets in the wild and apparently, as long as a wolf does the killing, it doesn’t matter how gruesome the kill is. For lunatics on the left, being eaten alive is a better way to go than being shot from an airplane. It just doesn’t seem to make sense to me, however, – even given the likelihood that not all aerial attempts will make for instant kills.
Employing bow and arrow would seem to fit Feinstein’s definition of a fair-chase type of hunt, but how many people are signing up for wolf hunting with archery equipment? Fair chase tends to lessen the odds of a kill by a hunter. But when the issue is control – and, make no mistake, wolf control is Alaska’s issue – the most effective method must be used: aerial shooting.
But, Feinstein’s proposal provides an exception to allow airborne hunting during biological emergencies, which is defined as a case where a wildlife population’s sustainability is significantly threatened by an excess of predators.
Notice there is no mention about people, just animals. You see, the people in remote areas of Alaska aren’t able to get jobs at the mall and then parlay their pay into ground chuck at Kroger. These Americans eat from the bounty of the land to survive.
But, this isn’t about them, is it? It’s about one component of a fractional element and special interest groups being paid back for their political funding and support of cooperating candidates. In fact, this issue typifies how the Democrat party has become no more than a conglomeration of whiners asking what the government can do for them. John Kennedy, how did your party get your most famous quote so goofed up?
What makes perfect sense is that if hunting is practiced, the HSUS is against it. That’s always its common denominator. And, it doesn’t matter to them if sustenance hunters are going hungry, as long as hunters cannot hunt.
So, instead of using volunteers who pay for the privilege to participate in game management, Feinstein and her comrades will pay government employees to do the job with taxpayers’ money but only when the animals – not the Alaskans – are in peril.
I’m sure Feinstein will praise the job-making maneuver just when jobs are needed most! I wonder why the ignorant Alaskans didn’t think of this.
