Our friendCrystalwolfhasa very important message to share with us:
Please join the group Sarah Palin - A danger to wolves and other wildlife Regina created this group and made me an admin. and there is an emergency right now!I need everyone on board and to email Parnell...I am calling the National Parks service in Alaska tomorrow and will report on the group. Here is the emergency:
Helicopter-borne Alaskan predator control agents have killed an entire wolf pack from Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, prompting the National Parks Conservation Association to call for "immediate suspension" of the program near the national preserve.
National Park Service officials, meanwhile, are wondering why the shooters killed two radio-collared wolves, as the Park Service had an agreement with Alaska Fish and Game officials that collared wolves would be spared as they were part of a long-term study of wolf behavior in the preserve.
“We have meetings set tomorrow with state Fish and Game officials to ask that question," John Quinley, the Park Service's assistant regional director for communications and partnerships, said Thursday evening from his Anchorage office. "Basically, 'How did this happen? You’re two days into the (predator control) program and it’s already gone against the agreement that we thought we had pretty well in place, that was easy to understand.' We’re interested in how that fell apart so fast.”
Please, Please make your voices heard for those that can't speak...I am writing this through tears in my eyes....♥Thank you.
Gov Parnell may be contacted on the SOA website or by telephone: 907.465.3500
Little Billy is a curious little schoolboy. He likes to write to prominent people, shows interest in what they are doing and asks them questions. In 2008, Sarah Palin caught his attention after being nominated as the vice-presidential Republican candidate. Back then, he wrote to her:
"Dear Governor Palin, This is a project for my school. We're supposed to write to ask someone we admire a question. My grampa helped me find your address. He likes the way you wink at him from the TV. My question is if we visited Alaska would you take us wolf hunting from your helicopter? That would be really cool! Could you also send a picture? Sincerely, Billy"
Billy was lucky - he received a personal reply from a member of the Palin-family! It reads:
"Billy, Thank you for your letter to Governor Palin. I'll get it to her tomorrow. Like your Grandpa, I also like the way Sarah winks. I'm helping her with the mail... No wolf hunting from helicopters here. The news media thought that up. It is done in Russia, though, where pictures came from. Best Regards, Chuck Heath (Sarah's dad)"
Here is a screenshot of the letter:
Chuckles also likes the way his daughter Sarah "winks"...?
A cold state, a"hot" Governor -
and a father with a strange sense of humor
Anyway: No wolf hunting takes place from helicopters in Alaska, according to Chuck Heath Sr. Just the evil Russians do it - not the good Americans. Billy certainly is reassured now.
But little Billy isn't happy - because he doesn't exist. He was invented by William Geerhart who wrote thousands of letters to famous public figures during the last 15 years. "The Independent" (UK) reports today:
"Billy Geerhart was actually a bored adult, who has spent 15 years scrawling fake letters to public figures. The highlights have now been compiled in a book, Little Billy's Letters, which is due out in the UK next month.
William Geerhart, to use the author's proper name, invented Little Billy in 1994, when he moved to Los Angeles hoping to become a screenwriter, but found himself temporarily unemployed.
His first letter was fake fanmail to Dan Quayle. The former US Vice President's reply suggests that he accepted, without question, the proposition that an eight-year-old had recently ploughed through his turgid memoirs.
After that, Mr Geerhart began sending a letter every few days, squirrelling the replies away in a private collection. He has narrowed down the 1,000 or so replies to little Billy's letters to 120 for his book. Highlights include a letter from OJ Simpson's attorney, Robert Shapiro, offering advice on how Billy might get away with having destroyed his sister's doll: he should accuse the family dog of eating it and hire "a good forensic dentist".
Mr Geerhart said yesterday that he'd had trouble pitching the book to publishers because of concerns about copyright. But William Morrow eventually took it on, hoping to mimic the success of similar bestsellers, such as William Donaldson's Henry Root Letters."
More reports about William Geerhart and his new book can be found HERE, HERE and HERE.
Chuck Heath is of course correct. Alaskans don't hunt wolves from helicopters - because they do it from small planes!
(EDIT: I was wrong - Alaskans DO hunt from helicopters - see updates 1 + 2)
"Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and John McCain's vice presidential pick, is an enthusiastic hunter who has proposed legislation and cash incentives to encourage aerial wolf gunning, the controversial practice of shooting wolves from an aircraft. Do people in Alaska really shoot wolves from planes?
Yes, but only with the government's permission. Aerial shooting yields better results than traditional hunting, since it allows the hunter to cover a lot of ground quickly and track target animals from a clear vantage point. Historically, hunters also used planes to drive animals—polar bears in Alaska and elk in Montana, among others—toward gunmen waiting on the ground. But many hunters found the practice unsportsmanlike, since it violates the "fair chase" ethic, and animal rights activists call it inhumane, since airborne gunmen rarely get a clean (i.e., relatively painless) kill. In response to concerns like these, Congress passed the Federal Airborne Hunting Act of 1972, which made it illegal for hunters to shoot animals from a plane or helicopter.
The federal legislation does have a loophole for predator control, permitting state employees or licensed individuals to shoot from an aircraft for the sake of protecting "land, water, wildlife, livestock, domesticated animals, human life, or crops." (This doesn't just apply to wolves; coyotes and foxes are sometimes gunned down from aircraft, especially in Western states.) Since 2003, Alaska has issued aerial wolf-hunting permits in select areas where moose and caribou populations are particularly endangered. The idea is that by killing the predators, the airborne gunmen can ramp up the number of moose and caribou that human hunters can take home for supper.
(...) Palin tried last year to have the state pay $150 for every wolf killed, but the state superior court shot that down as an illegal use of bounty payments, which were outlawed in that state in 1984."
Sarah Palin herself showed a keen interest in "educating" the citizens in Alaska about the benefits of "aerial predator control" - in 2007 the legislature and the governor of Alaska approved to spend $ 400,000 in order to educate Alaskans about the aerial shooting of wolves and efforts to reduce bears in some areas.
"Opponents of the state's predator control program are blasting lawmakers and the governor for approving a $400,000 appropriation to educate Alaskans about the aerial shooting of wolves and efforts to reduce bears in some areas.
They say the capital budget money is really an attempt to influence voters, who will decide next year whether to ban aerial shooting and land-and-shoot hunting by private citizens.
"It's outrageous," said co-sponsor Joel Bennett of Alaskans for Wildlife. "It looks like it's a clear effort to thwart the public will."
State game managers don't know how they will spend the money but it won't be used to influence the election, said Ron Clarke, assistant director for the state's Division of Wildlife Conservation.
"We're a science-based agency," he said. The state will try to share that information in a way the public can understand, he said.
Aerial predator control lets private citizens shoot wolves from the air or conduct land-and-shoot hunting of wolves in five rural areas of the state. In the last year, the state has also liberalized bear hunting in some of those same areas, including no bag limits and land-and-shoot hunting of black bears in Game Management Unit 16 across Cook Inlet from Anchorage.
The effort is intended to boost moose and caribou numbers.
More than 700 wolves have been killed since the program began almost five years ago. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimates there are 7,000 to 11,000 wolves in Alaska."
+++
Sarah Palin herself lied in "Going Rogue" about aerial wolf hunting and claimed that it doesn't exist. On page 327 she talks about her embarassing prank interview with "President Sarkozy" and says:
"Then Sarkozy started talking about hunting and suggested we get together and hunt from helicopters, which Alaska hunters don't do (despite circulated Photoshopped images of me drawing a bead on a wolf from the air)."
Screenshot from "Going Rogue", page 327:
That is just one of the many, many lies that Sarah Palin tells in "Going Rogue".
Under Alaska law, "the Board of Game may authorize a predator control program as part of a game management plan that involves airborne or same day airborne shooting." On May 19, 2008, the Anchorage Daily News reported that "[p]ilot-gunner teams" had "taken 124 wolves," according to the Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation, as part of "a winter program to kill wolves from aircraft," which the Daily News contrasted with "the 97 wolves gunners took last year." In 2007, Palin introduced a bill to "simplify and clarify Alaska's intensive management law for big game and the state's 'same day airborne hunting' law," which she stated would "give the Board of Game and state wildlife managers the tools they need to actively manage important game herds and help thousands of Alaskan families put food on their tables." According to an August 26, 2007, Daily News article (retrieved from the Nexis database), Palin supported "a $400,000 appropriation to educate Alaskans about the aerial shooting of wolves and efforts to reduce bears in some areas."
Recently aerial wolf hunting once more became an issue in Alaska - Mudflats and Shannyn Moore wrote about it from an Alaskan perspective just a few days ago.
In Alaska, the message of the government is that wolves are being hunted from the air so that more moose and caribou are available for native hunters, who are dependent on them as a food resource. In September 2007, however, 172 scientists wrote an open letter to Sarah Palin, protesting Alaska's aerial wolf hunting policy. They explain:
The basis of Alaska's recent predator control programs is the state's intensive management law. This law mandates restoring "depleted" ungulate populations to former levels of abundance and setting of ungulate population objectives. We are concerned that objectives were often based on unattainable, unsustainable historically high populations. Accurate determination of habitat carrying capacity was seldom considered. The net result is to perpetually chase unattainable objectives with inadequately designed predator control programs that risk long-term sustainability of ungulate habitat integrity and sustainability of reasonable predator populations.
(...) Finally, negative, long-term consequences of predator control may outweigh short-term increases in ungulate numbers. Such consequences include habitat damage from high ungulate populations that may result in population crashes of both ungulates and predators as well as the ancillary "costs" of predator control programs in terms of staff time and credibility with and support from the broader public. Many in the general public are concerned that the Alaska Board of Game process is not fair and representative of the broad public interest in Alaska's wildlife. We appreciate your support for fair and transparent government and ask you to encourage the Board of Game to consider the broader public interests in their wildlife decision making. Finally, we urge the State of Alaska to consider the ecological role that large predators play in preventing eruptions and crashes, and to consider conservation of predators on an equal basis with the goal of producing more ungulates for hunters.
+++
Aerial wolf hunting in Alaska is explained in detail in this excellent video:
It seems that Sarah and her dad are apparently not very proud about the fact that Sarah supported aerial wolf hunting. One more reason to end this horrible practice.
A relative newcomer to state Division of Wildlife Conservation who several wildlife advocates said is overly sympathetic to hunters at the expense of other groups has been selected to head the state agency at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Corey Rossi, who purportedly has close ties with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her family, starts his new job Tuesday. Fish and Game Commissioner Denby Lloyd said he chose Rossi because he brings a can-do attitude to the agency's mission.
But not everyone is happy with the selection. Rossi represents a move toward a narrow wildlife management philosophy that will benefit extremist hunters -- those that would artificially inflate moose and caribou numbers by removing massive numbers of predators, Alaska Wildlife Alliance director John Toppenberg said.
That approach will be at the expense of other user groups, such as wildlife viewers, whereas Doug Larsen, the man who Rossi replaces, had a more balanced approach, he said.
"With this appointment, it is my belief that the title of the organization that he now represents should be changed to the Division of Wildlife Killing," Toppenberg said.
+++
Interestingly, it was also mentioned in this report:
"E-mails sent to Palin aide Jason Recher seeking comment after business hours Friday were not immediately returned."
So it seems that Jason Recher has now replaced Meg Stapleton as the new "go-to-person".
+++
In addition, several Alaskans have commented on Crystalwolf's facebook regarding this story and said that helicopters ARE in fact being used for aerial wolf hunting in Alaska! One Alaskan said: "Alaska Fish & Game decided not even planes were good enough and went directly to helicopters."
5-Day Trophy Reindeer Hunt for 1-hunter in Alaska Great Northern Safari Company Corey Rossi
The high bidder will get the first hunt on the herd for the 2010 season. For the past several years, GNSC has been harvesting what can only be described as the largest antlered animals on the planet! GNSC’s unbelievable Alaskan Reindeer have been producing top-ten SCI scores for several consecutive seasons. SCI Scores in the 420+ category are commonplace, with some animals actually breaking the enviable 500-inch mark! You will receive a “what to bring list” upon confirmation of the hunt.
Well, we are used to "a lot" from Alaska, but this clearly is a conflict of interest, is it not? The designated head of the Department of Fish & Game also owns a hunting company?
By the way, Corey Rossi's email address is mentioned there as "gutpile@alaska.com" - which also happens to be the contact email of the "Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife". "Gutpile"...what lovely people!
Well, folks - here is a Palin Prediction that took only three days to come true:
$arah Palin, quitspeech on Sunday: do what’s right for Alaska when the pressure mounts, because you’re going to see anti-hunting, anti-second amendment circuses from Hollywood and here’s how they do it. They use these delicate, tiny, very talented celebrity starlets...
Sens. Diane Feinstein of California and Ben Cardin or Maryland introduced legislation that would explicitly prohibit huntersfrom shooting and killing wildlife from aircraft.
Delicate, tiny, very talented US Senate starlet Diane Feinstein and action hero Sen. Ben Cardin have mounted a Hollywood circus against hunting and the second amendment...
One passage refers to a film made in 1983, Never Cry Wolf:
Never Cry Wolf (1983, Carroll Ballard), the well-known adaptation of Farley Mowat's entertaining novel, was by far the most sympathetic wolf movie I watched. The movie's main character, a young, inexperienced biologist, is sent to the Alaskan bush to determine if wolves are responsible for the decline of a caribou herd. The biologist observes a small pack of wolves and soon learns to understand their behavior and structure of their society. He sees them as a family (especially after they have pups), but the movie does not sugar coat the facts of the wolves' carnivorous behavior. They are shown hunting caribou and other animals, but never in a way that makes them look irrationally vicious...
Small correction: the plot takes place in Canada, not in Alaska, although it doesn't alter the findings of the biologist or the relevance of such findings regarding the issue in question.
The discussion about wolves an their predatory behaviour appears to have started at least 25 years ago. The author of the article explores the impact of Hollywood on the public perception of the wolf as a bloodthirsty, vicious enemy and how it achieved its bad reputation.
The Board of Game, appointed by $arah Palin, has strong links to commercial and trophy hunting organisations, as highlighted here.
$arah Palin's "Hollywood needs to know, we eat, therefore we hunt" soundbite doesn't reflect the truth. The predator control schemes in Alaska have very little to do with subsistence hunting, it's all about special interests groups.
If anybody is fond of mounting a circus, I would say it's the quitter ex-governor herself. There are: the Family Circus, the Evangelical Circus, the Letterman Circus, to name a few... all bearing $arah's fingerprints all over. .
This is how dead wolves look after Sarah's men have shot them from the air. It's not a pretty sight. They ran out of money and snow to finish the job. For now... The Department of Fish and Game stopped shooting wolves from a helicopter in the eastern Interior on Thursday after killing 66 wolves in five days as part of an intensified and controversial predator control program to increase caribou and moose numbers in an area east of Tok.
State officials were hoping to kill as many as 150 wolves by tracking them via airplane and shooting them from a helicopter, but a lack of both fresh snow and money prompted the department to temporarily halt the program.
The department had $100,000 set aside for the helicopter shootings, and James said the agency had used “probably 80 percent” of that as of Wednesday.
Asked what it would take to get department sharpshooters back in the air, Fairbanks regional supervisor David James replied, “More money and more snow.”
Private pilot-gunner teams with permits from the state can continue to take wolves until April 30 or conditions are such that planes can no longer land to retrieve wolves that are shot. The wolf trapping season also closes April 30.
Even though the department didn’t kill as many wolves as it set out to, James said the program was a success.
“Considering the portion of the total control area we covered we’re pretty pleased at this point,” James said. “There are substantial portions of that control area that we haven’t covered yet.”
I'm sure Sarah Palin will find plenty of money to continue the slaughter. Sarah and her Board of Game have their own stimulus plan to preserve prey for sports hunters. In 2007 they spent $400,000 in a state propaganda campaign to "educate" the public about predator control.
They don't have money problems, but hopefully there won't be any fresh snow.
“While the media obsesses over Governor Palin’s private family life, she is getting away with illegally slaughtering large numbers of wolves from the air,” said Defenders Action Fund president Rodger Schlickeisen. “The governor is even encouraging the killing of wolves that reside and den mostly on federal land, which belongs to all of us, not just Alaskans. There is no biological emergency in Alaska that warrants such measures.”
Defenders of Wildlife filed suit on Wednesday against the administration because new regulations allowing the killing have yet to take effect, “making the current helicopter wolf killing program in the Upper Yukon/Tanana region illegal.”
They explain the lawsuit:
"The Palin administration considerably escalated its aerial wolf killing spree this past weekend, with full details only becoming clear in the hours after the killing initiated. At least 58 wolves have been killed in the Upper Yukon/Tanana area of Alaska over the past 4 days by Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) staff, which indicates that their target of approximately 250 wolves will be easily met.
The key ingredient is the decision by the governor and her appointed Alaska Board of Game to use helicopters as part of the state’s wolf killing program in this region. The Board of Game approved the use of agency helicopters and personnel at its most recent meeting, which ended March 9, 2009, but those new regulations are not yet in effect, making the current helicopter wolf killing program in the Upper Yukon/Tanana region illegal. It is on these grounds that the board now faces a law suit, filed today by Defenders of Wildlife calling for an immediate injunction on the aerial wolf killing occurring in this area".
There are loads of links with further information and how to help stop the slaughter of Alaskan wolves and protect other wildlife here.
On behalf of the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance and the listed conservation organizations supporting this letter, we want to publicly endorse your wolf management policy. We believe the recent public relations blitz initiated by the Defenders of Wildlife grossly mischaracterizes you Administration’s wolf management policy.
After years of research, it is recognized by practically all state and federal wildlife officials that predator management is a prerequisite for guaranteeing stable populations of prey species. Given that many Alaska residents rely on moose, caribou, and other wildlife species for food, it becomes imperative that those species not be decimated through lack of predator management.
The Alaska wolf management program accomplishes this. It does so through a rigorously regulated, scientifically based system targeting only those predators in areas where wildlife populations are not able to reach adequate levels of sustainability in the program’s absence.
As each of our organizations works within the conservation movement, we understand the critical importance of science in wildlife management. It is evident that the Defenders of Wildlife attacks are part and parcel of a well orchestrated publicity stunt meant to achieve maximum exposure and minimum discourse.
The future of effective wildlife management necessitates that emotional pleas not substitute for reasoned analysis.
Sincerely,
Walter P. Pidgeon, Jr. President and CEO U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance (On behalf of eight Conservation organisations)
They call themselves conservationists... the Alaska Board of Game is full of these characters!
Excerpts from an item in the Anchorage Daily News on July 20, 2008:
Wildlife biologists kill 14 wolf pups on Alaska Peninsula
PREDATOR CONTROL: Controversial move meant to help caribou.
State wildlife biologists killed 14 wolf pups on the Alaska Peninsula as part of a predator control program to help a struggling caribou herd. Biologists found the 4 to 5-week-old pups when they landed to collect carcasses of adult wolves shot from a helicopter two months ago near Cold Bay, about 600 miles southwest of Anchorage.
"As we got on the calving grounds, we took adults, and in the course of taking adults we found there were pups," said Doug Larsen, director of the state Division of Wildlife Conservation, from Juneau.
Biologists had killed 14 adult wolves, including mothers of the pups. Each pup was shot in the head.
"It's a quick, humane way to kill them," said area management biologist Lem Butler of King Salmon.
The state issued a press release on June 27 about killing wolves but made no mention of killing pups, only that "wolves from three packs were shot from a helicopter by Alaska Department of Fish and Game staff."
It was the first time in more than 20 years that department biologists killed wolves from the air. Butler said it was his opinion that the use of the helicopter was more pertinent than killing pups.
Omitting the pup killings "wasn't an attempt to hide anything, by any means," Larsen said.
(Doug Larsen was appointed director of the state Division of Wildlife Conservation in August 2007.)
There must be better ways to control the wolf population. Wildlife conservation surely includes wolves? Aren't human hunters classed as predators?
So many questions...but certain people don't want to answer them!
(Sadly, there are only about 6000 to 8000 wolves residing in Alaska and an estimated 4500 in the lower 48 states. The biggest threats to the gray wolf are illegal hunting and trapping, along with loss of their natural habitat.)
I have included a couple of links to petitions at the bottom of the original post. Please check it out.
FURTHER UPDATE
If you'd like to find out more about how the policies on aerial hunting of wolves and grizzly bears in Alaska evolved over the years, please read Shannyn Moore's excellent article in the HuffPo.
I found this in one of the comments at Mudflats and thought it would be good to share:
"Support the PAW Act - End Alaska’s Aerial Hunting Program! Target: U.S. House of Representatives Sponsored by: Care2.com
Alaska is truly our nation’s last frontier. It is also the last place in the U.S. where a few hunters still use aircraft to chase and kill wolves. They shoot these animals from the air or chase them to exhaustion before landing and shooting them point blank.
Congress passed a law over thirty five years ago to put an end to aerial hunting. But Alaska is exploiting a loophole in federal law to resume the practice, not only for wolves, but bears as well. Hundreds of scientists have condemned what Alaska is doing, even as other states threaten to follow Alaska’s lead. It’s time to stop aerial hunting once and for all.
Rep. George Miller (CA) has introduced the Protect America’s Wildlife (PAW) Act, legislation to close a federal loophole and curb Alaska’s brutal aerial hunting program — and prevent programs like it from spreading to places like the Greater Yellowstone region.
Please urge your Representative to sign on as a co-sponsor to Rep. George Miller’s PAW Act." Here is a Link to the petition.
There are lots of petitions on this page of the Care2 site.
Which is more important: protecting the interests of large corporations seeking to explore Alaskan resources, ensuring that groups who hunt for sport have plenty of prey OR keeping an eye on the future of our planet by taking steps to protect these creatures?
Sarah Palin doesn't like her policies regarding the preservation of Alaskan wildlife to be challenged and responds by making herself into the victim. As usual.
Professor Rick Steiner of the University of Alaska wrote an excellent article in which he looks into the Governor's record on environmental issues. It was published back in September 08 but it's still very topical. After all, her record is as abysmal now as it was then.
