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MONTH: May 2007
Judge halts Alaska wolf bounties
ANCHORAGE--Alaska Superior
Court Judge William Morse on March 30, 2007 ruled on behalf of Friends
of Animals, Defenders of Wildlife, and coplaintiffs that the Alaska Department
of Fish & Game does not have the authority to pay bounties to aerial
gunners for killing wolves.
However, Morse added, the Alaska Board
of Game can authorize bounties. Morse held that the 1984 repeal of a state
law allowing bounties applied only to administrative actions of the Department
of Fish & Game, not to actions of the Board of Game. Thus, while the
Morse verdict suspended a bounty program introduced on March 21, it left
the possibility that the Board of Game may reinstate it, or start a new
bounty program.
The Alaska Department of Fish & Game
for the winter of 2006-2007 authorized hunters, trappers, and aerial gunners
to kill up to 664 wolves in five target areas, with a goal of killing
at least 382. Through March, the toll was just 151. The department then
sought to encourage the 111 registered aerial gunners and 82 aerial gunnery
pilots to hunt more wolves by offering $150 per wolf they killed.
"Critics of the program said the
state has overestimated the number of wolves, based on outdated information,"
summarized Associated Press writer Rachel D'Oro. The official state wolf
population estimate is markedly higher than recent federal estimates.
"We think it would be a great idea
for the state to put the money from the bounty program toward conducting
a proper survey of the wolf populations before any more wolves are shot,"
said Defenders of Wildlife representative Tom Banks.
The Alaska Department of Fish & Game
on April 3, 2007 suspended culling wolves in the Nelchina Basin, near
Fairbanks, the area historically generating the most political pressure
to kill wolves.
Because the Nelchina Basin is accessible
from Fairbanks, it is among the most hunted parts of Alaska. The Board
of Game has for decades sought to keep the Nelchina Basin wolf count to
less than a third of the carrying capacity of the habitat to keep moose
plentiful for human hunters.
From 1989 to 2006, however, the Nelchina
Basin wolf population resisted reduction to the decreed levels. When the
moose count dropped by half, wolves were blamed.
Aerial gunners shot 33 wolves in the Nelchina
Basin during the winter of 2006-2007, while hunters and trappers killed
62, with almost a month left of the wolf hunting season. Aerial gunners
had killed just 55 wolves in the other four targeted areas combined. Of
the 660 wolves killed by aerial gunners in the five years since the present
wolf culling program started, 288 were killed in the Nelchina Basin.