Evidently animal rights activist think farmer and ranchers like to kill wolves and other predators in what little spare time they have, as if they don't have more important things to do. As for the Inuit who subsist off of the moose and caribou populations in Alaska, evidently they need a cultural readjustment or some form of social retraining.
Sarah Palin is therefore taking heat from several animal rights groups, including the Defenders Of Wildlife, who have utilized the talents of actress and film star Ashley Judd in a promotional video in opposition to Palin's practices of paying bounties for the severed forelegs of killed wolves. You can see the video at the site by way of the link.
The Scotsman has what seems to be a pretty well-balanced piece on the controversy, but there is considerable more information to be found in Salon that gives a fairly detailed account of the activists position.
This following passage gives a pretty good indication of one of the major disconnects between the two opposing camps-
Detractors consider the airborne shootings a savage business, conducted under the euphemism "predator control." The airplanes appear in the winter, so the wolves show up like targets in a video game, sprinting across the white canvas below. Critics believe the practice violates the ethics of hunting, while supporters say the process is not hunting at all, but a deliberate cull.
Well, obviously the emphasis here from the vantage point of the pro-wolf hunting forces is in culling the herd, in keeping their numbers down to manageable levels in order to prevent their decimation of the moose, caribou, and other animal populations. That some might be approaching the aerial wolf hunting program as a sport might be unfortunate, but somewhat understandable. That, however, is not the major focus, so there is no need for undue emphasis on sportsmanship or giving the wolves a "fighting chance". The point is to reduce their numbers.
At the same time, I am not altogether unsympathetic to the point of view of the animal rights advocates, at least in this case. According to them, most wolves that eat caribou and moose eat them as carrion, in other words after they have died by other means. Or, perhaps, as is often the case in nature, they have run down and killed the oldest and sickest of the herd, which would undoubtedly die soon at any rate.
Those in favor of the aerial hunting of wolves and also bears, by the way, should make sure they are on firm ground here. I have a strong and unnerving suspicion that a great lot of these folks would be fine if every wolf in Alaska were destroyed, and that would be a great loss to nature if it were allowed to occur.
Politically, this is a chance for Palin to reach out to the other side and seek some form of rational compromise. She needs to double check, and even triple check her data on the moose, caribou, and wold populations and make sure they are accurate, as there does seem to be some legitimate questions as to this, and indeed as to the accuracy of the number of wolves being killed by the aerial hunting program initiated by her predecessor, Governor Mikowski, which she has greatly expanded upon.
There might also be another way of controlling the wolf population, if indeed it is too large, that would not only be less cruel, but just as effective and perhaps even less expensive. Trapping and relocating should be given a greater emphasis, and ways should be studied to see if that is a viable option.
However, the activist groups opposed to the hunting need to understand that the needs of indigent populations, such as the Inuit, as well as farmers and ranchers and those who depend on them, cannot afford to sit idly by for perhaps two or three decades in the hopes that the cycles of nature will eventually swing the pendulum back and even things out.
That is how the real world works. But, not really.
