State has spent $54,500 this year to date on one predation control program
A group of 150 citizens from 28 communities across Alaska is asking Gov. Bill Walker to stop the practice of radio-collaring wolves to locate and kill wolves as part of a predator control program.
In their letter of Aug. 15 the group also asked Walker to convene an intensive management working group to review all predator control efforts by the state.
The petitioners noted that the state’s lethal predator control/intensive management program has expanded dramatically over the past 13 years.
Each year the Alaska Department of Fish and Game predator control programs directly kill some 200 wolves, 150 black bears and 10 brown bears, the petition said.
This total does not, however, include the number of pups and cubs that die after being orphaned by the program, nor does this total reflect the increased predator harvest that has resulted from liberalization of predator take regulations, including liberalization/elimination of bag limits, significant extensions of hunting and trapping seasons for predators, elimination of brown bear tag requirements, baiting and snaring of ears, permitting the take of cows with cubs, permitting use of helicopters to run intensive management trap lines and bear snare sets, and more, the petitioners said.
Alaska’s lethal predator control/IM program, as currently practiced, is unscientific, unnecessary, ineffective, costly, unethical, inhumane, and controversial, they contend. They asked that the state replace lethal predator control methods with non-lethal methods, halt the “collaring for later control, or “Judas wolf” program, and halt intensive management within five miles of federal conservation units.
The petitioners told the governor that wolves serve a critical role in terrestrial ecosystem stability, and are intelligent, social animals, with strong family bonds.
“We find it reprehensible that this very sociality and family bond is being lethally exploited in state predator control efforts,” they said.
In 2013 alone, all 24 members of Yukon-Charley’s Seventy Mile Pack, including two with radio collars were shot by ADF&G-authorized private airplane gunners, eliminating the pack altogether.
In 2012 and 2014, ADF&G helicopter gunners shot all 19 member of the Lost Creek Pack, including two collared animals, eliminating that pack as well, they said. Then in March of this year, state helicopter gunners shot and wounded a female Yukon-Charley wolf along the boundary of the preserve, and then pursued the wounded animal into the preserve, where they illegally killed her, they said. Of the 18 other wolves killed by state predator control in this area this spring, half were young of the year, they said.
Despite the state intensive management program, calf survival in the Forty Mile caribou herd has not increased in the past five years, they said.
Retired University of Alaska professor Rick Steiner, a marine conservation biologist, one of the signers of the petition, said described the current program as “a clearly excessive and misguided state predator control program” that has “succeeded in destroying the natural character of one of the nations premier natural places.
“Keystone predators have a critical role maintaining healthy wildland ecosystems, said Jim Kowalsky, chair of Alaskans for Wildlife, another signer of the letter. “Predator removal is turning Alaska’s famous wildlands into moose and caribou farms.”
Steiner also serves on the board of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which issued its own statement saying that predator control by the state of Alaska has so degraded wolf packs in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve that the National Park Service has ended a more than 20-year research program on predator-prey relationships, according to documents posted by PEER.
Wolf packs in the Yukon-Charley Rivers preserve had been monitored by the National Park Service with radio telemetry since 1993.
While the effort was made to study natural predator-prey relationships, all of the packs routinely travel outside the preserve boundaries where the state’s “intensive management” program has results in the killing of 90 park resident wolves, including 13 National Park Service radio-collared for research purposes.
Consequently nine of the wolf packs in the preserve have been severely impacted, or eliminated, by the state, PEER said.
In response to an inquiry Steiner made in late March, Bruce Dale, director of the state’s Wildlife Conservation Division within the Department of Fish and Game, acknowledged that through June 1 the state had spent $54,500 on the Upper Yukon-Tanana predation control efforts. That included, Dale said, costs for aircraft, lodging and processing and salaries and benefits for department staff paid for with state general funds.
Steiner had sent another letter to Dale in early June, noting that the state’s agency’s plan was to use airplanes and helicopters to locate and lethally remove solves either in early winter or late winter. The department’s operational plan for the Upper Yukon-Tanana Predation Control Area specifically states, Steiner noted, “when possible, 1 or 2 members of each pack may be radio collared to aid in locating an removing non-radio collared pack members.
Steiner asked for specifics on how many such collars have been fitted by the agency, how many wolves have been killed, and the demographics of the wolves taken in this “Judas” effort, in particular number and age of pups.
Dale responded on July 7 that a total of 28 wolves were fitted with radio collars since 2005, between fall 2011 and spring 2016, and that a total of 179 wolves were killed between regulatory years 2011 and 22015 using this wolf control program.
