Alaskan Wolf Pack Loses a Member...Death Raises Ethical Issue

SEATTLE, April 20 -- An Alaskan wolf -- a black male that led the world's longest-studied, most-photographed family of wolves -- was killed last weekend by a hunter outside Denali National Park.

The kill, legal under Alaska law, punctuates a harrowing year for the wolf family, known as the Toklat group, which has been studied for more than four decades and has been viewed and photographed by tens of thousands of visitors to Denali.

Two months ago, the family's senior female and another female were killed in traps, also legally, when they left the park in search of caribou. The family has now been reduced to six pups and a mature pregnant female, which has been separated from the younger wolves for more than a month.
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In March, three Democratic senators -- Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Carl M. Levin (Mich.) and Barbara Boxer (Calif.) -- wrote to Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton and asked her to take immediate action to protect the Toklat wolves. John Quinley, a National Park Service spokesman, said that protecting the wolves outside Denali is a state decision. If Alaska chooses to protect the wolves, he said, the Park Service would be supportive.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6018-2005Apr20.html

TRIED AND TRIED BUT THOSE MORONS WHO RUN ALASKA WONT LISTEN THE SENATOR LISA M AND HER GOVERNOR HUSBAND FRANK ARE PART OF THE BUSH KLAN AND LIKE THE FACT THE WOLVES ARE BEING KILLED SO THEY CAN GET THEIR WAY WITH BUILDING UP THE AREA. SHE'S A BI#$H!!!!

He was formerly the 2nd U.S. Senator from Alaska and ran for governor; when he vacated his seat in the Senate, he appointed his daughter to the seat. She was re-elected last November with the help of Sen. Ted Stevens.

There are no caribou outside of Denali -- there are moose. Many native and non-natives depend on moose for subsistence, amongst other animals. The wolves were reintroduced to Alaska, as elsewhere, and have thrived to the detriment of the moose in some areas. This past year a limited wolf-kill was authorized to cull the wolves and give the moose a chance to rebound. Moose have a healthy population in many parts of the state, just not in all.

Needless to say, this entire issue is far more controversial in Alaska than one would think. However, the story isn't quite as it's being played out elsewhere. In Alaska, there is no single species that is so sacrosanct as to be unkillable, especially when protected species undergo a population explosion. As in anything that humans meddle with, it doesn't take too much to upset a very fine balance between all of the resources in the wild.

Next fall, there will be a second attempt at culling the moose in the Anchorage basin as its population has grown and now over 1,000 moose are in Chugach that come down into the basin during the winter. Over 200 moose per year die of starvation. Many believe that it is better to cull the herd and feed some families than it is to let them starve to death. Their natural predator in the area, the brown bear, hibernates through the winter and isn't available to do the task of cleaning up starving or dead moose.

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