I have negative feelings about this. I saw some footage of this a long time ago and it was pretty ugly. Many of the wolves were wounded and left to suffer due to the difficulty of getting a clean kill from a moving plane or copter. It sorta reminds me of the 1800s when they shot buffalo from the trains just for amusement. I am not anti-hunting but this sounds worse than canned hunts where shooters kill captive raised animals in pens or having guys release captive birds ahead of you so you can blast 'em ala Dick Cheney.
Kinda says it all. It’s not like the wolves are running rampant in the streets of the tiny Alaskan hamlets. We do far more damage to the population of moose and caribou that the wolves do, especially since we hunt the strong and the wolves hunt the weak (generally speaking).
No. I’m not against hunting per se, but I am against any kind of hunting that is likely to result in a non-clean kill and prolonged suffering for the animal. AIUI (IANAHunter), most traditional hunters try very hard for a clean kill.
Somewhere I’ve got a decades-old copy of Big Game Animals of North America which vaguely attempts to justify the exciting practice of shooting wolves from the air, describing it as “very sporting.” This is probably the same kind of sportsmanlike mentality that classifies dynamite as fishing gear.
In theory I’d be happy to shoot wolves from planes, as (a) it sounds evil, and (b) I’m evil. But first I must do a cost benefit analysis. Will the time I spend shooting be taken away from burning down nunneries? Is this the best and most evil use of my shooting-animals-from-plane-flying time available–that is, would it be more evil to shoot caribou, polar bears, bunny rabbits, or some other animal rather than wolves? Is shooting the wolves going to make baby Jesus cry, or is it going to whip Aslan into a Skald-smiting rage?
Wildlife professionals have determined that that particular wolf population needs reduction.
Quoted from the OP’s link: "State officials stand by their scientific findings on predator control. ‘Several times over the past several years, our science has been challenged in court,’ says Bruce Bartley, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. ‘In every instance it has prevailed.’ "
No, it’s not hunting in the normal sense, it’s wildlife population control. Ugly, but the officials with the Alaska Fish and Game Department think it’s necessary.
As an aside, if I’d known this was another Palin gripe, I wouldn’t have opened the thread. How much is enough? Next time a warning: “Thinly veiled Palin Pit” or something of that sort in the title would be appreciated.
Ahh, ya pansy. What, leaving gut-shot animals to die a painful, lingering death in the snow isn’t evil enough for you? You don’t think that makes baby Jesus cry? A fine evil overlord you’ll make, letting Alaskan state wildlife officials make your decisions for you. * “Oh, I guess I can’t support the destruction of the polar icecap; the Alaskan government says it’ll be a boon to the economy.”*
It’s about COST-BENEFIT, dude. If slaughtering wolves, melting the polar ice cap, or feeding Pat Harrington to the moongooses makes it HARDER for me to conquer the Earth, or ruins things that I want to exploit once I am emperor, of course I’m not going to do those things just for yuks. That would be as foolish as using my sunkiller bomb to destroy the Earth BEFORE I die; Earth is where I keep all my stuff. (Except for the hyperspace ark.)
I can understand not doing it right away, as to enjoy your status as ruler for a while. But it would be a real shame to build a sunkiller bomb and then not be alive to see what it does.
I live where the coyotes can, and frequently do, cause great loss to the livestock. I say kill them all, no matter how horrible the means may seem. If I can wound them, and they crawl miserably back to the den, maybe the rest of the pack will feast on thier measly carcass, thereby buying my herd one more loss-free evening.
Fuck them. Its “us against them”. I’m on the “us” side.
Well you did not make that point sufficently clear. Your earlier argument was implicitly framed as a cost-evil argument, not a cost-Earth conquest argument.
Of course, now you’ve let slip the fact that state-sponsored wolf culling is inimical to your plans, it becomes transparently obvious that your agenda hinges on a caribou population in which the sick and weak are not selected against. It is therefore elementary to deduce the host population in which you are currently incubating your arsenal of weaponized shifting antigen T-cell viruses. I fear that “Project Wendigo” has reached an unfortunately premature terminus point.
