Letter to the Editor
Wolf history
Published Saturday, August 23, 2008
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To the editor:
Nick Jans seems to have become the most recent high-profile advocate for Ballot Measure 2 that would permanently ban aerial and same-day-airborne wolf control. That is a curious position for someone who claims credibility based on living in the Inupiaq villages of the Kobuk River. He apparently does not know about or appreciate the history of the region.
Land-and-shoot wolf hunting was largely “discovered” and popularized by Tony Burnhardt (an Inupiaq) of Kobuk in the late 1960s, and it was land-and-shoot wolf control (along with harvest reduction) practiced by trappers with aircraft from Kotzebue that allowed the Western Arctic Caribou Herd to recover so quickly from its low point of 75,000 in 1976.
Since then, faster snowmachines have made it possible for people to run down and kill wolves. Jans seems totally opposed to aircraft being used for limited predator control programs but sees nothing wrong with widespread use of snowmachines to run down and kill wolves even when predator control is not warranted.
If Jans also had experience with villages along the Yukon, Kuskokwim, and Koyukuk, he would be more likely to see the need for more effective wolf and bear management around these villages, including the need to use aerial control methods for wolves. His claim of representing the view of people in the “Inupiaq villages” also is difficult to reconcile after the Alaska Federation of Natives passed a resolution at its annual convention opposing Ballot Measure 2. Who better represents Alaska’s Native people, Nick Jans or AFN?
The need for and support of predator management is very much a regional issue. It is much better and fairer to leave resource allocation issues to the Board and Game and the Legislature because regional perspectives are much better represented there than they are in a statewide vote.
Community Discussion
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Apparently, Mr. Swisher does not know about or appreciate the wording of the ballot measure for in his opening paragraph he makes a major error. The measure in no way bans predator control. It moves it from the private sector, where it presently is, to the aegis of F&G personel which is where it should be. There is presently no way of properly monitoring it, data taken from private airborne hunters is suspect, and abuse easily occurs. All the measure does is puts it back in the hands of the professionals who are trained to do it properly.
Also, Mr. Swisher is being very disingenuous when he suggests Mr. Jans does not know his residents and the AFN speaks for all Natives. We see in Measure 4, the Clean Water Initiative, how all the Native corporations are against it yet it has strong support amongst the individual Natives who depend on fisheries for their subsistence living (and that's quite a few). Also, I'm rather amazed at Mr. Swisher's apparent enyclopedic knowledge of Mr. Jans that he can make such a comment. I seriously doubt he knows the gentleman well enough to do so or to question Nick's 20 years of living with the Inupiaq.
Too, I have to wonder how many planes Mr. Swisher rents to airborne hunters? It could be he is working from a very biased basis, one set in money rather than fact. Fact which, we have already seen, is sadly absent from most of his letter.
Of course there was a fifty dollar bounty on them wolves than. We need aerial wolf hunting with a bounty cause of the high price of gas and every thing else. Why should the state pay for wolf control hunting when local residents will do it for free? Know Nick and all his toys. Lets let the local people who know best make the decisions on how to control the wolves and bear in different units of this huge state cause each area differs.
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