Aerial Wolf Hunting
September 4th, 2008 | by jg3 |I’m not much of a “sportsman.” I don’t hunt. I respect the rights of people who do (responsibly), and I think that responsible management of natural resources includes some measure of culling.
However, I’m not at all cool with irresponsible use of natural resources. I expect that for some people, hunting wolves and bears could be really fun. Presumably those are people who really enjoy a bear-meat sandwich or wolf steak. And I support the right of those people to do so. This country is big enough to set aside large areas of land where that can take place.
Somewhere in the realm of responsible management of natural resources, it becomes necessary to kill a few top predators to keep an ecosystem in balance. With that in mind, and in consideration of the fact that there are relatively few people to manage some very large swaths of land, aerial hunting might be useful. Not surprisingly, this is exactly what the Federal law allows.
But this is not, in my mind, hunting by any sporting definition. A hunter is already at a substantial advantage because they are using a gun. Chasing from the air also makes a hunter faster and from that angle the animals have no ability to hide. And without firing a shot you could chase an animal around for a little while (scaring the bejeesus out of it with a roaring motor) wait until he gets tired, then land. Walk right up to him an *pop* … bearskin rug.
But in Alaska, the issue keeps showing up on the ballot.
What makes this a controversial issue worthy of repeated public referendums? Because there are people who want to leave home bound for adventure in an exotic and far away country, send some postcards, and then return home with a bearskin rug and a story about the bear they shot. And some of those people would pay good money to do so in a way that assures them of making a kill. Sporting-ness be damned, they want to have the appearance of being a big game hunter. So there’s that. There’s also the fact that people will pay good money to hunt other big game, but top predators like wolves and bears keep the number of moose and caribou in an ecosystem down. Subtract some wolves and you can get more rich hunters to pour money into your state’s tourisim economy. That might not be okay if it didn’t require throwing the ecosystem out of balance to do it. It might also be okay if the people trying to do this sort of thing did not also keep trying to take away the ability of the public to control it.  Certainly that is a different issue, but it is related and creepy.
So, all of this might only be of passing interest if the governor of the state where all this is taking place were not nominated to be vice president.
To restate:Â I’ll support your right to have ridiculous firearms, I’ll support your right to hunt sportingly, but I will not support efforts to circumvent the political process or disrupt it with big money so you can exploit our shared natural resources and disturb a carefully managed environmental balance.
No matter how pretty you are.
Filed under: enviro, Politics
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