The recent memo issued by Alaska Department of Fish and Game regarding its “humane removal” — chased down by helicopters, then shot and killed with shotguns — of 94 brown bears, five black bears and five wolves in the Mulchatna area this past spring, every wolf and bear they could find in the area, noted that 20 of the brown bears killed were cubs, 11 of which were cubs of the year.
These newborn cubs were just weeks out of the den, eyes wide to their new world, alongside their mothers, whose only interest was protecting their new cubs and finding a first meal after a long winter hibernation. Then, these tiny newborn cubs and their mothers were gunned down from helicopters by agents of the state of Alaska, all in a desperate attempt to distract from its years of mismanagement of Mulchatna caribou, and to appease the administration’s political friends. Only two of the 94 brown bears killed were salvaged for meat; the rest, including all the cubs, were simply left to rot on the tundra. In response to a public records request for photographs taken of the massacre, the state replied: “No ADF& G personnel or person associated with ADF& G, including any employee of a contractor, was expected or instructed to take any photograph. Nor, as ADF& G stated, were or will any photograph be collected as ADF& G does not want or need any photograph for any purpose. In other words, any photograph was not even merely a transitory record; and, even if it were, it would now be beyond its retention age as ADF& G has no administrative need for it.”
Obviously, the last thing the state of Alaska wants is for we-the-people to see actual photos of the atrocity committed by “our” state government, ostensibly on our behalf, with public funds, on public lands, and with publicly managed wildlife. And this is now what passes as wildlife “management” in Alaska, supported by the U.S. Department of Interior’s Pittman-Robertson wildlife “restoration” program.
— Rick Steiner
Anchorage
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