Research-study wolves under fire in Alaska.

Study-group of wolves in Alaska being targeted -- legally-- by hunters.

Starting September 1st the hunting season opened in Alaska, and sportsmen are allowed to kill up to TEN wolves each.

While things are certainly bad enough for beleaguered wolves in Idaho’s Northern Rockies, in Alaska, flawed ‘predator control’ and hunting laws/game policies are endangering a group of well-known and beloved study-animals – while they are trying to raise their pups.

Please speak out now to let Alaska officials know you do not support the killing of these wolves. This plea is urgent, as the hunt is underway right now, and this familiar and much-loved wolf family could be destroyed at any moment by a ‘sport’ hunter.

This is a group of wolves known as the Swift Northeast pack. The group has been followed and studied for years in Denali National Park by independent wildlife biologist Dr. Gordon Haber, PhD.

Please go to his blog now.

Read entries, the ones dated August 16th and 18th.

Here you will find contact information for those you need to speak out to, as well as more suggestions, in Dr. Haber’s own words, on how to get this hunt, inside a National Park, stopped.

Why doesn’t Alaska protect her magnificent wolves – and in particular this popular and cherished canine family, from being slaughtered? Especially now, while they are struggling to survive, to raise their pups to maturity before winter sets in? A hunter could easily ‘legally’ shoot any of the pack members, including the parents, the young pups or the dominant female (who is lighter than the others and therefore a more tempting target for hunters.)

Wolves in Alaska, as elsewhere in United States, have been made into scapegoats, villains; they’ve been demonized and persecuted.

While there is plenty of prejudice and misinformation, there is no actual justification for it.

Wolves are indeed brilliant predators—Nature’s original, supreme game managers. They are smart and complex, social and adaptable. They care deeply for their own, living in extended families, the dominant pair mating for life, showing loyalty and sensitivity – as well as gentleness - that sometimes puts the human concept of family-life to shame.

Perhaps they are TOO much like us for comfort?

Even so, why would a moose hunter decide to shoot wolves?

Part of the logic is supposedly to reduce competition for the moose. The burgeoning population of hunters, both ‘subsistence’ and non-resident sport/trophy hunters, want to have more hunting opportunities for themselves. While hunting may be a ‘natural’ activity for humans, our astronomical population growth and the influx of more and more hunters competing for a limited resource (moose and caribou) is placing unnatural demands on the ecosystem. Therefore hunters feel justified (compelled?) to treat another predator species – one that is also intelligent, highly social and family oriented – just like us – as worthless ‘vermin’.

Hunting is also a very lucrative business, and powerful lobby, in Alaska.

There is no commercial or food value for wolf carcasses. Even the pelts are only useful at certain times of year.

So this isn’t so much an ‘anti-hunting’ issue but one of money, greed, politics, bad science and worse laws.

If you want to help stop the hunting of Alaska’s wolves, and protect, in particular, the Swift Northeast wolf family, visit Dr. Haber’s web site right now by clicking here. Then please send the request on to as many people as you can.

Time is not on the side of the Swift Northeast pack. Please help them. Many – including the wolves and those who care about them – will thank you.

Follow Dr. Haber’s work with the Swift Northeast pack on Twitter.

* If you feel that what Dr. Haber is doing is worthwhile, please contribute to FoA at, www.friendsofanimals.org. You can earmark your contribution for this research, but FoA also does much else for Alaska’s wolves, including via legal action against the state’s wolf-killing programs. Your contribution will be used effectively.

Related articles:

Aerial gunning of Alaska’s wolves being challenged in Congress

Bad Science may be killing Alaska’s wolves

Exploring Alaska’s wolf control policies

More on Alaska's wolf control controversy

* If you feel that what Dr. Haber is doing is worthwhile, please contribute to FoA at, www.friendsofanimals.org. You can earmark your contribution for this research, but FoA also does much else for Alaska’s wolves, including via legal action against the state’s wolf-killing programs. Your contribution will be used effectively.