Posted on 01/19/2008 4:07:43 PM PST by decimon
Residents along the Kuskokwim River want state game managers to allow them to kill wolf pups in their dens.
Wolf numbers seem to be rising in the wilderness around Aniak, McGrath and other villages, and the task once carried out by young Native men should be employed again to help moose populations recover, said Greg Roczicka, natural resources director with Orutsaramuit Native Council in Bethel.
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"We're fervently opposed to it," said John Toppenberg, director with Alaska Wildlife Alliance. "It's been illegal in Alaska for a long time and deservedly so. It's a Stone Age concept of wildlife management and has no place as a management tool for civilized people. It's just barbaric."
The tribal council and advisory panel also want the board to let hunters kill bear cubs in dens. Along with wolves, bears are blamed for low moose numbers around central Kuskokwim villages, said Doug Carney of Sleetmute, former chairman of Central Kuskokwim Advisory Committee.
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(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
Um, ok. Maybe they can send in whales to do it then.
S.S.S.
That's apparently what happened to a family of coyotes where I live in New York. One day there were some too-near gunshots and I stopped seeing the coyotes at dusk. And no one cares, far as I can tell.
rats with 2” canine teeth
I lived along the Kuskokwim. I won’t say where, and you’ll know why I won’t once I retell these charming observations of living among Alaska’s First People.
Once I came upon a group of men on snowmachines in February. They told me they were headed upriver to get moose. I asked them what they would use to hunt them, expecting to get a caliber for a rifle. One of them smiled and said, “A shovel.” Thay dry Yup’ik humor. He meant that once the animal was poached out of season, they had to cover the bloody snow so it wouldn’t be seen from the air.
I watch a group of Yup’ik hunters on snowmachines corral caribou into a circle and fire wildly into the middle until a few of the animals fell.
I came across a caribou once walking on three legs; one leg had been shot, but the animal was left wounded.
In the village where I lived, literally every mammal larger than 10 pounds was killed and eaten - with the exception of beaver, which has a funky, sometimes foul, smell.
Once the elders came into my classroom to warn kids that a wolf had been spotted five miles away. They told the kids to run home and lock the doors. They then went out to kill it.
Once I was hunting with an elder and I asked him about the “rules for hunting out here.” He told me, “There are no rules.”
Conservation and the longterm care of the environment is a distinctly Western notion arising out of our understanding of the world with rational thought, our Christian ethic, and our respect for rule of law. I like Native people, but their culture isn’t mine. For a lot of Natives I know personally, hunting and fishing is seen as something that you can do anytime, with little longterm consequence. It doesn’t surprise me that they want to kill the wolf and bear pups down there along the Kuskokwim, since those predators are the competition.
It’s a different world, for sure.
Nothing you relate would surprise me. It’s a whole other thing when you get the kill or don’t eat.
I live in the Twin Citie’s first ring suburbs. Not long ago, a coyote was sighted a block or two away carrying a cat back to it’s hide to dine. Early settlers knew what to with large predators. Modern idiots aren’t so well educated.
And yet they managed to survive in spite of that.
Isn't civilized man supposed to be bad for the environment anyway? The libs should love that.
Yeah, the same damn thing happened to me!
What does "S.S.S." mean, anyway ?
S.S.S. = Shoot, Shovel, and most importantly, Shut up.
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