Sky Hunts Trigger Heated Arguments in Alaska : Wildlife: Advocates say practice keeps wolf population in check. Critics call it ‘legalized thrill-killing.’

Don Troutman, a silver-haired hunting guide who spends his summers in Alaska’s remote Brooks Range, was talking about wolves.

“They’re everywhere up there,” he said. “They’re up in the mountains. They’re out in the valleys . . . When you fly day after day, you see wolves every day.”

In fact, he asserted, there may actually be too many wolves in some regions of Alaska--an idea that goes to the heart of an emotional, complicated debate that’s been simmering in Alaska for years now.

Alaska is the only state in which wolves are not considered threatened or endangered. State biologists here estimate between 5,000 and 6,500 wolves roam in at least 700 packs across the state, and that their numbers are stable or growing in most areas.

Wolves are carnivorous, surviving by killing and eating other animals--often moose and caribou. At issue in Alaska is whether wolves should be hunted to protect caribou and moose for a growing number of human meat hunters, and beyond that, whether airplanes should be used to do it.

Dozens of people showed up in Fairbanks during the past week to argue about it before the Alaska Board of Game. In a state where wildlife and environmental issues often dominate political discussion, the issue of airborne wolf hunting has become one of the most heated.

On one side are hunters and guides like Troutman, who argue that caribou and moose populations, though far from threatened, could be expanded considerably in many areas, for the benefit of hunters, if wolf populations were cut.

“People think you’re going out there and annihilating every wolf,” Troutman said. “You can’t do that . . . Wolves aren’t easy to hunt.”

Wolves are so elusive that trapping or shooting them from the ground is extremely difficult, even for the most skillful trappers and hunters. So the solution, advocates of wolf hunting believe, is what has become known here as “land-and-shoot” hunts--tracking the animals using small airplanes, then landing, stalking and shooting them on the ground.

State wildlife authorities have generally agreed with that approach. Alaska has banned such “wolf-control” measures as using the planes to run the wolves into exhaustion or shooting them from the air or poisoning programs. But many state officials believe land-and-shoot wolf hunting, when properly monitored, can be a legitimate way of managing wolf populations.

Land-and-shoot wolf hunting is allowed in roughly a third of the state, with about 75 hunters participating last year. Hunting groups have been pressing to open up even more regions.

But land-and-shoot wolf hunting has drawn intense opposition from a combination of environmental and wildlife-protection groups, at least some Alaska fur trappers and other local residents. They argue that land-and-shoot wolf hunting, in most cases, is not sporting, harasses the animals and invites airplane hunters to illegally shoot wolves and other wildlife from the air.

One trapper termed it “legalized thrill-killing,” and critics have been urging a statewide ban.

“The public’s view of land-and-shoot has grown to one of repulsion,” said Albert Manville, senior wildlife biologist with Defenders of Wildlife, a Washington, D.C., based group. Other organizations protesting land-and-shoot wolf hunting include Greenpeace, the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Fund.

Manville said the wolf has become a “symbol of wilderness” to many Americans. “The fact that wolves and their habitats have been virtually eliminated in the contiguous lower 48 states means that people in the lower 48 and Alaska feel even more strongly that we must do better,” he said.

Others argued that factors besides wolves may be contributing to declining moose or caribou populations, among them shrinking habitats and increasing use of off-road vehicles by hunters.

John Zabielski, a bearded guide and trapper who left his trap line near the Yukon border to attend the hearing, said he didn’t see wolves and other predators as competition, as do some hunters, and said there were far fewer wolves in his area than the state says.

“I don’t feel threatened by the (grizzly bear) or wolf,” said Zabielski, who traps wolves. “There’s no predator as effective as me, and there’s a lot of me out there.” He said he had seen people illegally shoot wolves, lynx and other game from planes, and argued that Alaska’s vast stretches of remote back country make enforcing land-and-shoot rules virtually impossible.

But such arguments carried little weight with a majority of the game board.

“You always have a few bandits,” said Sidney Huntington, a longtime game board member from the Athabascan Indian village of Galena. “But we’re civilized people.” He argued there is nothing wrong with controlling wolves to protect animals for hunters, particularly Indians and Eskimos who may depend on moose and caribou for much of their meat supply.

Earlier this week, a majority on the board agreed to expand land-and-shoot wolf hunting into several new areas of the state. At the same time, the panel tightened regulations to make it more difficult for airplane hunters to illegally kill wolves and sell the pelts, which can bring as much as $400 each.

Meanwhile, the state also is launching a two-year study of the future of wolf management in Alaska, a process intended to bring all sides in the issue closer together. But after the action this week, some opponents said they weren’t interested in participating.