Alaska’s Wolf Shoot: Farewell, White Fang : Wildlife: Hunters with clout decree wolves to be in excess. The animals are victims, like the Sioux, of the frontier myth.

Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?

In November, the Alaska Board of Game adopted a plan to kill up to 80% of the wolves in some parts of the state so that more caribou and moose--species preyed upon by wolves--will be available to hunters from the state’s two largest cities, Anchorage and Fairbanks.

If the plan goes into effect, the killing will begin this winter. Shooters will pick off the wolves from helicopters, wiping out entire packs as they run through the snow, similar to the 1870s U.S. Cavalry riding into an encampment of Lakota Sioux and gunning down men, women and children.

Frontiers do that; they bring out the best in some people and the worst in others.

Wildlife managers in the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, many of whom are hunters, are trained to manage. They study statistics, analyze trends and decide how many animals or fish can be removed from a given area in a given time. They play God in Alaska, a frustrating game for some when politics is involved, as it always is, and limits are exceeded, as they often are, through the efforts of commercial, subsistence and recreational hunting and fishing groups who see no other plates on the table but their own.

For others, the power can be intoxicating, as it probably was for the seven members of the Board of Game, each appointed by the governor, listening to testimony on both sides. Rumors said board members had been lobbied by wolf-hating, hard-line hunters early on, and had made their decision before the first testimony was heard.

A pity. At stake were not just the lives of hundreds of wolves, but a national vision of Alaska. People were watching, wondering. Would the same mistakes made elsewhere be repeated here? Would the welfare of every species in Alaska eventually pivot on the whim of just one?

Perhaps.

Gov. Walter Hickel told local radio that outsiders were too ignorant to understand wildlife-management problems in Alaska. His managers produced statistical designs showing that the aerial hunt would benefit all animals involved, eventually producing more of everything: caribou, moose, wolves--and happy hunters.

They just don’t get it. Aerial wolf hunting is a question not of science, but of morality. One is not the handmaiden of the other. These guys should stop reading American Rifleman and start reading Thoreau: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.” Let’s think about it: Do we want Alaska as de facto wilderness, or as moose farms and caribou ranches?

It has happened before. From 1976 to 1983, the state of Alaska killed 1,300 wolves at a cost of $824,000, or $634 per wolf. The result, stated Dave Cline, Alaska regional vice president of the National Audubon Society, in a letter to Hickel, was “no measurable long-term improvement in prey populations. The resulting public furor caused then-Gov. Steve Cowper to freeze funding for any additional aerial wolf control.”

The furor is back. Within days of the November decision to reinstitute the aerial wolf-control program, a national boycott was launched against Alaska tourism, the state’s most rapidly growing industry. Cancellations rolled in, and Hickel, a self-made millionaire who can hear a dollar bill fall on hotel carpeting, began to sing another song. To improve his state’s image, if not his agenda, Hickel has invited interested organizations to attend a “wolf summit” in Fairbanks in mid-January. Wolves might be available for relocation to whatever other states were willing to pay for them. But the wolves had to go.

Farewell, White Fang. For Alaska’s hard-line hunters with loud mouths and powerful contacts, the prejudice remains: moose and caribou, good; wolves, bad. It is the frontier myth, a sort of convenient religion that believes the Earth is a garden to plant and harvest however we please, to eradicate or relocate others--Lakota Sioux, wolves, whatever--and multiply ourselves.

It has happened before. Listen to the Sioux. Gone with them are the wolves and the wilderness, to make the land safe for cattle and sheep.

Alaska deserves better. Let it be.