Little Safety in Numbers : But Alaska Plan Will Call for Killing of Fewer Wolves

To survive, a wolf needs to eat the equivalent of 12 moose or 36 caribou a year, but when Alaska’s Board of Game decided to kill wolves to save caribou, the reaction was predictable. The call of the wild was a whimper compared to the howls of outraged animal lovers in the Lower 48.

Outsiders--to Alaskans, that means all non-Alaskans--inferred that the wolves would be killed for no other reason than to save more caribou for hunters to kill or, at best, for tourists to view.

It was a public relations disaster. The Fund for Animals, Defenders of Wildlife and other animal rights organizations called for a boycott of tourism to Alaska, which was all it took for Gov. Walter Hickel to tell his Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Wildlife Conservation to come up with a more palatable plan.

The wolves had their reprieve but, wildlife experts in the state said, the problem remained: too many wolves feeding on diminishing numbers of caribou. When the wolves ate themselves out of caribou, what would become of the wolves?

That’s why a new plan, due to be presented to the Board of Game on June 26, still calls for the killing of wolves, although on a reduced scale: 75 to 150, instead of 300 to 400, and in only one area, southwest of Fairbanks.

“A lot of the people down south think the key to keeping viable wolf populations is to keep wolves,” said Dave Kelleyhouse, wildlife conservation director. “They don’t understand that the best way to do it is to maintain a healthy prey base. It’s real simple.”

It should have been. But another point that didn’t come across was that the project involved only a few hundred of the state’s estimated historic high of 5,900 to 7,200 wolves that were preying on specific, underpopulated caribou herds in three areas covering 3 1/2% of the state.

“It’s a big state,” said Ken Taylor, a state wildlife biologist in Fairbanks.

The whole project, as first proposed, would have cost only $100,000 of Kelleyhouse’s annual $12-million budget, he said.

In the Delta area, where there are 220 to 295 wolves, the caribou have been reduced by half over the last three years, down to about 5,500. In the Fortymile area, where the caribou numbered 528,000 in the 1920s, about 200 wolves now prey on 22,000.

Closing hunting seasons hasn’t helped. Alaska’s experts say hunters statewide take only 3% of the caribou each year, wolves up to 30%. Additionally, Alaskans in remote areas are allowed to hunt for subsistence.

“They don’t have grocery stores around the corner,” Taylor said.

But, the experts say, if you take out up to 80% of the wolves in those limited areas over three to five years, the caribou herds would revive.

Kelleyhouse was wildlife manager of the Delta area for a wolf-control project in the early ‘80s. That earned him the sobriquet “Machine Gun Kelleyhouse” among animal rights advocates, but “the (caribou) herd had a 10-14% increase,” he said. “This is not new. We’ve got this down to a pretty good science. What’s new about it is we went through this big public planning process.”

It took two years. Hunters and anti-hunters were included.

But that involvement backfired when animal rights groups in the Lower 48 were tipped off. When the board’s decision came down, the Fund for Animals was ready. As soon as director Wayne Pacelle got the word in Silver Spring, Md., he was on the phone to the newspapers.

“I would say we played a fairly decisive role in (killing the plan),” Pacelle said. “Almost all of the hunters I spoke to down here thought it was appalling.”

Most appalling to conventional hunters was that Alaska proposed to kill the wolves by having state wildlife personnel shoot them from helicopters. Now it will be proposed to take them by trapping or shooting from the ground, at least through 1994.

Said Dick Burley, chairman of the Board of Game: “I was not surprised at the public outcry. What I was surprised at is that we were attacked on the use of helicopters, which the environmental community had insisted we use.”

Said Kelleyhouse: “We have developed a technique that everybody in the world has looked to as the model of the most effective and humane way to do this. It’s a much sturdier shooting platform. Your shots are sure.”

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“Goose bumps form as you recognize the unmistakable howls of a wolf pack. . . . What is this animal that fires our imagination so, at once repelling and attracting us?” --The National Parks and Conservation Assn.

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Part of the problem is the wolf. Part of the problem is Alaska.

If the wolf wasn’t an object of mystique before Jack London wrote about it, it has been since. Alaska is populated by rugged individualists, many of whom came because they were tired of others telling them how to live.

Said Nick Pierskalla, an outfitter and fishing and hunting guide: “I just plain don’t like being dictated to by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m up here for one reason: Leave me alone!”

Years ago, Alaska poisoned its wolves. But even before the environmental movement got up to speed, Taylor noted, poisoning was considered “not socially or politically acceptable” and was stopped.

“Denning”--the killing of wolf pups in their dens--also was stopped.

Until 1971 the state issued permits to the public to shoot wolves from the air, “but we got an awful lot of flak from that,” Taylor said. So they looked for other methods.

One was to track wolves from the air, then land and shoot them “under the guise of sport,” Taylor said. That was allowed in isolated areas until last year.

Trapping? “There aren’t enough trappers to impact the wolf population,” Taylor said.

And too few are willing to travel miles through wilderness by snowmobile to set and monitor their traps when pelts are selling for only $300, tops.

“The trappers now make more money shoveling snow in the cities,” Taylor said.

There once was a $50 bounty on wolves, but it wasn’t practical because it was general statewide instead of targeting problem wolves.

So it was proposed to remove the wolves by helicopter using state personnel--very professional, very controlled. Then that idea was shot down.

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“Had the Lower 48 managed their wolf populations as we do now, the wolf would still be a viable species (there).” --Dave Kelleyhouse, director, Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation

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What next for the wolves?

“They should be completely protected,” Pacelle said, brushing aside the biologists’ theories. “They’re trying to do a type of game-farming up there.”

Kelleyhouse retorted: “There are 124-million acres in this state where we’re basically letting nature take its course.”

Bruce Bartley, information officer for the Division of Wildlife Conservation, fielded countless calls in the days after the announcement of the plan to kill the wolves.

“People were so upset they could barely speak,” Bartley said. “If what I knew about the issue was only what I’d read in the papers, I’d be mad, too. But once we explained it all to them, nobody hung up mad . . . (although) some didn’t like it.”

What Bartley and the others have been trying to explain: “You don’t preserve wildlife populations by sitting around watching it. You manage it.”

Kelleyhouse complained of “some real biological problems that the outside newspapers have just glossed over.

“Most of the national coverage has failed to grasp that, although we’re talking about reductions of 75-80% in these control areas, that does not jeopardize the wolf population in Alaska, or even in those areas.”

Wolves reproduce at a rate of up to 40% each year.

“They’re dogs,” Taylor said. “They are far more productive than the prey population.”

Also, Kelleyhouse said: “There were thousands of square miles previously open to hunting and trapping of wolves that would have been closed (by the plan). That part was completely ignored.

“We have to consider the feelings of the people outside (who) look at Alaska as something really special--and it is. But we have been good stewards up here. There isn’t a single species that we’ve managed since statehood that has ever been on the Endangered Species list.”

It’s a tough sell, and Alaska is in a tough spot. It could be intimidated by threats of a tourist boycott and, with only two U.S. senators and one seat in the House of Representatives, it could be easily steamrollered by national opinion. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) has introduced a bill to amend the federal Airborne Hunting Act.

“The legislative backlash to their intransigence could work against them in a big way,” said Pacelle, who suggested that other natural resources besides wolves could be at stake.

Or, Alaska could simply ignore the Lower 48 and go its own way. A Fairbanks resident wrote to the Anchorage Daily News, suggesting to “replace the governor with someone who understands game cannot be managed by politics.”

Said Pacelle: “We’re going up there to battle in the summer. We’re going to fight this with our last breath.”

Joel Bennett, a former member of the Board of Game, said: “It’s going to be an ugly meeting.”

There have been a few changes on the board since January, and if they alter the balance at all it appears to be toward wolf control. Proponents are confident that the caribou will continue to decline during the two-year moratorium on aerial shooting, which will prove there is no other effective method.

Kelleyhouse could not conceal a smile when he said, “I was at a tourism meeting the other day and they said the bookings now for this summer’s tourist season are higher than ever, and they attribute it to all the coverage we got outside (on the wolf issue) . . . sort of like what happened after the Exxon Valdez (oil spill in 1989). Everybody predicted gloom and doom, and there was a 14% increase in tourism the next year.”

Kelleyhouse, Taylor and their colleagues say they find no joy in killing wolves. But game management often is difficult.

“When you lose your caribou and your moose, you also lose your wolves and the whole food chain collapses . . . wolverines, ravens,” Kelleyhouse said.

“They’re one of the most beautiful animals we have up here,” Taylor said. “It’s enjoyable to watch the pack’s interaction, and most of our staff shares that feeling. Nobody got into wildlife management to kill animals.”