Hunting Wolves in Alaska

* Your article on the Alaska wolf issue (Jan. 3) was well-documented and fair to both sides. I have lived in different parts of Alaska for 70 years and fully understand the problem. It is not only the hunters from Fairbanks but the natives from the villages who want the wolf population reduced in that area.

I would hope that Pricilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals, would go to some of the villages in this 4,000-square-mile area. These people live off the country--moose, caribou and dried fish. There are no Safeways or even 7-Eleven stores there. The basics come by air. Taking 100 wolves out of a population of 7,000 is not out of the question when it means food for those who subsist on fish and wildlife.

Man and wolf compete for the same meat and both need to be controlled.

W. L. KUBLEY

Ketchikan, Alaska

* Shooting at wolves from a helicopter could pass for a class Q serial thriller if it weren’t such a horror story.

The wholesale slaughter of wolves in Alaska is deplorable not only in terms of needless killing of a magnificent breed of animal; the soul of collective mankind has slipped downward a few steps on the evolutionary ladder, as well. Be assured that a wolf would at least face us eye to eye were the positions reversed.

When we violate anyone, we crucify ourselves, we become our own victims. Haven’t we practiced that phase of our development long enough?

We also have within our nature the power to behave peaceably with honor and respect toward our planet-mates, celebrating our differences rather than destroying them. And everything living, whether it walks on two legs, four, or none at all, has the right to that kind of behavior from each of us!

ALICIA HOLIDAY

West Hills

* One need not be a militant animal rights activist to know that killing wolves that hunt caribou for survival so that there will be more caribou for the people who hunt them for sport is terribly cruel and wrong.

The leader of the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Assn. (an ironic name, to say the least!) says that it would be “fair” if of the harvestable surplus wildlife, hunters took 30%, bears 30%, wolves 30% and natural causes 10%. Perhaps the association could take a meeting with the bears and wolves to debate the issue. I’m sure they could get Mr. Ed to mediate. Oh, and somebody needs to let the other animals know that only 10% of them are allowed to die naturally.

There, that was easy enough; now if we could only do lunch with the spotted owl.

JILL E. SMITH

Huntington Beach