17 wolves killed in aerial control program in Interior Alaska

Laurel Andrews

March 6, 2013

 

The aerial wolf control program was conducted in the 1,360 square-mile management area around Allakaket and Alatna, villages which have the combined population of around 140 people. The goal of the program is to reduce predation “as much as possible” in the area for the next five years, said Fish and Game wildlife biologist Cathie Harms. Denali NPS Twitter feed

 

An aerial predator control program that began Saturday is standing down after killing 17 wolves in four days in an area surrounding two Northern Interior villages. The program is one of several wolf reduction programs that are underway this year in areas across Alaska.

This particular program was conducted in a 1,360-square-mile management area around Allakaket and Alatna, villages which have the combined population of around 140 people. The goal was to reduce predation “as much as possible” for the next five years, said Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist Cathie Harms. There are between 25 to 50 wolves estimated in the management area, which is part of Game Management Unit 24B.

The decision to stop aerial surveys was made after Tuesday’s field work, said Harms. “If wolves do come into the area then we may resume,” later in the spring, she said. The staff involved in the aerial shootings will now head to Tok to commence the aerial control program approved for that area.
“This program is not to increase the number of moose overall,” Harms said, but to boost calf survival rates to allow for more hunting by villagers. In order to gauge whether the program is working, Fish and Game will tally numbers of moose population and moose harvests. They estimate that there are about 400 moose in the management area, and they want those numbers to remain steady, while increasing the numbers of moose harvested.

The Board of Game approved the Allakaket-area predator control program in March 2012. In this case, the villages approached the board asking for help in increasing the numbers of moose in the area.

“The community is very supportive” of the program, Harms said. “They also had very strongly held cultural beliefs on how wolves should be handled,” and they have been given the wolf carcasses to dispose of in a customary way.

“We’re skinning them and disposing of carcasses in traditional Koyukuk Athabascan manner,” village second chief P.J. Simon told the Daily News-Miner. “We skin them, cut all the joints, put some food in their jaws, burn the food, dismember the wolf and bring it back out to the forest.”

Normally, the wolf hides are sold at auction, and the money goes back toward Fish and Game. But Harms stressed that between cleaning the hides and shipping, the department doesn’t make any money.

While the communities of Allakaket and Alatna support the program, such predator control tactics are controversial among Alaskans elsewhere.

Wildlife biologist Victor Van Ballenberghe said that killing the wolves in Allakaket may not actually increase moose numbers. When the board considered the proposal, the numbers showed that “bears were likely the major predators on moose in the area,” he said. However, the villages requested not to have a bear control program, so the board authorized wolf control programs only.

“There’s been 30 years of research in Alaska on moose predator interactions, and whenever there’s been a severe predation program ... the information has shown that bears are as least as important a predator on moose as wolves, and oftentimes more important,” he said.

Rick Steiner, former conservation professor at the University of Alaska, and an independent environmental advisor through Oasis Earth, said that he has doubts about the numbers used by Fish and Game. They’re “usually reliant on bad science,” Steiner said, and aren’t open to independent scientific studies.
“Few people trust their data and their justification for doing this,” he added.

While Steiner noted that it’s important to “default to the villages wishes,” for this predator control program, problems in the environment may present themselves.  “You can have long-term problems in these wildlife systems,” when predators are eliminated, he said.

Harms said that the effect of such control efforts on predators is “very short term,” noting that wolves repopulate quickly. Predators are the “lead limiting factor” in prey populations in Alaska, she said, meaning that prey die by predators more often than any other factor. She said that of every 100 moose, seven die by accidents, such as drowning, seven by humans, and the rest are killed by predators.

She added that predator control is "taking place on less than 10 percent of the state" and will “never become the norm.”

Controversy on the science and politics behind the programs will no doubt continue. Meanwhile, aerial predator control programs will continue this year in places around the state, including near Tok, McGrath, in the Nelchina Basin and around Cook Inlet.

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