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David---let's use common sense facts
Posted by bushrat on Mar 07 2006
David et al,
I'm not sure about the "doubling" figure. According to the article you use to claim the state's wolf population doubled, "In 1984, the state's wolf population was estimated at between 4,481 to 6,136" and "according to the Department of Fish and Game's last wolf population estimate compiled in 2002, there are between 7,660 and 11,170 wolves in Alaska."
The article goes on to describe the difficulty and expense in counting wolves and estimating densities and then ADFG's Robus says:"That range is a result of a lot of different types of estimates from very good to ballpark estimations." No confidence intervals are given...and as any good biometrician or biologist knows, these figures with so large a range mean little. If we use the high end of the 1984 figure (6,136 wolves) and the low end of the 2002 figure (7,660 wolves), there hasn't been much increase. And since the range of the 2002 study is so vast (intimating a very low confidence interval, or high "margin of error") this 'ballpark' type of estimate means squat. It would be like taking a voter poll and saying the margin of error is +/- 40%. The poll would be worthless to politicians just as the ADFG "poll" is worthless to biologists. This is one of the main gripes of many: We aren't sticking to sound science. And yes, budgets are down, and ADFG and others rightly say they can't do real science without the funding, but articles like this one you have quoted from suggest a false reality, and when you have Robus saying "ballpark" figures were used, any scientific community would simply label that as "guess work." Non-scientific guess work, hyperbole, meaningless drivel.
What's really happening with wolf control is that in areas where wolves are heavily harvested (still) by trappers (like in 20A,which is close enough to Fbks that a lot of local trappers have access), they can achieve high densities along with the moose population, but not high enough to effectively bring down the growing population. As McNay told me, 20A may "mimic Sweden" in some regards. But in areas in which wolves are lightly harvested, as in many of the new (and proposed) control areas, what is likely to happen is that after control, after the moose and/or caribou populations theoretically increase, with so much biomass available wolves can (and do) increase at rates of up to 100% annually. So if we, say, kill off the wolves in 20E to the desired level of 50 wolves, post-control these wolves can double in population annually if there is enough biomass and too few trappers. Year 1 (50 wolves), Year 2 (100 wolves) Year 3 (200 wolves) and by year 4 we are back to the same amount (or more) of wolves we theoretically started with and they are still growing and will increase until the moose population in 20E is again at LDDE state. This is exactly what happened prior to the fed poisoning program of the 1950s---we had irruption densities of ungulates...a few deep snow years, overhunting, predation from increasing predators, and we were back to the same Low-Density-Dynamic-Equilibrium the ecosystem probably "favors." The type of pred contol we are now doing is just a short-term fix. The results of it will be overcrowding of hunters, more and more atv abuse, more controlled use areas, more moose and caribou, less wolves...for about five years. And then, unless we continually use wolf and bear control to keep irruption densities of ungulates out there to please all-too-many hunters who think this is a good thing, we'll have the same LDDE states that seem to be common throughout many areas of Alaska.
The only possible way to achieve permanent Intensive Management harvest and population objectives that I can see would be to have ongoing, consistent, permanent aerial wolf control every five years until the sun burns out. I don't think many of us here have actually looked at some of the harvest objectives we are trying to meet, which are based on the philosophy that demand has exceeded supply, so let's permanently increase the supply-side. (It's sorta like our own system of economics which has the same ideology of a cancer cell---infinite growth until it kills the host <grin>. Alaska's habitat is finite. We can only handle so many hunters before we "ruin" parts of it.)
I sent comments into the board about the proposed wolf-control program to boost the Fortymile caribou herd. Isn't it ironic that the management reports speak to the 'greastest concern" being the increasing amout of hunters using atvs to access the country? Yet here we plan to make sure by law we increase the harvest of caribou, which means that numbers of hunters in the field would have to double and triple and more. If we already have too many hunters using atvs off the taylor hwy, I just don't see the logic in a program of wolf control designed to effectively assure those hunters (like the caribou) will increase by the thousands. We are cutting off our nose to spite our face. It's crazy, it really is crazy. The annual figures of Fortymile Caribou hunters are around 3,000 hunters annually hunting the herd over parts of its range. 41% of successful caribou hunters of this herd use atvs or orvs. To meet the harvest objectives in the lower end of the range proposed by Intensive Management (IM law calls for a harvest of 1,000-15,000 caribou annually) would require about 10,000 hunters, and one can assume 41% or more of those would be using atvs/orvs. Is this what we want for the future of Alaska? All so for a short period everyone can have higher success rates? Do we honestly believe that on the heels of successful wolf/bear control and rising ungulate populations that the Board of Game won't have to impose more controlled use restrictions to simply avoid ruining the habitat? Has anyone hunting off the Taylor recently? Did you find it a "zoo"? Well, picture it with a threefold or more increase of hunters. All this may sound good on paper (less wolves and bears, more moose and caribou), but in the real world the repercussions are great. The repercussions, in my opinion, are too great. We will in effect be destroying the village in order to save it. The value of Alaska hunting doesn't lie in ever-more crowding in order to have higher success rates. Greed will potentially win out and I can't think of anything that hasn't been ruined by greed. It's that cancer-cell ideology. And I don't want to see this place, this state which I've come to cherish and love, go the route of so many others to where we're all mandated to wear blaze-orange vests and caps and there isn't a single river or place to hunt where you aren't hearing the whine of engines and the gunshots of fellow hunters and there is no longer fear of the great bear and you never hear a wolf howl...yada yada yada. Call me crazy, living a pipe dream, living in the past, whatever...but if we aren't careful some of us just may get what we wish for, and it won't be pretty.
Selah,
Mark
Mark
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