ANCHORAGE, Alaska, - A federal judge on Friday invalidated the aerial gunning of wolves in several areas of Alaska in a case brought by four conservation groups challenging the state's wolf control program. At the same time, Superior Court Judge William Morse upheld the practice of shooting wolves from planes and helicopters.
The program was challenged by Friends of Animals, Defenders of Wildlife, the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, and the Sierra Club, who sued the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Board of Game in 2006 after the Board extended the areas where aerial gunning was allowed.
In his decision, Judge Morse examined the entire history of Alaska's wolf control programs. His ruling upholds the aerial gunning program as a whole, while banning the practice in four areas covering up to 15,000 of the total of about 60,000 square miles covered by the program.
The areas where the judge banned aerial gunning are the areas into which the Game Board extended it in 2006, notably covering the entire Forty Mile caribou herd near Tok and also in an area across Cook Inlet from Anchorage.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimates there are now between 7,700 and 11,200 wolves in the state. State wildlife managers say they prey too heavily on caribou and moose and that the aerial shooting program will increase the populations of these animals needed by subsistance hunters.
But the conservation groups maintain that the science on which the Game Board bases its decisions is not sufficient to justify killing more than 700 wolves since the program began in 2003.