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you aren't making much sense
Posted by bushrat on Feb 02 2006
Mark,
If you've spoken with bios and read the same reports I have, then I just don't see where you're coming from.
And I'd like to point out that the "Department" (ADFG) is not really in control of managing our wildlife. Hunters think that ADFG in in control of things but actually the control is in the hands of politicians and their appointees of the Board of Game. Intensive Mangagement Law was a partisan "wildlife management" law pushed and passed by partisan politics and a conservative governor (Hickel). Everything we are doing now is based on IM law. All the ridiculous population density goals of ungulates are based on IM law. How IM law is interpreted varies on what political party has the governor's office. Neither liberal nor conservative governors and legislators are learned about biology and wildlife management. Yet they are the ones who decide when and where and how we will kill predators and manage ungulates. There is no balance at all until we take politics out of game managment. And if we can't do that, then perhaps we can all move toward pushing for a bi-partisan nomination of the BOG members and push toward returning control more to biologists rather than political appointees. If we don't repeal IM law, then we are going to be moving toward every IM unit looking like 20A in the Tanana Flats and mimicing Sweden. Some really want that, many hunters really demand a 35% success rate. They just don't realize the crowded conditions and habitat destruction that will happen when they get what they wished for. The difference between "sustained yield" and "maximum sustained yield" is the difference between balance and no balance. There is no such thing as maximum sustained yield without ongoing, consistent predator control and a vast reduction of wolves and bears for all time.
I've heard a few hunters here claim that our State constitution calls for "maximum sustained yield." Well it doesn't. Article 8 of the Alaska State constitution says that "Fish, forests, wildlife, grasslands, and all other replenishable resources belonging to the State shall be utilized, developed, and maintained on the sustained yield principle, subject to preferences among beneficial uses."
It wasn't until Intensive Management law was passed that we came up with this "maximum sustained yield" principle that requires irruption densities of moose in certain units, the very same densities that we had after the fed poisoning program of the 40s and 50s and ongoing aerial reduction of wolves.
I'm for balance too. We just seem to differ on what that is. You think that pred-control based on IM objectives is balance? You think that irruption densities of ungulates is balance? You think that hunters demanding high success rates is balance? Man...I'm the one that can't believe what I'm hearing.
Cheers,
Mark
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