Remember when state officials made such a big deal about managing wildlife “scientifically” for “subsistence?“ Well, never mind---they were faking it.

Because the state kept getting successfully sued for not following “scientific” management principles, Alaska wildlife legislation (SB 176/HB 256) proposes the state stop pretending to do science at all and operate without any principles other than allowing the Board of Game to engage in perpetual predator control for the purpose of “providing a high level of human harvest“ for “all hunter demand.”*

The state will continue to play the subsistence card---it‘s a great fantasy. Recently it was argued that, since the economy is poor and wildlife depleted, we need to kill more wolves and bears so Bush-dwellers can get meat for “subsistence.”

If that were true the state would have restricted the guided hunts, airplane hunts, gargantuan off-road vehicle hunts, “urban subsistence” hunts and cow hunts---before wildlife got wiped out.

Remember how enthusiastic Gov. Palin was with her plan for a return to the glory days of subsistence? Now she seems half-hearted.

The governor’s initial failure to appoint a Native to the Alaska Board of Game may have been politically naïve but was operationally irrelevant (“Game board appointments eliminate Bush, Native seats,” ADN 2-2).

Subsistence reared it’s stuffed and mounted head when Natives protested their total exclusion from the board. The governor’s office responded with a subsistence euphemism (the family “lived off the land” near Tok) as justification for appointing a former Outdoor Council president.

Teresa Sager-Albaugh honorably declined the post, but the governor’s quick appointment of a token Native makes no difference (unless he turns out to be a scientific subsistence activist)---the state won it’s war against subsistence a long time ago.

What? After fifty years you still believe the constitutional mandate making all Alaskans “subsistence” users wasn’t intended to keep Native subsistence rights from interfering with the white man’s hunt?

To aboriginals, subsistence was sacred---directly linked to survival. Aboriginals could not afford civilized exaggerations concerning the location or numbers of animals because it would cause hunters to waste energy and starve.

Civilized “subsistence” hunters use up far more energy than any food value they derive. They expend vast amounts of fossil fuel and spends lots of money---which translates into political pressure to protect their entitlement hunts.

Civilized hunters ride to the hunt on padded seats and with full bellies---but raise the specter of starvation to promote killing predators. The mythical, aboriginal subsistence hunter is merely the poster child for rooting out wildlife with high-tech machinery---thus the token Native game board appointee.

The inference of predator control is that predators wiped out the animals. But oil pipeline money subsidized the vehicular “harvest.” “Subsistence for all” meant subsistence for none---wildlife was squandered within decades.

The problem with wildlife management in Alaska is that wildlife just keeps on disappearing and the survivors just keep on getting slaughtered. Game management resembles a blood-bath because wildlife is “managed” the same way it is “harvested”---run down with vehicles to “get in position for a shot.”

Now the state wants to expand aerial wolf-killing, make it legal to kill bears with cubs and strangle wolf pups in their dens.

Why not? Wildlife extraction interests have won their war against wildlife by decimating it; won their war against wildlife viewers by eliminating wildlife to view; won their war against “outside animal rights activists” by reducing populations of all species inside Alaska; won their war against the Alaska public because the game board is now free to slaughter predators by any means plus aircraft.

The framers of the Alaska Constitution---in ensuring access to game animals by all---have succeeded in making the concept of subsistence meaningless. Alaska Natives---the last “traditional” subsistence culture---are now a transformed culture. Witness the Nelchina caribou hunt where Natives opposed an income limit to qualify for a symbolic, subsistence-in-name-only hunt.

SB 176/HB 256, if passed, will just make it official---“subsistence” and “science” are wildlife management principles for suckers only.

Rudy Wittshirk