In a letter to the press last week, Rick Steiner called for Alaskans to pressure the Board of Game to hold an emergency meeting to reconsider two citizen petitions regarding the Denali wolf buffer.
Denali National Park is said to be the historical epicenter of wolf controversy in America, which runs deep and wide. Transboundary wildlife issues are almost ubiquitous in National Parks across the country and have recently come to the forefront in places like Yellowstone, where reintroduced wolves are simultaneously lauded by environmentalists for their perceived positive ecological impacts, and intentionally targeted by hunters and ranchers at the park boundary. As the gray wolf faces federal delisting from the Endangered Species Act, the debate over its place among humans is rekindled. To unpack the deeper themes at play in this controversy, we can return to the unabated conflict at its epicenter.
McKinley National Park was designated in 1917 as a 2-million-acre refuge for Dall sheep, largely at the behest of hunters who wanted to protect their favorite game species. It was also the only National Park that did not exterminate wolves or other predators from its land holdings in the ensuing decades, and official scientific study of the park's wolves began in the 1930s. When the park was renamed Denali and expanded to 6.4 million acres in 1980, an intruding 25-mile peninsula of land (Wolf Townships) near the town of Healy was left under state management, exposing wildlife to legal hunting and trapping pressure as they cross the invisible park boundary.
After the Alaskan “wolf wars” of the 1990s and strenuous advocacy from both wildlife activists and controversial biologist Gordon Haber, the Alaska Board of Game (which determines almost all state wildlife management policies) enacted a moratorium on wolf hunting and trapping in some parts of the Wolf Townships in 2000. In 2010, however, when the National Parks Service sought an expansion, the Board instead decided to rescind the entire protected area. Over the past decade, several of the most visible and longest-studied wolf packs in Denali have been greatly diminished or even eliminated entirely, which many activists attribute partly to trapping activity in the Wolf Townships. To complicate matters further, in 2014, the Alaska Board of Game approved “baiting” for grizzly bears in this area, allowing hunters to effectively lure wildlife out of the park. In 2016, the alpha female wolf of a well-known and long-studied pack was shot at a bear bait station in the Wolf Townships and her GPS collar illegally destroyed. The pack collapsed as several other members were killed, demoralizing wildlife activists and inflaming division among local residents.
Alaska Wildlife Alliance and many biologists have long maintained that this area, which serves as vital winter habitat for both the Denali caribou herd and the animals which rely on it for prey, was always intended to be included in the expansion and should be a designated protected area to provide a contiguous habitat zone for the animals who primarily inhabit park lands. Trappers and some hunters vehemently oppose such restrictions, however, as this area is widely known to provide some of the best fur trapping in the region--especially for wolf pelts.
This year, wildlife advocates tried again to get the state to halt the harvest of wolves along the northeastern boundary of Denali National Park. Two emergency petitions were filed with the Alaska Board of Game and Department of Fish and Game (in July and October), asking the state to close wolf hunting and trapping along the northeast park boundary. Both petitions were denied by the commissioner and the Board of Game has, so far, rejected them.
Rick Steiner urges Alaskans in his op-ed, saying, “If the state acts on this request [to re-establish the buffer] now, it could begin to restore wildlife viewing, visitor numbers and spending at Denali.”
Fish and Game admits that 97.6% of all land in Alaska is open to wolf hunting, with only 2.4% closed (the cores of the original parks at Denali, Katmai and Glacier Bay). So approximately 350 million acres is open to killing wolves, with 10 million acres closed. Isn’t 350 million acres, 97.6% of Alaska, enough for people who want to kill wolves? And while there are indeed multiple sources of mortality for Denali wolves — low prey abundance, severe winters, wolf-on-wolf mortality, etc. — the only source of mortality we can control is hunting and trapping. -Rick Steiner
If Alaskans are concerned and want to weigh in on this, now is the time. Email the Board of Game, care of its executive director, Kristy Tibbles (kristy.tibbles@alaska.gov), and request that the board hold an emergency meeting this week to consider the Denali emergency buffer petitions, and to close wolf trapping and hunting on the park boundary before the next scheduled opening Nov. 1. You may wish to remind the board that the Alaska Constitution requires that wildlife be managed for all Alaskans, not just a minority of hunters and trappers.
Alaska Wildlife Alliance is partnering with independant filmmaker Ramey Newell to create a documentary on the Denali wolf buffer issue! Learn more and watch the funding trailer here!
