Palin's $150 Wolf Paws

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

When reports first came out of people describing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as "manipulative" and "conniving," it was just words. But the more we learn about her short history in leadership positions, the more believable these allegations become.

How a person treats animals says a lot about their character. Just because a person identifies as a hunter doesn't mean they can't respect wildlife. There is a difference between someone who enjoys fishing and someone who gets a barrel and a shotgun and takes everything with fins. The latest revelations from Mark Benjamin at Salon.com reveals Palin to be of the latter persuasion.

In Alaska, the state encourages the culling of the wolf population by its citizenry, so -- in the theory of rabid hunters -- as to cultivate a larger moose population for hunters, both subsistence and recreational. This video from Defenders of Wildlife shows a brief look at the process of killing a wolf from an airplane in Alaska.

Click here to watch the video

"It's not a clean kill," a narrator states. As you'll see in this video, the wolves often are injured and bleeding, only to be finished off after the plane lands. Other times, the gunner can't hit the wolf at all, so the pilot chases it until it reaches utter exhaustion. Benjamin describes the wolves as easy to target, much "like targets in a video game, sprinting across the white canvas below."

Sure, Palin's advocacy for such bloodletting is concerning on a personal level. But it's not just the cruelty of the action, it's how Palin manipulated governmental processes and public opinion to get what she wanted and to satisfy the powerful Alaskan hunting lobby -- and the particularly "thrill shooting" wing of that group, because more conservationist hunters are against her policies. That's where the story throws up legitimate questions about her fitness to govern the nation.

The wolf culling program was already in place when Palin took over the governorship, although the Alaskan population has voted to ban it several times. However, it was Palin's expansion of the program, accomplished in ways that are clearly Bush- and Cheney-esque, that gives some observers cause for worry.

As Benjamin reports, Palin expanded the program to reward untrained citizens for killing wolves. She offered a $150 incentive in taxpayer money to hunters who, after they'd killed a wolf, hacked off the front left leg of the animal as proof.  Yes, you read that right.  The aerial shooters land their planes and helicopters, walk up to the wolves and hack off the front left paw to receive $150 in taxpayer money for each one turned in!  That's not fiscal conservatism; that's welfare for well-off hunters who can afford to fly and shoot.

When she ran up against some opposition -- including virtually the entire scientific community who study wildlife population issues -- to her plan to turn sportsmen into bounty hunters, she went into full combat mode with two secret weapons: a distaste for science and willingness to deceive.

She ignored the 172 scientists who told her point blank that the numbers the state came up with for optimal moose population were unsustainably high, and dismissed their request for an even-handed conservation policy. She refused to provide evidence that the program even worked to raise the moose population. Instead, she approved a $400,000 state-funded advertising campaign that praised the success of the wolf culling program just three weeks before a public referendum vote on the matter.

Now she's trying to put the program under the purview of her own office, transferring authority from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game over to a panel appointed by the governor. Either way, the department's Web site currently peddles what some scientists call false and misleading information about the effect predators have on moose. A majority of the nutrition Alaskan wolves get from such populations is from scavenged meat, scientists contend. Only an estimated 30% of the diet of wolves comes from actually killing moose.  And the moose are thriving in Alaska, not being depleted.

Scientists are begging the McCain team to release more information on how their administration would treat the government-maligned institution of American science. Meanwhile, Palin sounds more and more like a certain leader who has done everything he can to devalue knowledge and research.

Several sources quoted in Benjamin's article draw broader conclusions regarding what this story says about Palin, but one stood out:

"Across the board, Sarah Palin puts on a masquerade, claiming she is using sound management and science," says Nick Jans, an Alaskan writer who co-sponsored the initiative. "In reality she uses ideology and ignores science when it is in her way... This is a reflection of a somebody who doesn't have any use for science."

Sound like someone we know?

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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