When I decided to start this blog I planned to do more lifestyle than politics. However there are so many hot ticket wildlife issues going on in Alaska right now it’s hard not to jump on my soapbox. The attached Anchorage Daily New article is about one more example of on group who are offering a caribou herd to the alter of gia. This really irritates me you have a food source that people depend on is being decimated by wolves yet it is the wolves that are being protected. In the video I posted yesterday Ashley Judd blabbed about managing wolves with scientific principals. She’s right they should be, but they are not they are being managed by a bunch of gia worshipers who treat them, wolves and other predators, like gods while ungulates become the blood sacrifice. It is the ungulate herds that traditionally feed people over the eons not wolves. In Alaska wildlife has and is the traditional mainstay for both rural and urban, courts have even ruled that all Alaskans are subsistence hunters. Alaska is unique among the states in that all resources are jointly own by the people. This includes wildlife, making the Alaska Department of Fish & Game the primary manager of all wildlife in Alaska including federal land. However in Katie John v Alaska the Ninth Circuit gave the federal land managers control of subsistence hunting & fishing on all federal lands and certain waters in Alaska. Title VIII of ANILCA set up the Federal Subsistence Board and Regional Advisory Councils. The regional Councils are made up of local users who meet twice a year to discuss local subsistence needs as well as other subsistence issues then advise the full Board whose job, among other duties, is to allocate fish & game for subsistence uses.

Last spring Secretary of Interior Salazar met with the chairs of all ten of the regional council’s. One of the items discussed was predator control on federal land. The chairs urged the secretary to align federal predator control programs with those of the state. Too many federal land managers look at this as the state usurping their authority when they should be looking out for the interest of the people. Until federal and state managers come together on predator control predators will continue to win and gia will get his sacrificial caribou.

All that said the people of Unimak should not have waited for the wolves to destroy one of their primary sources of food before acting. They were the ones there they should have been hunting and trapping the wolves long before they got out of control. People have gone to long believing the government will fix all their problems when they had the means to take care of them before things got out of hand.

Anchorage Daily News
Legal action threatened over state predator control in refuge
By MARY PEMBERTON
The Associated Press
Published: May 24th, 2010 06:45 PM
Last Modified: May 24th, 2010 06:45 PM
A federal agency threatened legal action if Alaska moves ahead with plans to kill wolves.
In a letter Monday, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service cautioned the Alaska Department of Fish and Game about proceeding with plans to kill wolves on refuge land on Unimak Island without a federal special-use permit.
Doing so would be considered as a trespass on the refuge and such action would be referred to the U.S. attorney, according to a Fish & Wildlife Service news release.
The letter was in response to one that state wildlife officials sent last week to Rowan Gould, the Fish & Wildlife Service’s acting director.
In that letter, Corey Rossi, director of the state Division of Wildlife Conservation, said, “Immediate action is required to protect the herd, specifically this year’s calves.
“Waiting to take action places this year’s calves in too great a jeopardy,” wrote Rossi, a strong proponent of aerial predator control where wolves and bears are killed to increase moose and caribou numbers. Federal agency is required by law to follow a certain process — a process the state is well aware of but apparently doesn’t want to wait for, said Fish & Wildlife Service spokesman Bruce Woods.State Fish and Game Department officials declined Monday to answer questions or comment.
Wade Willis, a former state wildlife biologist and a vocal player on the conservation side of Alaska wildlife politics, supported Fish & Wildlife’s action.
“Fish and Wildlife cannot tolerate the state’s attempts to obliterate the last 30 wolves remaining on Unimak Island,” he said.
“Federal management authority always takes preference over state management mandates. The USFWS is mandated to protect natural diversity and abundance. Alaska prefers to manage for a game farm, where wolves and bears are decimated to allow unchecked commercial guiding and trophy hunting.”
Last week, the state Fish and Game Department announced that beginning about June 1 it will shoot some wolves on Unimak to protect caribou calving grounds under its aerial predator-control program.
The department plans to use two biologists and four pilots to kill wolves over three weeks on Unimak, which is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.
It would be the first time in recent history that aerial predator control was used inside a national refuge in Alaska.
Caribou are a subsistence food for people living on the island, but their numbers have declined sharply. In 2002, there were more than 1,200 caribou. Last year, fewer than 300 were counted. The state has an unofficial estimate of up to 30 wolves.
In its letter, the Fish & Wildlife Service said it recognizes the urgency of the situation but is required to follow federal law when initiating new management programs on its refuges.
It also points out that the federal agency has been working with the state to better understand the biological factors in the herd’s decline since concerns were raised in December. To that end, it has issued permits to allow additional radio collaring and biological sampling of wolves and caribou, the letter says.
The federal agency hopes the jurisdictional issue can be resolved without going to court. If it can’t, maybe the court could resolve it “once and for all,” Woods said.

It looks like another American icon is headed south of the border. Polaris is to snow machines as Chevrolet is to automobiles. I’ve owned several Polaris snow machines over the years,  for all-round performance and durability Polaris was the best at least in my humble opinion. I can’t see how it will remain at the top using substandard labor. Made in Mexico is the twentieth century equivalent of the last century’s  Made in Japan. The difference is Japan knew it and worked to change their image I don’t believe Mexican manufactures care.  I realize it was a business decision by Polaris but North America is the largest buyer of recreational snow machines & ATV’s in the world. How long do manufactures think they can keep putting their largest market out of work and still stay a float? How many European and Asian countries buy toys? There will always be a market for few utility machines but no one makes them any more all of the over the counter snow machines made today are toys. Some may be sold as “dual purpose” but they’re toys.

As news sank in that its largest employer will be shutting down, the village of Osceola, Wis., looked to an unknown future Friday.

More than 500 employees of a Polaris Industries manufacturing plant were told the day before that their jobs would be gone within two years. Some work will move to other plants in the region, but much of the operation will move to Mexico.

What followed was shock, employees and community members said — shock that hasn’t even begun to wear off.

“We can’t even really begin to imagine what’s going to hit us,” Polk County supervisor Larry Jepsen said of the local economic impact. “It’s kind of like a volcano, and the dust cloud hasn’t hit the ground yet.”

Besides the hundreds of employees who have built their lives around Polaris, many others stand to be affected — plumbers and electricians who subcontract at the plant, the local hospital, just to name a few, Jepsen said.

“This thing ripples through the entire community. It really does,” he said.

Doug and Marlene Nykanen have owned Osceola Pharmacy in the village’s downtown for 25 years. Many of their customers work at the plant, Marlene Nykanen said. “That’s going to change.”

To read more of the article:

http://www.twincities.com/ci_15138693