Apparently, Ashely Judd is involved with an ad campaign about how Sarah Palin is endorsing some kind of imaginary “wolf genocide”. To believe the anti-hunting/PETA hyperbole, Sarah Palin herself must be flying around in an Apache slaughtering wolves with the 25mm chaingun.
Of course, if you have two brain cells that you can rub together and make a spark, you might have guessed that Ashley Judd is completely full of crap. Thankfully, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is smart enough to explain in simple words why wolf hunting is necessary:
In control programs, predators are reduced in number but never permanently eliminated from any area; viable populations of predators are a requirement of law. The long-term goal of a successful program is increased prey density, increased harvest, and stable populations of predators. Biologists determine the level of predator removal needed to allow growth of prey populations. Biologists determine predator population objectives for areas that can achieve desired levels of harvest. Intensive management efforts, including predator control, focus on achieving those objectives.
It’s also worthwhile to note that wolves 1) occupy their entire traditional habitat in Alaska, and 2) it’s illegal to shoot wolves from the air. That’s right, the ad is even more misleading than you thought – no animals are being shot from the air. In fact, the aircraft are used to spot the animals and direct the shooters to their targets. The reason that they do this is Alaska is a very big place (in Judd-speak) which means that using planes is a lot more efficient.
A joke I tell my Texas friends when they get too big for their britches gives some size comparison for how big Alaska really is:
“I heard that Alaska is planning to split into two states. Then Texas will only be the third largest!”
And hunting from the are is a bad idea for controlling predators, anyway. You want them to associate the presence of people with bad things happening, such as dying.
Back when dinosaurs walked the earth (the ’80s) PETA ran an ad featuring a helicopter and a dying wolf.
The text attacked American “sport hunters” but the helicopter displayed the logo “CCCP”.
Making stuff up out of thin air (*snicker*) is par for the course for PETA. Besides, isn’t PETA killing their own animals to worry about some wolves in Alaska?