I received an email today from a relative berating Sarah Palin for hunting wolves from airplanes, and was urged to not vote for McCain/Palin because of this. (There are a lot of emotional Democrats in my family: I think that I am the only Republican, unless someone is keeping their mouth shut…)The link to the video is here:

Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund video

Other than the obvious issues related to this sort of email, curiousity got the better of me and I searched around for a more balanced view of this. I found this rebuttal:

Kswatcher’s Weblog

Although I abhor such hunting, especially for predators (my wife and I are dog breeders, so I have a soft spot for wolves and other wild canines) I suspected that there might be more behind this than was included in the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund video. There was…

It turns out to be a wildlife management issue in Alaska, and that the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences has an issue with how the State of Alaska is managing their wildlife resources, i.e. not doing exactly what these councils want.

Wildlike management issues are very complex, controversial, difficult and painful, for both sides alike. Usually, neither side ends up getting all that they want, but the end target should be the most humane, effective, and most cost-effective management program that can be created, meeting the goals required by the law and deemed attainable by science. But to do this, both sides have to negotiate and cooperate with this in mind. It rarely happens in practice…

The sad part is that the radical Green/Enviro crowd used this to stir up emotions on both sides in an effort to slime a Republican/Conservative… what a surprise!