Monday, September 8, 2008

Palin's not pro-(wild)life

Still love your wolf-eared copy of "Julie of the Wolves"? One wonders if Sarah Palin would consider banning it on the basis of fraternizing with the enemy.

Salon magazine posted an article today about Palin's gung-ho support of gunning wolves from planes:

Wildlife activists thought they had seen the worst in 2003 when Frank Murkowski, then the Republican governor of Alaska, signed a bill ramping up state programs to gun down wild wolves from airplanes, inviting average citizens to participate. Wolves, Murkowski believed, were clearly better than humans at killing elk and moose, and humans needed to even the playing field.

But that was before Sarah Palin took Murkowski's job at the end of 2006. She went one step, or paw, further. Palin didn't think Alaskans should be allowed to chase wolves from aircraft and shoot them -- they should be encouraged to do so. Palin's administration put a bounty on wolves' heads, or to be more precise, on their mitts.

In early 2007, Palin's administration approved an initiative to pay a $150 bounty to hunters who killed a wolf from an airplane in certain areas, hacked off the left foreleg, and brought in the appendage. Ruling that the Palin administration didn't have the authority to offer payments, a state judge quickly put a halt to them but not to the shooting of wolves from aircraft.
A video of the (be warned: horrifying) wolf killing here.

1 comment:

"I Love you, Catmother!" said...

What if they shoot the wolf from a solar-powered hot air balloon?

This policy isn't change. It's more of the same!