Is “The Alexander Archipelago Wolf” a rare threatened species? No! It doesn’t exist!
“Cry Wolf” is simply a part of the ongoing preservationist’s campaign to eliminate natural resource development in a multi-governed area that has a problem with its ownership/management and identity.
Imagine living in a region that has four names, one unknown to 84 percent of the local residents.
A region where a remote government owns almost all land, air and water.
A region where another government owns almost all animals and the land’s subsurface.
Welcome to:
(1) Southeast Alaska.
(2) Tongass National Forest.
(3) Alaska’s Panhandle
(4) Alexander Archipelago (named by the U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey in 1867).
All the same place! The region’s acreage totals 17 million, including 1,100 islands.
Twenty-six Ketchikanites were asked recently: “Where is the Alexander Archipelago?” Twenty-two, including the Daily News’ editor, didn’t know.
Archipelago means “lots of islands.” “Alexander” was a Russian Tsar.
The Alaska Statehood Act gave the U.S. government land ownership of Southeast Alaska. Today a bloated U.S. Forest Service with a transient work force of hundreds mismanages the Tongass with toxic regulations devised in Washington, D.C., in concert with powerful national and international preservationists. The Forest Service’s abusive polices focus on “worshipful” protection of a decadent, climax forest and distrust of all mining. The agency’s goal is to make the Tongass a pristine tourist park and zoo. Alaska Regional Forester Beth Pendleton proudly portrays the Tongass as “A Children’s Forest.”
The Forest Service is charged with developing Southeast Alaska’s resources. They did well for a half century. From 1945 to 1995, loggers harvested and renewed 6 percent of the old no-growth timber, which provided jobs in the forest and mills. In the 1990s, the Clinton government illegally closed the mills. Thousands of Southeast families were uprooted and sent packing to the Lower 48. Preservationists celebrated and gayly screamed, ”No more logging, forever!”
During the last decade, the only midsize sawmill remaining in Southeast begged for a supply of timber. The Forest Service painfully crafted a small timber sale, misnamed “Big Thorne,” on Prince of Wales Island, one of the Alexander Archipelago’s 1,100 islands. Big Thorne involves a mere 6,200 acres of Southeast Alaska’s 17 million.
Preservationists immediately moved to stop the sale. How? Dust off an old endangered species petition from a Colorado group who claimed in 1992 that Southeast Alaska’s timber harvest threatened wolves with extinction. The petitioner invented a new species and called it “The Alexander Archipelago Wolf.”
Preservationists updated the old petition in 2011 and presented it to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a federal agency that monitors threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
The statehood act gave Alaska complete ownership of wildlife. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game manages the game. ADF&G reports Alaska’s wolf population at 7,000 to 11,000, with the highest density in Southeast Alaska. Southeast’s wolf population may be more than their counterparts in the continental U.S.A. (5,500).
Is the Southeast Alaska wolf rare or endangered? Definitely not, say the ADF&G experts!
During years of timber harvest, wolf density on POW was about 350, based on a 1995 ADF&G benchmark count. Oldtimers recall bounties for wolves, because they were so numerous. Since logging slowed, beginning in the mid-1990s, there has been a decline in both harvest and wolf numbers. Today the score is timber sales, 1; and wolves, 89. Poaching, trapping, hunting, subsistence users, predation by other wolves, old logging roads and a 260-mile “state scenic byway”are named culprits.
The truth and solutions:
First: The Southeast Alaska Wolf “species” numbers in the thousands. There is no “rare” Alexander Archipelago wolf!
Second: Eliminate hunting, trapping and subsistence use. Penalize poachers with jail time and heavy fines.
Third: Leave the packs on POW alone. Protect and monitor their comeback.
Four: Harvest lots of old timber! Density numbers were high during the harvest heyday.
Will the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deny the endangered species petitions this December? They’re another federal agency sometimes sympathetic to preservationists.
Final solution: Return the region back to its rightful owner: The State of Alaska!
• Bob Pickrell is a 54-year resident of Ketchikan who arrived here on 1961 to serve as manager of the Alaska Loggers Association before publishing and editing the “New Alaskan” from 1965 to 1995. Closely associated with the timber industry, he has served on numerous boards and committees, as well as on the Ketchikan Gateway Borough Assembly.
