Removal of buffer zone has
animal groups in a dither
An Outside animal rights group is calling for tourists to boycott Alaska because of an Alaska Game Board decision to eliminate buffer zones where wolf trapping was barred just outside Denali National Park. The activists had hoped the protective buffers would be widened.
Friends of Animals' President Priscilla Feral called on Gov. Sean Parnell to intercede, which he rightly declined to do, saying the buffer zone was scheduled to sunset this year and that he respects the board’s decision.
This is not the animal rights crowd’s first call for a tourism boycott to protest Alaska's predator control policies. The first was after predator control was announced in 1992 that game officials were implementing predator control.
Alaska has worked to control wolves since the first humans had to compete with the more efficient killers on four legs. In the 1940s and then in the 1950s, when aerial shooting started, the idea has been to thin their numbers to increase the numbers of moose and caribou.
Luckily, in recent times threats of tourism boycotts mostly have been toothless. During the 2000-2001 visitor season, for example, more than 1.4 million visitors came to Alaska, mostly in the summer months - or about double the number who arrived in 1991, or about 727,000. A terrible thing.
Mind you, cruise ship traffic drove most of the increase in those years. That could change in the next year or two because of a poorly thought out cruise ship tax adopted by Alaska voters that has discouraged the vessels from visiting Alaska ports.
There always have been strong reactions to Alaska’s science-driven predator control efforts, yet wolves continue to thrive across the state - often to the detriment of prey animals in particular areas.
The Alaska Game Board made exactly the right decision when it eliminated the trapping buffer zones, which amount to little more than “park creep.”
Who knows? Yet another call for a tourism boycott from the animal rights bunch might be good news for the tourism industry.
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