Tuesday, September 09, 2008

Sarah Palin: Great White Hunter

Wolves are good hunters. Too good for some people. They kill all of that wonderful trophy moose in Alaska preventing tourist hunters from having a crack at them. The solution?
Sarah Palin, predator control, shooting wolves | Salon

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.
I would be all for this if instead of shooting the wolves, people had to jump out of low flying aircraft with a knife clasped in their teeth onto a wolf, wrestle it to the ground, and hack off the limb of the still fighting beast. And they must do it while wearing a loin cloth. Anyone who managed to do that would have earned the bounty. I would personally pay the bounty to see Palin do it. Double if her pregnant daughter does it.

But to be fair, if you owned an airplane would you really want to put yourself at risk by shooting wolves from the ground? What if you miss?

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