Wolves’ Taped Agony Halts Trapping Plan

ANCHORAGE — Alaska has suspended its wolf-control program after a TV station showed a snared wolf being shot five times before it died and another that chewed off part of its leg in a futile attempt to escape.

Nearly 700 snare traps will be removed from a 1,000-square-mile area in the Alaska Range south of Fairbanks, state Fish and Game Commissioner Carl Rosier said.

Rosier’s decision came after a telephone conversation with Gov.-elect Tony Knowles, who said he was “disgusted as well as disturbed” by the videotape played on KTUU-TV in Anchorage.

“That’s no way to treat an animal,” said Knowles, a Democrat succeeding Republican Walter J. Hickel, who supports wolf control.

Knowles is to be sworn in as governor Monday. He said he will immediately order a review of the wolf-control program to determine whether it is necessary and being conducted in a humane fashion.

Biologist Gordon Haber, a persistent critic of the program, shot the videotape Tuesday when he came across a group of four snared wolves while guiding a newspaper reporter and photographer through snowy, frigid wilderness.

A wolf snared around the neck was dead, but the three others were alive. One was caught around the chest and two by the leg. One young wolf had chewed its right foreleg into a bloody red stump trying to get free.

A state biologist was filmed firing a .22-caliber handgun at the head of a snared wolf four times. The animal flinched, but did not die. The biologist returned to his helicopter for stronger ammunition and fired once more, killing the wolf.

Alaska, with 5,000 to 7,000 wolves, is the only state where wolves aren’t endangered.

This is the second winter that Alaska has been killing wolves in an area of mountains and flatlands in the Alaskan interior. The Alaska Board of Game approved the program in an effort to increase moose and caribou populations for the benefit of hunters.