August 19, 2011
Friday

The recent article in Sitnews about some of our environmental groups again attempting to classify our wolves here in Southeast Alaska as endangered is of concern to me. We all know that these wolves are here as a result of the availability of food. I have seen them swimming from the mainland of Alaska to our islands in search of food and new territory. If there is any difference at all in the specie it's because these wolves are hybrids, having bred with our domestic dogs on occasion. Our Alaskan Malamute and Siberian Husky dogs and others are very capable of survival in the wild and have inbred with these so called phony hybrid Alexander Archipelago wolves, rare indeed, what a crock.

In my fifty plus years of living, working, recreating, hunting and subsisting in Southeast Alaska I have observed the cycles of our deer and wolf populations. I find that the deer and wolf populations did just fine without being used as surrogates for militant groups of environmentalists. These groups make it a practice to search high and low for causes primarily motivated by greed, the money flowing into their coffers from ignorant sponsors.

Please do not let these carpet baggers propagate another problem for us to deal with in this country. This nonsense is a waste of money and soaks up what would be otherwise useful taxable dollars that should be spent on reducing our nation's deficit. The sponsors of this nonsense need to realize that they're not helping the environment they're hurting it by fostering bogus science, concocted and produced by conmen. Their premises lack sound, published, tested science. They spend their careers looking for props to play out their fantasies at the expense of traditional cultural uses of the land that have been present for generations.

There is no better steward of the land than the multitudes of people who use and enjoy our great outdoors in Alaska. There are those groups that would take our hunting rights ,our guns, our fishing rights and our access rights away for no other reason than greed and/or ignorance, I suspect mostly greed.

If anyone thinks they have an ally in these environmental terrorists they are sadly mistaken, at some point when the money starts running out they'll turn on you like a pack of jackals.

Thanks,

Butch Olmstead
Ketchikan, AK