September 12, 2011
Monday PM

Dear Editor:

I wish to voice my strong support for the stand Butch Olmstead took in late August against the radical environmentalists’ latest scam regarding the so called “Alexander Archipelago Wolves.” His letter stemmed from a recent article entitled “Protection Sought Again for Rare Alaskan Wolf” in many recent publications.

The entire premise of this article is misleading and plays into the hands of these radicals by implying that there even is such a species.

The first time I ever heard the term Alexander Archipelago Wolf was in 2004 when a close acquaintance showed me a fundraiser mailing sent out from the Sierra Club seeking a minimum donation of $25.00 to help save this species from extinction on Prince of Wales Island. Back then they were claiming that there were only 900 such wolves left in existence.

Curious, I called our local area biologist. He laughed when I posed the question, saying that the Sierra Club had contacted him a few weeks previously.  His statement was: “There is no such thing as an Alexander Archipelago Wolf.  From a genetic standpoint our wolves are exactly the same as those in Northern Michigan and elsewhere.  Our theory is that they followed the deer populations up here when the last ice age receded”.  When I asked about the population he said that too was an exaggeration, that ADF&G estimated at least 1,200 on POW at the time, and there were also many large populations on all the other islands in S.E. Alaska, as well as Canada and the mainland.  He didn’t know how many, because there was never any funding to do the surveys, no real need for it, and the results of any wolf survey are highly questionable due to the heavy forestation and undergrowth in Southeast Alaska.

Realizing where the Sierra Club was headed with this I immediately sent then Governor Murkowski a letter asking for the attorney general to investigate the possibility of mail fraud (fraudulently soliciting funds through the mail) on the part of the Sierra Club. I never heard back from the governor or the AG, but that was the last I heard about the Sierra Club on the subject as well.

Now we have the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace apparently picking up where the Sierra Club left off seven years ago. Butch Olmstead is correct.  The motive for these organizations is mostly pure greed, but something far more sinister is also at work.  They fabricate man-made environmental disasters such as this in the making, and then prey on well-intentioned but unsuspecting, and poorly informed individuals elsewhere in order to gather millions of dollars to feather their own nests.

In the meantime, they force everyone off the land that our creator endowed us to responsibly develop.  I have seen hundreds of families lose everything because of these “jackals” as Butch so aptly describes them. In their quest to close down the land, they have all but destroyed the greatest economy in the world by blocking access to our natural resources.

Ever wonder what happened to the Communist Party in the U.S. after the 1950s?  You needn’t look far.  According to several authors they still are very much at work in their quest to destroy the U.S.A., but now it’s done within the guise of the environmental movement.

Sincerely,

Andy Rauwolf
Ketchikan, AK