For real:Under Palin, the state Board of Game authorized for the first time in 20 years the shooting of wolves by state wildlife officials from helicopters. The order resulted in the controversial shooting this summer of 14 one-month-old wolf pups taken from dens on a remote peninsula 800 miles southwest of Anchorage — an act that environmentalists claim was illegal.
Biologists found the 4- to 5-week-old pups when they landed to collect carcasses of adult wolves shot from a helicopter two months ago near Cold Bay, about 600 miles southwest of Anchorage.
Biologists had killed 14 adult wolves, including mothers of the pups.
"As we got on the calving grounds, we took adults, and in the course of taking adults we found there were pups," said Doug Larsen, director of the state Division of Wildlife Conservation, from Juneau.
"The issue then was do we leave the pups to fend for themselves and starve or do we dispatch them," Larsen said. "Our feeling was that it was most humane to dispatch them."
Shameful. Gov. Sarah Palin killed puppies.
