Pack thought to have killed teacher in Chignik Lake seen close to village again
By JAMES HALPIN, Alaska Daily News, March 10th, 2010 [here]
Villagers in Chignik Lake were on patrol Wednesday, hunting for wolves they blame in the death of a 32-year-old school teacher who was found dead after she went running on an isolated road this week.
Candice Berner was found Monday evening along a road leading out of town just a short time after leaving work. State officials haven’t yet determined her cause of death, but those who live in the village feel they know.
Tuesday night and again Wednesday morning, villagers said, an armed group of men was out roaming on snowmachines in search of tracks left by wolves, which people say have been coming too close to town lately.
“We approached them last night, but we ended up losing them,” said Fred Shangin, 32, who is among the hunters. “They were right by the village again. They started running, we started chasing them but they came up to a creek we couldn’t get across.”
Villagers say people are on edge, concerned with the boldness of wolves in the wake of Berner’s death.
Berner, who came to Alaska from Slippery Rock, Pa., was a special education teacher for the Lake and Peninsula School District. She was based in Perryville but traveled to different towns teaching. She arrived in Alaska in August, said her father, Bob Berner. …
School district officials say she left work at the end of the day Monday to go for a run on the road out of town.
Four people riding snowmachines along the road came across her body about 6:30 p.m. Monday. Gregory Kalmakoff, 23, said by phone Wednesday he and the others had been out riding at Portage Bay and were on their way back.
“There was a blood spot on the road,” he said. “I turned around, looked and there was drag marks going down a little hill.”
There were wolf tracks in the new snow and footprints left by a person, he said. It appeared something had been dragged off the road, said Kalmakoff’s cousin, 24-year-old Jacob Kalmakoff, who troopers say was among those who discovered the body.
“We seen her gloves on the road where she was running,” Kalmakoff said. “She didn’t get away too far from them; they took her down pretty fast. You could see a blood trail of her body getting drug down the hill.”
They went down the hill to investigate and found Berger’s remains not too far down. Berner’s arms and head had been mangled, Jacob Kalmakoff said. … [more]
by YPmule
Posted to the YPTimes.
Great comment by “Lynn S.”
Wolves in the three state area of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, have reached, if not surpassed, the same density levels as wolves in Alaska. Already, incidents of observing children at bus stops have happened in Idaho. This is one of the 7 signs that wolves are studying their prey [here].
Wolves in Yellowstone have all but decimated the elk herds there and have turned to cannibalism while state and federal agencies have stood by and done nothing to stop the decimation of the elk herds. The same is happening in Idaho and Montana.
Fish and Wildlife Service estimates close to 1700 wolves in the Wyoming, Montana, Idaho area; others say FWS is purposely low-balling the numbers, that the numbers stand closer to 5,000 in the tri-state area with the largest number in Idaho. In the Lolo Range of Idaho, the elk herds have gone from approximately 13,461 in 1994, pre-introduction, to approximately 2,178 as of February 2010; that’s an 84% decline [here]. The wolves that were in that area are now moving into the Dworshak tributary area, decimating ungulate herds there.
Wolves tend to pray on females and the young as their preference. Some of the diseases these wolves are carrying and spreading are dangerous to humans and to livestock [here].
Wolves are pushing farmers and ranchers off their land, putting outfitters out of business, seriously depleting ungulate herds, eating into revenue from hunting licenses that is used for wildlife management, and generally causing havoc. While advertised as bringing greater tourism to Yellowstone, besides decimating the ungulate herds there, there has been no increased revenue from tourism in Yellowstone where elk are now few and far between.
That environmentalists don’t care makes their agenda very obvious and wolves merely the tool: pushing all people out of rural areas in pursuit of government owned wilderness where man will not be allowed to step foot. Looking at the evidence, one can make no other conclusion. Consider this remark by Carolyn Sime, Wolf Project Director, to a Montana rancher, “We’re sorry about what the wolves do to your business but you’ll just have to find something else to do” [here].
Bob Blackwell, a rancher, outfitter, horse trainer, out of Montana, worked at YNP when the wolves were brought in under the supervision of Mike Phillips. Although Phillips, now associated with Wolf International and the (Ted) Turner Endangered Species Fund, denies that he stated, at a wolf symposium in 2000, that the Taylor Grazing Act should be repealed, putting 30,000 ranchers off grazing land on behalf of wolves, Mr Blackwell heard him say, “”Now we’re on the way to putting the cattle rancher out of business.”
What is and has been going on with wolves in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and now Washington State, demands our attention.