Anchorage Daily News

FAIRBANKS -- Above-average snowfall this month is helping participants in the state's aerial wolf control program track wolves.

Pilot-and-gunner teams have reported killing more than 30 wolves in the last 3 1/2 weeks in the five different control areas where aerial wolf hunting is allowed by special permit.

The total take for the season so far stands at 117. Last year, hunters in the program killed 97 wolves.

Since the program was begun in 2003 and expanded to five areas, 784 wolves have been killed. The program is intended to increase the number of moose and caribou for subsistence and sport hunters.

"I heard somebody took four out of Unit 16 the other day," information officer Bruce Bartley with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Anchorage said by phone Friday. "The guy was flying to his cabin and looked down and saw a pack of wolves, so he ran down and got his neighbor, who is another control pilot, and they got four of five."

So far, 30 wolves have been killed in the Nelchina Basin (Unit 13); 29 in the McGrath area (Unit 19D); 23 in the upper Yukon and Tanana river drainage (parts of units 12, 20B, 20D, 20E and 25C); 20 in west Cook Inlet (Unit 16); and 15 in the central Kuskokwim (Unit 19A).

"It's probably a combination of conditions that were absolutely perfect and the long daylight hours," Cathie Harms of the Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks said of the spike in kills over the past month.

Permits expire April 30 but the department can reissue permits to extend the program into May if conditions allow.

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