Sara Palin's Shocking Animal Cruelty

By Michael Markarian, Humane Society Legislative Fund. Posted
September 16, 2008.

If Sarah Palin ran the United States like she has run Alaska, it would
indeed be a terrible day for animals.

GOP conventioneers were officially introduced to their vice
presidential candidate who is, as Fred Thompson said, "the only
nominee in the history of either party who knows how to properly field
dress a moose."

But it's not Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's personal love of hunting or
appetite for moose venison that should strike fear in the heart of
every animal advocate in the nation--it's her retrograde policies on
animal welfare and conservation that have led to an all-out war on the
state's wolves and other creatures.

Her record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to
animals than any other current governor in the United States -- and
that's a difficult distinction to achieve among our 22 Republican and
28 Democratic chief executives. Voters of both political parties who
care about the humane treatment of animals must unite to make sure
that the nation's worst governor doesn't end up just a heartbeat away
from the nation's most important job.

Palin is not only a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association,
but is also a close ally of Safari Club International. These radical
groups don't represent rank-and-file hunters, but instead lobby on
behalf of their elitist, wealthy members to defend despicable and
unsporting practices such as captive trophy hunts, bear baiting, and
steel-jawed legold traps -- practices that real hunters agree are
inhumane and unacceptable.

And the Palin Administration, in lock-step with these extreme
anti-conservationists, has waged an all-out war on Alaska's predators
to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy
hunters. Palin has tried to pass legislation making it easier for
state officials to gun down wolves and bears from the sky, and even
offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf as an
economic incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more of the
animals.

Leading up to the recent statewide vote on Measure 2 to stop the
aerial shooting of wolves and bears, Palin's Board of Game spent
$400,000 of public money on brochures and radio ads to influence the
election. She not only took an inhumane and unsporting position at
odds with the principles of wildlife management and fair chase, but
did it in an undemocratic and underhanded way. Palin may have
criticized "the old politics as usual" and "the culture of
self-dealing" in her speech last night, but that's a pretty good
description of her dealings with the NRA and Safari Club.

Since Alaska is not protecting its wolves from aerial hunting, the
U.S. Congress has stepped in and is now considering the Protect
America's Wildlife (PAW) Act, which would close a loophole in federal
law that allows the shooting of animals from airplanes and
helicopters. But Gov. Palin has attacked that effort, too, and used
her office to criticize the federal legislation. She wrote in a press
release that the bill's author "doesn't understand rural Alaska" and
"doesn't comprehend wildlife management in the North."

This new video from our friends at the Defenders of Wildlife Action
Fund reveals shocking images from the brutal practice of aerial
hunting, and shows the world just what Gov. Palin has championed at
the state and federal levels.

Watch: http://www.alternet.org/story/98918/?page=entire

But that's only one part of the story. It's not just wolves, of
course, who have been the targets of Palin's outdated policies, but
also the Arctic region's iconic polar bears, the 21st Century's
canaries in the mineshaft who are teetering on the brink of
extinction.

Despite the effects of climate change on the bear's vanishing habitat
and shrinking ice floes, Gov. Palin penned an op-ed in The New York
Times earlier this year arguing that it was the "wrong move" to list
the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. Later, when the Bush
Administration announced its listing of the polar bear as a threatened
species, she filed a lawsuit seeking to reverse the decision.
Environmentalists fired back over Palin's lawsuit and said "her
head-in-the-sand approach to global warming only helps oil companies,
certainly not Alaska or the polar bear."

For those who don't believe that the number two spot on the ticket
matters much at all, consider this: fourteen vice presidents in
American history eventually climbed to the top job, eight of them
because their predecessors died in office. If Sarah Palin were to be
propelled into the presidency and given the opportunity to run the
United States like she has run Alaska--controlling the Departments of
Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce, with wide-ranging authority over
issues affecting pets, wildlife, farm animals, marine mammals, animals
in research, and public lands--it would indeed be a terrible day for
animals and for the country.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political
endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

Michael Markarian is the president of the Humane Society Legislative
Fund.