Kyle Clayton
As the U.S. House continues the process of repealing dozens of Obama administration regulations, Alaska Rep. Don Young celebrated yesterday “a new era of reduced federal oversight” by holding up the still beating heart of a recently strangled wolf pup on the floor of the House.
Young helped earlier this week to push a bill in the House that allows state of Alaska game management plans to override federal predator management priorities that, in part, banned the shooting of brown bears over bait, targeting bears and wolves from planes, shooting mother bears with cubs and cubs themselves, and killing wolves and wolf pups in their dens.
Once Congress approves the bill and those hunting practices are reinstated, Young plans on introducing a new regulation that would, upon entering a wolf den, require hunters to strangle at least one wolf pup with their bare hands.
“We Alaskans value ethical, sportsmanlike, fair-chase hunting,” Young said, still gripping the pup’s heart high in the air as blood sprayed across cheering members of fellow U.S representatives. “That’s why my bill requires each hunter to track and strangle one wolf pup for every expended M-16 magazine, and for every pound of military grade explosive, used in the procurement of a member of the predator species.”
Dan Ashe, who served as U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director from 2011 until January 2017, said the regulations being repealed are science-based and rely on predator-prey relationships to manage populations.
“Beyond hunting regulations, the special interest groups influencing politics at the federal and state level will ultimately handover control of national wildlife refuges to state and even private ownership,” Ashe said.
Other federal regulations being repealed include a measure limiting methane emissions from oil and gas drilling on federal lands and the Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule that better protects hydrologic ecosystems from the adverse impacts of surface coal mining operations.
Ashe, speaking to the press on the steps of the nation’s Capital Building, was silenced as Congress members and a pack of lobbyists, still stained red from the blood of the wolf pup, stuffed wads of dark money into his mouth.