Animal Rights Group Renews Call for Alaska Tourism Boycott

An animal-rights group is renewing its call for tourists to boycott Alaska after legal challenges failed to end a program aimed at killing hundreds of wolves this winter.

The move comes after the Alaska Supreme Court on Friday denied a request by Friends of Animals to halt the program. The judges also refused to review the case. The court did not provide an explanation.

“As far as a tourism boycott which I had called off, it will be organized again,” Priscilla Feral, president of the Darien, Conn.-based group, said today. “As much as we are floored to get the news, we are determined to go ahead and keep working.”

Over the past two years, Friends of Animals helped stage hundreds of demonstrations called howl-ins in cities across the country to protest Alaska´s predator-control program, intended to allow moose and caribou to increase in numbers. Some activists dressed in wolf outfits at the gatherings, and some howled in imitation of wolves to protest the hunts.

Alaska tourism officials say the howl-ins have had little, if any, effect on the state´s $2 billion-a-year tourism industry.

Friends of Animals began holding howl-ins in November 2003, soon after the program was initiated in the Interior town of McGrath. Since then, the wolf-control program has spread to four more areas of the state where moose and caribou numbers are low. About 400 wolves have been killed so far, about half the number planned for this winter.

Friends of Animals also hopes to make lethal wolf control a gubernatorial campaign issue in the November election, Feral said. Murkowski, a first-term Republican, has not yet said whether he will run for re-election.