Feral says fights will be fierce
FRIENDS OF ANIMALS: Group's president wants wolf control killed.
By JOEL GAY
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: April 4, 2004)

One of the best-known names in the ongoing battle over predator control in Alaska is Priscilla Feral, president of the Connecticut-based Friends of Animals. Feral, who has visited Alaska 50 times over the past 25 years, was in Anchorage last week to consult with attorneys on her group's legal challenge to several new state-sponsored aerial wolf-kill programs, and with her supporters and contractors.

Feral, 54, was born in Connecticut and attended boarding school and college in New Jersey during the 1960s. She has worked or volunteered for Friends of Animals since 1974. In 1979, she witnessed the annual Pribilof Islands fur seal harvest, in which thousands of animals were clubbed to death and their pelts sold for furs.

The group organized a successful tourism boycott in the early 1990s that helped stop lethal wolf-control programs. A similar effort this year hasn't shown the same results, and the group failed to persuade a Superior Court judge to halt new programs around the state. But Feral said in an interview this week she won't give up.

"Nationwide, hunters make up only 6 percent of the population," while nonconsumptive uses of wildlife such as viewing and photography "are on the rise. And that's the future," she said. "So these fights are going to be fierce when you get a foot in that door, saying there's some behavior that is just particularly uncivilized and primitive and needs to be off the table. Let's get rid of that program. It isn't fit for a civilized society any more. That's the bottom line."

Q. What events shaped your philosophy?

A. I've always been interested in social justice work and was a war resister during Vietnam. From that I found a deep interest in human rights, civil rights and eventually animal rights. I stopped eating most animals in 1971. ...

When I saw the killing of a thousand seals for five hours (on Alaska's Pribilof Islands in 1979), ... I thought: 'This is what I'm going to do. I've got the stomach for it.' Not that it doesn't rip you up; it does. But I'm going to do what I can to try to make things right. And to get people to make connections between human rights, gay rights, animal rights, that in the overall scheme of things, we've got to care about it all.

Q. Do animals have rights?

A. Not under the law, they don't. But animals aren't resources like coal. They're not plants and trees and gravel. ... We're all animals. We all experience an interest in our future, an interest in freedom. We can have enjoyment in our lives, and pain and suffering. Well, wolves experience the same thing. How do you not dare to respect them, or at least try to not interfere with their lives? The best of all rights we could extend to wolves or bears or any other free-living animals is to be left alone.

Q. What's your view on consumptive uses of wildlife?

A. Hunting and trapping are, for the most part, for joy or commercial purposes. Then it gets down to whether you think it's morally justified. No, it's not. In the year 2004, could we all live without it? Yeah, but you'd have to change some ideas. All that's really needed to evolve here is to sacrifice some lame ideas. And the most fragile of all programs is this current aerial shooting program.

Q. A national movement to treat chickens, hogs and other livestock more humanely is gaining support, including from corporations such as McDonald's. Is that something Friends of Animals is working on?

A. To improve the living conditions of an animal that's going to be slaughtered ... is not a rights concept, it's an animal welfare concept, ... and the groups that work on programs to eliminate gestation crates for pigs or add a few more inches of cage space for hens is really not abolishing the institutionalized exploitation of what we call food animals. I'm not a bit interested in this welfare system.

What's progressive is to get people thinking about eating something else and getting animals off the menu. ... There's other food available. It's just a mind-set.

Q. How do people in the Lower 48 see Alaskans?

A. Unless you travel up here extensively, I don't think people dare to pigeonhole Alaskans. ... I don't think anyone should. I see a diverse culture here. Is there a lot of verbiage about feeding the family and shooting the moose? Yes.

Q. Does subsistence hunting have a place in the world?

A. Not for Friends of Animals. ... I think hunting is wrong. I think it is not legitimate, and I'm pleased there's some division among the ranks of hunters in trying to sort out between right and wrong. Some of them are evolving. Some of them that used to hunt aren't hunting anymore.

I think people outside Alaska have a different view of subsistence living and hunting than people inside Alaska. Gordon Haber (an Anchorage wildlife scientist who does research on Alaska wildlife issues) has a house in Denali. He built a cabin. He would be considered a subsistence person because of the location of his cabin. His income in irrelevant. His bloodline is irrelevant. What does (subsistence) even mean? I think you can poke a lot of holes in it.

Q. What do you say to the residents of villages such as Nikolai and Takotna, where jobs are few and where predator control programs are aimed at boosting moose stocks for subsistence hunters?

A. I don't know why people don't have jobs. I would move to where the jobs are. Native Americans used to move around to where the food was. ... Our campaign is not to end the shooting of moose or caribou. It's not about that. In my heart, I would like to see an end to that. But frankly, I don't think that we have to agree on all points. It doesn't make us wrong about wolf control because we are a vegetarian advocacy organization or that we oppose hunting across the board.

Q. Is your Alaska predator control program merely a fund-raising ploy?

A. That's a popular slogan. I can't speak for the Alaska Wildlife Alliance or the Defenders of Wildlife, whether they actually think they make money from a campaign (like this). ... I assure you, and our books are open, there is no money to be made from any campaign in Alaska for Friends of Animals, because we spend a lot of money in Alaska, ... $150,000 a year at least in wolf research. Whatever we spend on organizing the tourism boycott, ... our costs haven't been recovered. ... The work here isn't coming back in dollars, and it's not important to me that it does.

Q. Friends of Animals spends about half its $5.3 million budget every year on spaying and neutering clinics, and other funds on anti-poaching campaigns throughout Africa. How does the Alaska wolf project fit in?

A. Most of the wolf project work has been organizing. Research (has cost) about $150,000 a year for 10 years. Much of the work we did to organize (the tourism boycott) was through the Internet. A decade ago we had to take a lot of ads out. We haven't had the ad budget to do a lot of advertising ... so there hasn't been a lot of money spent in a high-profile advertising campaign, as opposed to a decade ago.

Q. Another animal advocacy organization, the World Wildlife Fund, is offering cruise ship trips to Alaska this summer, in defiance of your tourism boycott. Was that a surprise?

A. It's not surprising, but it's discouraging. ... And in fact they've lost a lot of contributors. ... They're fund-raising off a tourism boycott. They're saying, 'No, we want to make money instead.' And people that thought it was a decent organization are ripping up their membership cards.

Q. How is the boycott going?

A. I think it has a life of its own. People want to extend it beyond April 30 (the proposed cutoff date). We've had a lot of time just devoted to one issue and little time to do much else. A lot of our staff are working on one thing. ... We're hearing from a lot of people.

Q. You have also proposed asking Congress to boycott plans for an Alaska gas pipeline. Is that still a possibility?

A. I'm encouraged to do that, talking to people here. We're going to research it. I think as long as this wolf control is in force, I think people ought to oppose all of Alaska's projects in Congress. And our members will be asked to consider that. We'll try to connect with environmental groups working on this too.

Q. Some Alaskans think of you as insensitive and uncaring. Is that you?

A. To think that I don't have feelings, or that I can't be hurt, is ridiculous. I am not a bit interested in portraying myself as somebody impervious. It's just that I deliberately chose this line of work. So I'm not a victim. I'm in it for the long haul, and I'm doing the kind of work that really matters to me, tremendously. ... I don't see myself as a successful woman. It's just that I'm outspoken. And I'm not intimidated. I can't afford to be.

Q. Do you ever see yourself giving up this work and doing something else? You're working on a vegetarian cookbook.

A. I'd love to open a string of restaurants. ... I'd love to see them everywhere. I'd love to see alternatives to eating animals. ... But a steady diet of that kind of (work), I don't think I could hold up long under it.

I hold up under this (activist life) better. It's stressful. But again, I'm not the victim here. I'm the lucky one. When the club was coming down on this fur seal's head in the Pribilofs and the founder of FOA was standing next to me, and she looked at me and thought, "Oh, is this kid going to start crying or what?" And she said: "It's not about you. Don't you dare break up here. It's not about you." She was right. It's not about me.

Q. Do you have any pets?

A. Three cats and two dogs ... and my daughter's fish after she left for college.

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Wild Sheep Federation - Life Member
OVIS/Grand Slam Club - Life Member
Safari Club International - Life Member
National Rifle Association - Life Member

alyeska338 - Please forgive the State of Connecticut for having this sick person based here! I've seen and heard her in action and she's bad piece of work! We've protested her protests and generally hound her to death whenever she opens her mouth here! She will twist the truth into whatever suits her. I believe it's the anti's plan to go after Alaska and Maine first to get thier agenda's made into law so that lesser hunting states will fall easier. Be aware that hunting is not her only agenda, any type of medical animal testing will also bring her and her numbskulls out to protest. My deepest apologies to the people of Alaska for having to put up with this person! CEJ..

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NRA Life Member

Man, that almost made me sick. She doesn't seem to understand the use of the word subsistence. She tells the Indians they should move if they can't get jobs and they should not hunt. Makes me want to puke.

Probably the biggest mistake I ever made was not staying in Alaska as a perminant retiree. After reading the article, it makes me even more sure that I made a mistake, for I could have been one more Alaskan voice against stupidity. I hunted from the Brooks Range out to Port Hyden, and lived outside of Fairbanks for a couple of years. Lower 48's will never understand Alaska! Those who fail to winter a couple of years there are nothing but tourists with opinion based on spot analysis of pictures in time events. This is one of those issues where "Yankee Go Home" really fits.
Paul

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Paul Nichols
Omaha, Ne.

Let's not forget the real message here: the media not only accepts this point of view, they promote it! Otherwise this would have never seen the light of day. Can you imagine the opposite, if some hunting group claimed to speak for the animals? They would be made out to be the laughingstock of the nation.... yet the nonsense above is treated as 'news'.

The media doesn't report the news, they in fact create it.

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MikeG

She sounds like one of them people that went to school and had all of the common sence sucked out of her head and had it replaced with liberal theory that has nothing to do with anything but to further more of there liberal thinking.I bet she thinks gun owners are all nuts and the 2 amendment is for the national gard.
Riflemen10x

Feral... an appropo name, indeed!

What a #&@*%!$g nutcase!

Does anyone know this nut-job's real name?? The one she uses is so obviously made up.

Seriously, I think that is her real name.

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Wild Sheep Federation - Life Member
OVIS/Grand Slam Club - Life Member
Safari Club International - Life Member
National Rifle Association - Life Member

That may be her legal name at this time, but, I doubt she was born with it.

snowtigger - Sorry but alyeska338 is correct, that's her real name. Talk about truth being stranger than fiction! She's been a pain in the arse to us here for many years, now she's becoming a national pain in the arse! CEJ...

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NRA Life Member

What scares me the most,is that these Clowns have a five point three million dollar budget!
Frank

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Frank

She enslaves animals? Wonder what her constiuents at PETA think about that?
She wants to ban hunting all together, so if you can't hunt, you won't need your guns, since owning guns will be too much of a temptation to hunt, or to turn your energies to shooting people, and the only people in the woods that need guns are the police, who are out there protecting the animals. Of course, you won't need your guns for protection from urban or rural predators, since you shouldn't be out in the woods trespassing on the animals land, and since we have the police to protect us, we should just turn in our guns, murder vegetables for meals, and the world will be a better place.
I wonder when she'll set her animals free and just stop breathing so her wolves won't be deprived of oxygen we are so selfishly monopolizing?

Well, reading this I find myself in an interesting position.

I am dead set against the wolf hunts for a multitude of reasons I shan't bore you with. Alaska is obviously having imbalance issues with wildlife populations, but I believe this is the wrong way to go about it, and is in no way a permanent solution. However, this is just my opinion, I'm not preaching.

Obviously by posting on a site such as this, I am a gun nut and not against hunting in principle. After all, wild animals hunt, do they not? For Ms. Feral to say deer hunting is wrong, while supporting the wolves, makes no sense. After all, wolves hunt deer! *slaps* Why don't we go out and tell the wolves to eat berries, or arrest them for murder?

If humans are to be equated with any other animal and not put on a pedestal (which I personally hold as true) then hunting for food, or even for sport (as other animals do as well) fails to register as problematic. However, mass-killings such as the wolf and bear hunts in Alaska are cop-outs to the larger issue of human overpopulation and encroachment, IMHO.

I think it's already been established that Ms. Feral is a few rounds short of a stripper clip. I encourage support of established and respected animal charities such as Defenders of Wildlife, not the left-wing-nuts in FOA.

Feral's attempted boycott of Alaskan tourism is idiotic and counterproductive. Many people disagree with the current wildlife policy, but I see no reason to punish the Alaskan economy for this. I would visit if I could afford it.

I guess the whole point of this little rant is to demonstrate that one can support both animal rights and hunting at the same time, and strike a balance between the two.

I obviously don't assume all gun owners are nuts, being one myself. Yeah, that's right, I'm a dirty hippie, and I'm heavily armed.

So I ask that you all not slap around the animal rights crowd with the assumption that we're all as crazy as the aptly named Ms. Feral, because we're not unreasonable people.

She just gives us a bad name.

This lady is well versed and you can tell she is sincere. She must be good at what she does or she would not have been at it this long. I was impressed. I think I will go over to the other side. NOT!!!!

She makes here point when she says we should just leave the animals alone. They are not a resource we should manage. That is truely the basis of her stance if you take the emotion and morality out of it.

Mine is that it is a resource to be managed as are all the things in this world. That is what I have been charged to do and that is what I try to participate in.

If we look at it on that level we see the difference has nothing to do with animals. Now all those folks in the middle that deal in the emotion and the morality of it have decisions to make that will decide all these issues. With most of us on this side it is a non-issue.

Vorzer, no flame here, I promise. You seem to me to be right there in the middle. I don't know your convictions about things or know you so I certainly can't judge on your post but that is how it seems to me. Please don't be offended. That is not my intent. We just disagree.

we have long since passed the point where management of our natural recources is an option. it is necessary. including wolf populations. i live close to YNP where the introduced wolf population is multiplying rapidly to the point where control is gonna have to happen soon. this will be interesting.

monty

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RECOIL IS OUR FRIEND!!!

Vorzer, overpopulation (of humans) in Alaska is NOT the problem. Look up the population stats - the state is almost empty.

You're missing a very basic tenet of sound wildlife management. Animal populations will always go in boom-and-bust cycles. They expand until they depete the habitat, then the population crashes, and then the habit recovers, and the cycle begins again. This is true for both predators and prey.

Predator management keeps populations at a stable level. That is better for the long-term health of the populations involved, even it it's detrimental to a few of the individual animals.

Having a population crash, for any reason, leaves the species more susceptible to extinction, as well as greatly reducing the genetic diversity of the survivors. Again - there is no distinction between predators and prey in that statement.

Basic wildlife management..... don't mean to preach, but you need to understand the fundamentals before you pass judgement on the methods used.

It's too late for the animal rights nuts. They have turned a blind eye to the facts, and no amount of information will sway them. However I think you are intelligent enough to make the transition.

Hope this helps.

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MikeG

You might ought to re-think your position. By supporting groups like these you run the risk of losing your rights all together, as it is clear that they will use whatever "hotbutton" topic and animal of the day to achieve the end result; ban all hunting as well as firearms in the hands of the public.

"Nationwide, hunters make up only 6 percent of the population," while nonconsumptive uses of wildlife such as viewing and photography "are on the rise. And that's the future," she said. "So these fights are going to be fierce when you get a foot in that door, saying there's some behavior that is just particularly uncivilized and primitive and needs to be off the table. Let's get rid of that program. It isn't fit for a civilized society any more. That's the bottom line."

Seems she will get to deem exactly what behavior is civilized and which isn't. This is not only an assault on our rights as hunters, but on our Second Amendment as well. Our very freedom of association is theatened by her actions, seeing that her argument as to particular behaviors being uncivilized will eventually include even the very mention and discussion of hunting, and later shooting (uncivilized, remember).

Even calling yourself a "gun nut" gives the anti's just the ammunition they want. Please understand that my response is not a flame; that is not my point. Rather, it is to highlight the reasons I feel that support of such extreme anti-hunting groups, no matter how much or how little, is a mistake.

I don't know whether Feral (great name, btw) is pro-animal, anti-gun, or both, but the fact that she has enough clout to start causing problems scares me. Only 6% of the population are hunters? I wonder where she got that figure, as I doubt it reflects our society as a whole. Plus, where does she propose to decide where a population is of a high enough percentile to be deemed "OK" by her twisted standards?? Is this to say that any activity where members encompass below, say, 10% of the population should be done away with completely, while those that are "on the rise" are alright?

The other is her "animal rights" stance. I've never understood why they consider hunting or slaughter for food to be "bad" while starvation is okay? I read an article from PETA not long ago, which acknowledged the approximate 3-year cycle of overpopulation/starvation most species experience if left unchecked, and called it "unfortunate, but that's just how nature does things." It takes a week or two to starve, depending on conditions; sometimes much longer. I'd like to see any of these types go a week or two with no food, and see how "natural" it feels...

Okay, I'll stop ranting...