LOS ANGELES - March 5 - Wolf advocates, sponsored by Friends of Animals, continue the tourism boycott against Alaska this weekend, as the 100th Howl-In is marked in a protest at Terminal Two, Arrivals for Alaska Airlines at Los Angeles Airport, on Sat., March 6, from 10am-3pm.

L.A. is joined by two other California protests this weekend, in Palo Alto and Laguna Beach. This Howl-In, and the 99 that have preceded it, will focus on getting the word out about Alaska’s state-sponsored aerial wolf-shooting program, which was revived after Gov. Frank Murkowski took office last year and appointed six of the seven Game Board members.

Since 21 Jan., 88 wolves have been machine-gunned in the Nelchina basin region, and 3 wolves were shot from helicopters and other aircraft in McGrath, a wolf “control” area expanded by Alaska’s Dept. of Fish and Game this week from 1,728 to 3,588 square miles. These two locations are the first to be opened to wolf-killing, despite Alaskans voting against these programs twice (in 1996 and 2000 voter referenda). Still more areas may open to aerial wolf-gunning in the final a week of the Board of Game's two-week meeting. The Board's decisions have comprised a frontal assault on the majority of Alaskans, wolves and other free-living animals.

“Doubling the wolf 'control' area in McGrath is likely to accelerate the number of wolves killed there, and it reflects the underlying source of the problem— a lack of ethics combined with faulty scientific reasoning. Although we denounce the ethical poverty associated with the killing of each wolf, we note that even the state's scientific reasoning is off the mark, for the expansion exposes the reality that there is a smaller number of wolves in the area than the state’s biologists asserted,” says Priscilla Feral, president of Friends of Animals.

Alaska’s Governor Murkowski, who has failed to call off the wolf-killing, despite legal, ethical and scientific arguments, has been sent over 75,000 of Friends of Animals’ postcards, as well as countless letters, faxes, emails, and phone calls from North Americans and people all over the globe, pledging to boycott Alaska's $2 billion-a-year industry until the aerial wolf-shooting stops.

For details about the first 100 Howl-Ins, to find out when and where new ones will be happening, and to see the names of over 100 organizations that are supporting the tourism boycott, see http://www.friendsofanimals.org/wolves/list.htm

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