Six months after a federal judge ordered an environmental study before the state could start slaughtering wolves on Unimak Island in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is out with an environmental assessment on wolf and caribou management on the 1,571-square-mile island.

It endorses the state's original plan, and offers four options for dealing with a shrunken Unimak caribou herd. One option is the "no action" alternative required in all environmental assessments. The other three involve gunning wolves in one way or another -- from helicopters, from airplanes or from the ground. Environmentalists are predictably outraged. The Center for Biologist Diversity has initiated a letter-writing campaign.

What has been happening with the Unimak caribou herd is not well understood, said Rebecca Noblin, the organization's Alaska spokeswoman, and "there is no scientific evidence this is going to help."

State officials, however, see no downside to killing wolves. A variety of studies in the 49th state have shown that removing predators tends to help their prey, and the wolves have shown themselves an extremely resilient species so long as they have wild habitat in which to live. State biologists admit there is no guarantee that killing wolves that prey on Unimak caribou will help the herd grow, but they believe it is the best chance for a population which now numbers only about 400 animals.

Back in the 1920s, an estimated 7,000 caribou lived on Unimak, an island in the Aleutians about 700 miles southwest of Anchorage. By the 1950s, all the caribou were gone, or at least biologists couldn't find them. Gradually though, the caribou returned, apparently by migrating from the nearby Alaska Peninsula. By the start of the new millennium, the herd had stabilized in the range of 1,000 to 1,500 animals, and then began another decline. From 2002 to 2009, according Alaska Department of Fish and Game data, the population plummeted from almost 1,300 animals to about 400.

A year ago, when the state first proposed killing wolves, state biologists were warning of an "imminent and perhaps irreversible decline of caribou on Unimak Island." But that doesn't appear to have happened, said Nancy Hoffman, the manager of the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Based in remote Cold Bay -- a community of about 100 centered around the runway of an old, World War II air base -- Hoffman oversees nearby Unimak Island along with the Izembek refuge. Hoffman said poor snow conditions this year have to date prevented biologists from getting a good count of the number of caribou left in the Unimak herd, but a "composition count" in the fall showed what might be considered some improvement.

A dangerously low ratio of bull caribou to cows appeared to have improved, she said, as had the ratio of calves to cows in the herd. State officials last year put the bull-cow ratio at five per 100 and warned that ratios of less than 10 per 100 might threaten reproduction. Hoffman said that the survey this fall, however, showed the ratio creeping back toward the latter number. And the ratio of cows to calves, which hit rock bottom in 2009 when only three calves survived for every 100 cows, had come back up as well.

"I wouldn't call that (herd) decreasing," Hoffman said.

Source: Unimak EA outsourced with 'predetermined outcome'

Hoffman, however, has not been directly involved in the environmental assessment done for the Unimak herd. The EA was completed by GAP Solutions Inc., which lists an address in Pocatello, Idaho, and no phone number. Biologists who provided data for the study said the contract was overseen by Dave Allen, the former and retired regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage. Allen could not be reached for comment.

Anchorage biologist Wade Willis, a former state biologist and sometimes critic of that agency, said the Unimak EA (PDF) was the first ever done by Allen. Willis also noted the whole process was a bit unusual.