That appears to be Sarah Palin's environmental philosophy, at least when it comes to wildlife. Polar bear? Let it go extinct. Beluga whale? Let them beach themselves. Wolves? Shoot them. The rest of the environment? Drill it, dig it, or cut it. She appears to make Dick Cheney look like John Muir.
At the National Governors Association conference where she first met John McCain, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had other business: making her case to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne against classifying the polar bear as a threatened species.
Months later she sued Kempthorne, arguing that the Bush administration didn't use the best science in concluding that without further protection, the polar bear faces eventual extinction because of disappearing sea ice as the result of global warming.
http://ap.google.com/...
In her 20 months as governor, Palin has questioned the conclusions of federal marine scientists who say the Cook Inlet beluga whale needs protection under the federal Endangered Species Act.
She has defended Alaska's right to shoot down wolves from the air to boost caribou and moose herds for hunters, and — contrary to a view held by McCain — is not convinced that global warming is the result of human activity.
Environmentalists have nicknamed Palin the "killa from Wasilla," a reference to the small town where she formerly was mayor.
"Her philosophy from our perspective is cut, kill, dig and drill," said John Toppenberg, director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, maintaining she is "in the Stone Age of wildlife management and is very opposed to utilizing accepted science."
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_Her administration disputes conclusions by the federal National Marine Fisheries Service and its science advisers that the beluga whale population is in critical danger. The state argues that 2007 data shows the whale rebounding.
_Palin opposed a state ballot initiative to increase protection of salmon streams from mining operations. It was defeated.
_She also opposed a ballot initiative barring the shooting of wolves and bears from aircraft except in biological emergencies. It was also defeated.
Under Palin, the state Board of Game authorized for the first time in 20 years the shooting of wolves by state wildlife officials from helicopters. The order resulted in the controversial shooting this summer of 14 one-month-old wolf pups taken from dens on a remote peninsula 800 miles southwest of Anchorage — an act that environmentalists claim was illegal.
Someone send this article to Joe Biden. Who cares about her personal life when she's bent to destroying the environment.