SEATTLE -- A two-year federal undercover operation has broken up one of the biggest illegal wildlife slaughters in modern Alaska history.
Drugs, savagely beheaded animals, traditional Eskimo lifestyles and tourists' fancy for ivory all are intertwined in the case.
So far, 29 people in Alaska -- Eskimos as well as non-natives -- have been charged, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says at least 80 others could be arrested in the massacre of protected walrus to provide ivory for the tourist trade.
Federal agents say that not only walrus tusks, but also polar bear hides, seal skins and sea otter furs, were illegally marketed for cash and drugs.
Authorities described a loose ring of "buddies" that butchered animals illegally on the west and north coasts of Alaska, sold the valuable ivory and hides to undercover agents in Anchorage and then purchased marijuana and cocaine to take back to the lonely and isolated villages of bush Alaska.
To back up the charges, the Fish and Wildlife Service released a videotape allegedly taken by one of its agents in the course of a sting operation.
In the edited tape, a group of Eskimo hunters in the Bering Sea approach an ice floe in their traditional skin boats. More than a half-dozen hunters stand off and open fire with rifles at close range into small herds of walrus. The shooting appears indiscriminate. The huge, bewhiskered beasts are shot where they lay basking in the air. Others are shot as they try to swim to safety.
The hunters then approach walrus carcasses, hack off the heads for ivory and roll the blubbery bodies to the cold sea. Untold other wounded animals flounder in the water and almost certainly perish.
"I almost didn't let the videotape out. It goes almost as far as you can go in shock value," said U.S. Attorney Wevley William Shea in Anchorage.
The cornerstone of the sting operation was a storefront ivory trading post established and operated by two federal agents in Anchorage. They bought 693 pounds of raw ivory tusks (a single walrus tusk weighs 2 to 5 pounds), 32 walrus heads, six polar bear hides, four seal skins and nine sea otter hides -- all sold illegally.
Neither walruses nor polar bears are endangered in Alaska, but both populations are strictly protected.
