In her television show last night, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin was to cast herself as a can-do superwoman of the natural world. She fishes, hikes across glaciers and preaches “respect for the elements” from a speedboat while clad in a yellow rain coat.
However, the program has already plunged the Mama -Grizzly-in-chief into controversy after a leading conservationist in her adopted home of Alaska accused her of flagrant irresponsibility by fishing too close to protected brown bears.
John Toppenberg, director of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, said scenes in an online trailer for the program appeared to show the former Republican vice presidential candidate breaking the rules of Wolverine Creek, a famous spot where bears — and humans — come to fish.
“It’s clear from the video that she violated the guidelines,” he said, calling her actions “a travesty.”
In a preview of Sarah Palin’s Alaska, a part nature documentary, part candid camera of the daily life of one of the US’ most controversial political families, the former state governor is seen fishing for salmon with husband Todd and family members.
She can be seen apparently holding her rod toward brown bears on the river bank, while the party’s boat appears to be closer to the bears than guidelines advise. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game says people in a boat must not fish within 9m of a bear.
“It’s clearly irresponsible,” Toppenberg said. “She is encouraging the violation of important guidelines. Humans can get too close to the bears.”
The irony of a right-wing conservative, who boasts of hunting moose and shooting wolves while campaigning for more oil drilling in Alaska, transforming herself into a nature fan for primetime has not been lost on environmentalists.
Large brown bears gather in Wolverine Creek because the fishing is so easy and the animals have, in the process, become a tourist spectacle. However, Toppenberg warned that by behaving in an apparently irreverent manner, Palin was doing nothing to foster responsibility among visitors.
“She is encouraging the violation of important guidelines that allows tourism to flourish in Alaska. She is inviting future problems with the tourism industry and, in particular, the bear--viewing industry,” he said.
More than two years after she was plucked by Republican presidential candidate US Senator John McCain to be his running mate in the 2008 election, Palin, 46, claims she will run for president in 2012 if “there’s no one else.”
Meanwhile, she has decided to put her family and her home state on show for the nation in Sarah Palin’s Alaska. However, even a soft-focus program becomes controversial when Palin is attached to it.
Joe Meehan, of the wildlife conservation division of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said that it appeared that the Palins’ boat got within 9m of the bears, but not while they were actually feeding.
“Some people may say you shouldn’t even try to fish when a bear is in the area and I wouldn’t argue with that,” he said.
Meehan, who supervises Alaska’s wildlife refuge program, which includes Wolverine Creek, said that while he did not believe Palin had necessarily breached the guidelines, he had concerns over the signal she was sending.
“Fishing in close proximity to bears may, in general, not send an appropriate message to large numbers of people that are not experienced at fishing in bear country,” he said.
The preview clip also shows a bear jumping into the river near the Palins.
Palin recalls dramatically to camera later: “So I’m thinking we are going to get stuck there, the anchor is dropped and there is a bear coming towards us.”
However, this served to enrage Toppenberg.
“She implies that she is somehow in danger or being brave. That’s complete nonsense,” he said. “Wolverine Creek is the one place in Alaska where the bears are tolerant and completely habituated to the presence of people and boats, but the guidelines are there for a reason.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion