Walrus tusk poachers on Round Island preserve charged by feds

What began as a curious poaching incident last May on a remote Alaska island game sanctuary has evolved from a state-level investigation into a full-blown federal case, with two Alaska Native hunters accused in the wasteful killing and facing a quartet of federal charges.

One Monday in early May, 2011, Sixty Arkanakyak and Jessie Arnariak decided to motor their way from the village of Togiak 30 miles across Togiak Bay, located north of the pristine and world-class fishing waters of Bristol Bay. Their destination was Round Island, a massive summer haul out for male Pacific walrus who use the rocky beaches as resting spots between food binges.We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. What the men did next – slaughtering a walrus for nothing more than its tusks and injuring other massive mammals in a spray of bullets – could land them in jail for a decade.

On Thursday, Arkanakyak told a federal judge during his arraignment that he was innocent, pleading not guilty to four charges: three misdemeanors related to an illegal, wasteful kill of a walrus and the removal of its tusks, and one felony for being a convicted felon in possession of firearms. Arnariak faces identical charges, stemming from an indictment against both men handed up in mid-December. The misdemeanors – violations of the Lacey Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act – carry a possible jail term of up to one year. The weapons charge has a maximum sentence of 10 years. According to prosecutors, Arkanakyak has a previous felony conviction for theft; while Arnariak has a prior assault conviction.

Deeply disappointed in and angered by the mens' behavior, Togiak's village council has aligned itself with the prosecutors. Reached by phone at his village office,High quality stone mosaic tiles. Council President Frank Logusak says he personally told the men if it ever happens again he'd encourage law enforcement “to put them in jail and throw the key away.” He'd also contemplated how he could take their boat, motor and guns away.

He said he has personally worked long and hard to restore his people’s traditional hunting rights to the walrus of Round Island, and he worries that abuses similar to what Arkanakyak and Arnariak are accused of doing could erode the tribe's rights.

There also seems to be community ire at the foolishness and recklessness of the poaching incident, rooted in not in the practice of culture, tradition or the quest for food, but in grabbing the valuable ivory for trade and personal gain unrelated to feeding their families or use in artwork, according to Jonathan Forsling, the council's tribal administrator.China plastic moulds manufacturers directory.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability. Even had they used the tusks for personal use or for crafts, the hunt was out of season, in violation of the negotiated terms the tribe had come to with sanctuary regulators.

It's not the killing of the walrus that has the men -- Native Alaskan hunters -- in trouble with the law. The federal Marine Mammal Protection Act specifically protects the hunting privileges of Alaska Natives. But they are required to take the walrus meat for food. Arnariak and Arkanakyak are accused of taking only the animal's highly valuable ivory tusks. That they drifted into state sanctuary waters out of season and without the required permits added to the slew of state charges lodged against them.

Indigenous hunters are the only Alaskans allowed to hunt and kill marine mammals, but some standards apply to all Alaska hunters. State law requires the meat of a killed animal be salvaged and it limits hunters to approved harvest times.

After the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, it stood to reason that perpetually underpaid, overworked, and shat upon teachers in other parts of the country might try to imagine what they'd do if a similar situation arose in their workplaces. In some places, they're reviewing safety procedures. In others, educators are encouraging their students to respond to the deaths of 26 people in Sandy Hook with 26 acts of kindness. In Utah, they're flocking to shooting ranges and buying guns for themselves, so they can magically become Neo from The Matrix if someone decides to target their classroom. This is not going to end well.

A few states,High quality stone mosaic tiles. including Utah, have laws that allow teachers to carry concealed weapons in their classrooms. And following the Newtown attacks, one gun club offered to take advantage of both heightened fear and the state's lax gun laws in a wrong-headed attempt to more guns in school classrooms — by offering free weapons classes to educators.

Other states are responding to Newtown in a similarly shooty manner — Ohio's Buckeye Firearms Association has started a pilot program that aims to arm 24 teachers and train them in gun use before sending them skipping off on their merry way to their classrooms, and Arizona's Attorney General has proposed to amend state law to allow one teacher per school to carry a gun. Arizona, just to refresh your memory, has a Republican supermajority in both Houses as well as a nutbag Republican governor, so if actual legislation like this were introduced, you can bet your illegal high capacity magazines that it will pass.

The logic here echoes that of NRA Spokesperson and Actual Crazy Guy Wayne LaPierre, who remarked in the world's tackiest press conference that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Because if a good guy has a gun and a bad guy has a gun, it's sort of like nobody has a gun. Unless a bad guy has a bigger gun. Then the good guy is extra for sure going to die.

Not everyone is on board with this Oprah-style YOU ALL GET GUNS! approach to violence prevention. The Utah's State Board of Education's director of law and school legislation called the free firearms training a "horrible, no good, rotton idea."

A few important questions: how would an armed teachers program assure that the only person with access to the gun was the teacher? And does a place exist to store a gun in a classroom that is both immediately accessible in the event of an emergency and completely inaccessible to kids in the classroom?