Now, more than 560 wildlife refuges across the country have been set aside, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says, “for wildlife first.”Yet the meaning of that phrase was muddied in the minds of many conservationists on the refuge system’s anniversary this year. Fish and Wildlife Service last summer to end some controversial hunting practices in national wildlife refuges in Alaska. Young and other Alaska lawmakers cast the issue as a matter of states’ rights and preservation of traditional subsistence hunting. “Rolling back protections for predators defies everything wildlife refuges stand for,” said Emily Jeffers, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, in an email.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 25, 2017 02:34 UTC