They have an island that’s getting overpopulated and need to reduce the herd size. The rest of the story is BS, the Musk OX are not on the ice flow’s.
Exactly.
“because unusually warm temperatures mean the sheets of ice the animals inhabit are melting and drifting into the Bering Sea.”
What is a ruminant who eats vegetation going to do on a sheet of ice for food? I can understand a seal or walrus or polar bear stopping by, but a hairy cow won’t inhabit ice.
If an Alaska resident spots a musk ox floating on ice sea ice adjacent to a western Alaska game management unit, they can now legally hunt it without a permit because the land mammals dont have much of a chance of surviving anyway.
On Wednesday, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued an emergency order allowing residents to harvest musk ox if the animal is stranded on free-flowing ice surrounded by salt water in Game Management Unit 18 — an area that stretches along the Bering Sea from Kotlik to Platinum and includes Nunivak Island, which is home to more musk oxen than people.
http://www.adn.com/article/20151014/hunters-can-target-musk-oxen-stranded-western-alaska-ice-floes
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The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is opening a resident hunting season for musk oxen that are stranded on free-floating ice floes completely surrounded by salt water in Unit 18. The hunting season opens October 15, 2015 and residents taking musk oxen from ice floes must comply with hunt conditions specified in regulation 5 AAC 92.046 Permits for taking incidental or stranded musk oxen. The area affected by this announcement includes coastal marine waters adjacent to muskox populations located on Nunivak and Nelson islands in Unit 18.
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/applications/webintra/wcnews/2015/releases/10-14-2015.pdf
Perhaps, but all the global warmers will swallow it hook,line and sinker!