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Federal authorities on Thursday charged another Brevig Mission man with waste after a group of hunters killed 14 walrus in 2016, removing some of the heads and leaving entire carcasses to rot.

Timmy Henry was part of the group that shot and killed the North Pacific walrus, which included six calves, according to the filing in U.S. District Court in Fairbanks by Stephen Cooper, an assistant U.S. attorney.

Henry is charged with one count of wasteful subsistence taking of marine mammals.
Under federal law Alaska Natives can take walrus for subsistence hunting or for making art, as long as it isn't done wastefully, the filing said.
But Henry and others left a substantial portion, the harvestable remains, of all 14 walrus, the filing says.

Brevig Mission is located in Northwest Alaska, northwest of Nome. Prosecutors say the illegal hunt occurred on May 7, 2016, on a Bering Sea ice floe west of Sledge Island, about 100 miles south of Brevig Mission.

There were four hunters in the group, Cooper said on Friday.
William Kakoona and Bob Tocktoo were previously charged with wasteful killing of the walrus, and have paid or are in the process of paying $2,280 in fines, Cooper said.
Edward Barr, from Brevig Mission, was also charged with waste in June for the incident.

Barr has said he had left one or two walrus on the floe because ice was closing in on his hunting group, and they had to head home for their own safety. Another man in the party left his walrus kills behind after cutting his hand, forcing him to get medical care in Nome, Barr told the Daily News.
Last year, federal authorities prosecuted four other men in a different case involving wasteful killing of walrus in 2015, this time at Cape Lisburne in Northwest Alaska. In that incident, the men sought tusk ivory that can be carved and sold as art.

Cooper said he didn't know specifically why the Brevig Mission hunters removed only heads. Their motivation is a secondary issue, he said.
"The crime is wasting any substantial portion of it, and the whole carcass is certainly a substantial portion," he said.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/cri...rged-with-waste-in-killing-of-14-walrus/

Was on a Federal jury selected for a wanton waste of walrus case many years ago. After the selection process they sent us to lunch. Right after lunch they released us because they all decided to plead guilty. Maybe the voir dire did not go the way they planned. The number of walrus they killed was far higher than this case.

Calling these incidents subsistence is kind of like calling spotlighting/poaching sport hunting.

Now now! Be nice!

Yup. Remember the rash of "hunters" killing black bears several years ago and the only thing "harvested" was gall bladders?

I could play. Dignity and self-respect are sold for second-hand store prices these days.

I grew up hearing “waste not, want not”, and it’s kind of funny how so many Western values and ideas have parallels in Yup’ik culture. (They don’t always jump out at you right away, but this one is clear.) You’ll sometimes hear the elders -especially- lament the loss of respect for these values. Lots of cultural ‘holes’ in need of filling these days, and the saggy pants culture seems to be filling a lot of them.

On the bright side however, was at a cookout on the Fourth and was talking to a swarthy, weathered young man.... around 40 years old. I remember the ‘kid’ well when he was waist high. He was talking eagerly about the start of berries. (Tundra Salmonberries are imminent.) I asked if he was working this summer since there are some good Davis-Bacon jobs locally this summer. He said “no, but putting food away” ..... “just finished fish (herring, salmon), now looking forward to berries.” I know he and his wife, another ‘kid’ I worked with as a student, probably put away early summer greens. I know their freezers have a bunch of fat spring geese in them. ‘They’ don’t all turn out poorly, but the rotten ones sure spoil the whole. Works the same way when some pasty-looking d!€¥ wad makes the rest of us pasty-looking humans suspect out in these parts.