Throughout the ages wolves have been considered a mystical creature bordering between good and evil — romanticized in fables and fairy tales, yet sacrificed for big game hunters and animal agriculture. Cry Wolf is a documentary film about the aerial hunting of wolves in Alaska. Over the past four years, Alaska has engaged in annual aerial wolf hunting whereby wolves are tracked and gunned down by aircraft and snowmobiles. According to the Alaska department of Fish and Game, more than 700 wolves have been killed in this manner since 2003. The Alaska Sportsman magazine summarizes the cruel practice as a challenging occupation noting that to shoot a moving wolf from the air with a twelve-gauge shotgun isn’t an easy task, and the element of danger and the subzero Arctic weather adds zest and spice to the fascinating business. The Federal Airborne Hunting Act was passed in 1971 specifically to prevent this sort of aerial wolf kill. However, this law has been circumvented and the killing has commenced under the notion of animal control. The main purpose for this government-sanctioned killing is to increase prey and boost game for hunters, namely moose, caribou, and mountain sheep. Currently, hunters (mostly out-of-state big game hunters) have control over 73% of the prey in areas where aerial hunting has taken place. A study by The National Academy of Science found that many of the biological relationships assumed in Alaska’s predator control programs are not well understood and insufficient information exists to conclude that such programs increase prey or game populations. Furthermore, many ecological studies including data published by the Alaska Fish and Game conclude that moose are not likely to become threatened, endangered or extinct due to predation. The vision of the Cry Wolf project is to help educate and spread awareness by revealing the biological discrepancies, the barbaric hunting measures, and the great loss of one of the world’s oldest indigenous animals.

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