Federal wildlife-protection agents are investigating a string of walrus-poaching incidents in Northwest Alaska, where dozens of headless animals were found on beaches and drifting ice in recent weeks.

Populations of the lumbering sea mammals are considered healthy in Alaska waters, but headhunting -- killing walrus for their ivory tusks and leaving meat and other parts behind -- is a crime under federal law and one of the most controversial wildlife issues in the state.

The number of headless walrus found recently has alarmed biologists and Native hunting groups, who fear illegal killing could eventually hurt walrus stocks and will give legitimate subsistence hunters a black eye.

As winter pack ice broke up and receded north through the Bering Strait in recent weeks, crews of village hunters in the region went out in open skiffs for the annual spring hunts. They reported killing more than 1,200 walrus, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which monitors the hunts. That's slightly less than the average spring take, biologists said.

But at least some of the walrus taken this spring have been taken illegally, with heads removed and meat wasted, according to federal fish and wildlife protection agents, who have been documenting the leftovers of illegal harvests. In recent weeks, they said:

* Between 20 and 30 headless walrus carcasses were reported on a beach in the Punuk Islands, rocky islets off St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. Authorities don't know who killed the animals, said Mark Webb, a Fairbanks-based U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent investigating the cases.

* Hunters found an additional 20 walrus carcasses on drifting ice near Sledge Island off the coast of Nome in Norton Sound, the animals' heads hacked off. Again, authorities have no leads into who killed the animals, Webb said.

* Federal and state wildlife-protection officers flying aerial surveys the last week of May saw and photographed numerous headless walrus littering the ice. Officials aren't saying how many. ''We observed a large number of headless carcasses on numerous ice floes between Diomede and St. Lawrence Island,'' Webb said.

An adult walrus can weigh between one and two tons.

Government posters offering $1,000 rewards for information leading to the conviction of walrus headhunters were distributed to villages in the region this week, Webb said, and two federal agents were in Nome interviewing people.

''All this is certainly a matter of concern,'' said John Gavitt, chief of law enforcement for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska. ''I can't say 'Wow -- this is really, really a major deal.' But we're getting enough complaints that we want to figure out what's going on.''

Uncarved ivory tusks, which legally can only be sold by Natives to other Natives, sell in coastal villages for between $15 and $20 a pound, Webb said. A good-sized tusk can weigh eight pounds. Much of the demand for walrus ivory is from Native carvers, both in villages and in Anchorage, and demand is also high for walrus penis bones, or oosiks.

But in recent years, federal authorities have prosecuted a series of illegal ivory cases, including a major undercover operation in 1992 in which nonvillagers were convicted of offering drugs in exchange for ivory. Authorities believe headhunting decreased after the heavily publicized arrests.

Authorities aren't sure now if poaching is increasing or if it's just being reported more by other hunters, who have been working closer during the past couple of years with government wildlife managers. In addition, Nome's lone federal wildlife agent was transferred to the Lower 48 earlier this year and wasn't replaced in time for the spring hunting season. Some people believe the absence of the agent may have led to more illegal hunting .

Reports of head hunts worry Native hunting advocates. Animal-rights groups have long complained that even legal walrus hunting is wasteful, and some of them have attacked headhunting as a rampant problem. Village hunters counter that the claim is exaggerated, but agree head-hunting makes nonwasteful hunters look bad.

''It's unfortunate. We're trying to get to the bottom of it,'' said Jack Olanna, acting executive director of the Alaska Eskimo Walrus Commission, a statewide Native group that works with the federal government to manage the state's walrus population.

''When this happens, it hurts the real subsistence users. This kind of activity hasn't been condoned by the Eskimo Walrus Commission,'' said Olanna. ''That's not the way we hunt. The majority of us are out there harvesting marine mammals for food . . . Myself, I enjoy it because that's what I grew up on. It's unfortunate other parts of the animal are valuable so some people exploit it. It's too bad this had to happen.''

The 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act outlaws hunting of all sea mammals, except for coastal Natives who may take them for subsistence and traditional handicrafts. Unlike bowhead whales, which are classified as endangered, there is no harvest limit or quotas for walrus. The law says only that hunters take the animals in a nonwasteful way.

Wildlife agents have sometimes had difficulty defining exactly what waste is. While hunters in some villages leave virtually nothing wasted when they harvest seals, a male walrus can weigh two tons and hunters are much more selective in what they take home, especially late in the season, according to officials and villagers.

What nonwasteful means has evolved. Working with village elders, the Fish and Wildlife Service eventually wrote a policy: taking at least the walrus' heart, liver, flippers, coak (the meaty, fatty area below the throat), some red meat and the tusks.

Biologists estimate the Pacific walrus population at about 240,000 now, although the animals were nearly decimated in Alaska waters by commercial ivory and oil hunts in the late 1800s. Populations remained low into the 1960s. Head-hunting has occurred in Alaska from the time cash and trade-goods were introduced into villages.

But catching illegal hunters has always been difficult. To make a case, agents must either catch someone in the act, or a witness must step forward, Gavitt and other said, and people in villages are reluctant to speak out against their neighbors.

''Once the ivory is distributed, it's pretty hard to put an investigation together,'' said Gavitt.

Agents investigating the recent headless carcasses hope the rewards help.  ''The information we've received has been very sketchy,'' Webb said. ''There are hunters out of Nome accusing hunters from Savoogna and Gambell. Hunters from Diomede are accusing hunters from King Island. Hunters are accusing non-Natives from fishing boats. There are lots of rumors, and I can't substantiate any of them.''

At the start of the season, the walrus commission and federal officials met with village hunters, urging them to hunt conservatively and take what they can use, and not to target tusks.

Fish and Wildlife and the Walrus Commission have scheduled a meeting for the end of the summer to talk about the problem.

''We don't want a bad apple to skew the public's perception, but there appears to be an increase this year,'' said Dave McGillivary, Fish and Wildlife's supervisor for marine mammals management in Alaska.

''The Native hunters we've been working with, they're very interested in more self-regulation and coming up with their own procedures or peer pressure or whatever to maintain the herds in a healthy state. We're all working toward the same end. . . . But there are people out there who aren't on board and some of them may never be.''

Update 7/26/96:  Allegations by federal wildlife agents that ivory-seeking poachers killed dozens of walruses in Northwest Alaska in recent weeks has angered subsistence hunters in the Kotzebue region, who say the problem is being blown out of proportion and has unfairly given them a black eye.

The hunters, including several well-known Native leaders from the region, argue that the 70 headless walrus carcasses found on beaches in Kotzebue Sound do not necessarily mean that rampant head-hunting is occurring.

''Every year we get dead walrus floating up here and we don't even hunt them,'' said former Kotzebue mayor Willie Goodwin Jr., a longtime subsistence hunter. Most years, ice prevents Kotzebue hunters from reaching walruses farther offshore in the Chukchi Sea, but this year an unusual breakup made walrus hunting easier in the region.

Goodwin and other Kotzebue hunters contend most of the animals either were killed outside the region and drifted into Kotzebue Sound, or were shot by local hunters but were subsequently lost in the water and later drifted ashore, with the heads removed by beachcombers.

''The majority of us are not poachers,'' Ross Schaeffer, former president of NANA Regional Corp., wrote in a letter to newspapers around the state this week. He maintains that many Kotzebue residents found walrus carcasses on beaches and legally took the heads, but that hunters didn't go head-hunting for live animals.

Fish and Wildlife officials say they stand by their earlier statements -- that most of the headless carcasses are the result of hunters who killed them on pack ice earlier this year for their ivory and wasted the rest, a crime under federal law.

Walrus populations are considered healthy off Alaska's western coast, with a population estimated at more than 200,000 animals. Alaska Natives may hunt an unlimited number of them each year so long as the hunting isn't wasteful and a substantial amount of meat is taken in addition to ivory. A pair of tusks can bring $300 or more, but can be sold only by Natives to other Natives, many of whom carve them into crafts.

Agents flying aerial surveys counted more than 160 headless walrus carcasses along beaches from east of Nome around the Seward Peninsula to Kotzebue, including about 70 on shores within Kotzebue Sound, said Mark Webb, the chief Fish and Wildlife enforcement agent in Fairbanks.

The investigation is continuing, Webb and others said. Fish and Wildlife is offering $500 rewards for information about walrus head-hunting.

Evidence is strong, Webb said, that the Kotzebue Sound walruses were killed on pack ice this spring and their heads removed, and that the headless carcasses later washed ashore. He said an informant in the area reported many of the animals washing ashore without heads following a storm in early July. He wouldn't say who the informant was.

Webb said ocean currents generally wouldn't drift carcasses into Kotzebue Sound from the Bering Strait region, where most of Alaska's walrus hunting occurs, or from the Russian Far East, where walruses are killed in subsistence and commercial hunts. This means the Kotzebue Sound animals were probably killed fairly close by, he said.

''The chances of 70 walrus carcasses being washed into Kotzebue Sound all at once from outside is just so remote, I can't fathom that occurring,'' Webb said. ''I'm not accusing people from Kotzebue of head-hunting, but I'm saying that all those animals just didn't drift in.''

The Kotzebue hunters strongly disagree. Unlike St. Lawrence Island and villages to the south, ice conditions prevent Kotzebue-area hunters from reaching walrus most years. But this year, while pursuing beluga whales and bearded seals, hunters found huge herds of the lumbering sea mammals, they said.

Schaeffer and others maintain that when walruses are shot, surviving animals often push the wounded animal off the ice into the water, and this could explain at least some of the carcasses.

''. . .there is a great amount of loss not due to the hunter's fault,'' Schaeffer wrote. ''I estimate that in order to land one walrus, as many as three to five walruses are lost due to the social behavior of other walruses and not the fault of the hunter.''

Webb disputed that so many walruses are lost, citing a study by University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Bud Fay in the 1970s showing that only about half of the walruses shot off St. Lawrence Island were lost.

Walruses shot and lost in Kotzebue Sound later floated ashore, Schaeffer and others said. While much of the meat was rotten, the heads and tusks were salvaged by villagers, they said. Schaeffer said he found five walrus carcasses floating in the water while hunting this spring and summer, four of them with heads still attached. One hunter in Deering removed nine heads from beached animals in Kotzebue Sound, and some families salvaged some meat and fat from other animals on the beaches, he said.

''The hunters here in Kotzebue value the walrus food but do not head-hunt only for tusks,'' Schaeffer wrote.  ''I find it very distasteful for the members of the Fish and Wildlife Service stationed in Fairbanks who could easily talk and work with Natives who found and cut off walrus heads to get an accurate count of these animals but elected to do nothing except count floaters and accuse us of poaching. No wonder Native people distrust and hate agency people.''

Reference:

Anchorage Daily News