For the price of the Iraq War, we could protect each moose and wolf in Alaska from returning Governor Sarah Palin and other hunters with 30 surface-to-air missile launchers.
The RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile launcher is planned or installed on 100 Navy ships, and costs $444,000. Each launcher contains up to 21 infrared-guided missiles for shooting down aircraft. Alaska has up to 11,200 wolves and about 150,000 moose. In recent years, aerial hunting of wolves has become more popular, and Governor Palin supports the practice. Protecting each animal with its own 30 surface-to-air missiles would cost $2.15 trillion, or $850 billion less than Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes' estimate of $3 trillion for the total cost of the Iraq War.
