Some of the eight orphan moose in captivity now might extend their 15-minutes of fame beyond Alaska newspaper pages and onto the small screen. Flashlight heard rumors weeks ago that a camera-toting crew was seen at various moose incidents—sometimes making Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists nervous about the department’s image—and this week a flack from cable TV channel Animal Planet confirmed the sightings.

The crew, according to Animal Planet publicity manager Melissa Olear Berry, has been in Alaska for about one month shooting for a pilot, tentatively titled Alaska Wildlife Troopers.

Tony Kavalok, a Fish and Game area biologist in Palmer, met the TV team June 19 after he received a call about an orphaned moose at a reindeer farm near Bodenburg Butte. Kavalok asked the caller to deliver the moose to the Fish and Game office but the man wouldn’t do that, saying the biologist might kill the moose outright or let it loose in the woods without a mother. “He said I had to come down there, because he didn’t trust us,” Kavalok says. “I said ‘No, we do not kill moose. Haven’t you heard of the governor’s policy?’” In early June the administration of Governor Sarah Palin told the department of Fish and Game to capture and protect any orphan moose they come into contact with. The Palin administration called the order a “stay of execution” for orphaned moose on the governor’s Twitter account. The governor’s tweet followed an incident in which Anchorage-based Fish and Game biologists confiscated two moose from a woman pulled over by police on the Glenn Highway. The moose were conspicuous in the back of the pickup, and it’s illegal to capture or transport wildlife without a permit in Alaska.

Kavalok says he suspected he was being set up when the caller from the reindeer farm pressured him to pick up a moose in person. He was right. “They had their dog-and-pony show all set up,” he says, adding that several people wore wireless microphones so conversations would be recorded. “Given the climate of what’s been going on, it does not surprise me,” he says. “Possibly they were going to try to embarrass the department, I don’t know.” Kavalok says he wasn’t sure who the crew was, only that they told him they were contractors for Animal Planet. He picked up the moose and left.

Flashlight watches some Animal Planet, and can’t recall a single incidence of ambush journalism flickering across our screen. For that style of reporting, we tune to Joey Greco’s Cheaters and to TMZ.

scott@anchoragepress.com