C'mon Albertans, let's protect our wildlife!
Alberta plans to kill wolf pups
This is a cause that I am passionate about and I am compelled to share my feelings.
As a long-time volunteer for environmental causes, I am outraged at the provincial government’s proposal for a wolf cull.
“Researchers in the University of Alberta's department of biological sciences have proposed a cull of wolves in the Rocky Mountain House area.
This would involve shooting wolf pups and sterilizing older wolves, with the intention of boosting the elk population in the area.
One reason given for the wolf cull is that it would provide more elk for human hunters to kill.”
The Red Deer Advocate has an insightful editorial Wolf Cull Defies Logic
I invite and encourage everyone to tell the government how you feel about this issue. The best way to do this is to write a letter to your MLA. If you don’t have time for that, then please go to this website and sign the petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/against-proposed-alberta-wolf-cull.html
Once you have signed the petition, you can log in and see the comments which people have made, such as this one:
“Not only is the research questionable, the government policies that led to it need to be re-examined as well. The current government wolf culls only mask the high level of destruction of Alberta's wilderness due to forestry and the oil industry. We need creative solutions, not another way to kill wolves.”
Here’s the comment which I made:
”Let's exploit the tourism factor of our wildlife rather than the killing of our wildlife. You can shoot a wolf a thousand times with a camera, but only once with a gun.”
Five years ago, I organized a large and well-publicized protest over the killing, by trappers, of two wolves from Banff’s Bow Valley pack. We received huge media coverage and informed many people about the situation. I am pleased to say that wolves have returned to the Bow Valley and they were successful in raising a large litter of pups last year. Elk are proliferating in Banff, and there is concern by park officials that there will soon be Elk/human conflict in the townsite. They've put up fences in strategic areas of the park, trying to make the elk more susceptible to wolf predation.
The town council of Canmore feels strongly about this and has written a
letter to the provincial government. “The policy runs contrary philosophically to where we are as a town, this is contrary to who we are as a community.”