They Shoot Coyotes Don’t They?

At least two Ontario politicians won’t get much voter support from animal rights activists or inner-city wild animal lovers in the next election, but they will more than likely gain votes from the farming community.

Tory MPP Bill Murdoch has drafted a petition calling for a $200 bounty on dead coyotes. The coyotes are smart, and fences and pens don’t keep them from killing and carrying off livestock. Murdoch maintains there is no defense against them except to eliminate them. Athough Dufferin County Council has been told in the past that the local sheep farmers are interested in culling the wild packs. Murdoch says the predators are hard to find and it’s hardly worth the effort without a realistic bounty, although they can be hunted year-round.

Bruce-Grey Owen Sound Tory MP Larry Miller agrees with Murdoch. “The only good coyote is a dead coyote,” he is reported to have told approximately 150 people during a panel discussion on “sheep day” at the 45th annual Grey Bruce Farmers Week. The discussion was titled Predator Control – What Do You Do When the “Wolf” is Knocking at the Door?

“We shoot every one we see. They’re a pest,” is what Miller reportedly told the crowd.

The Owen Sound Sun Times said Mr. Miller used the debate to again state his opposition to the national gun registry. He said farmers, like himself, who once carried a couple of rifles in their truck are “afraid to bring out their guns and travel around like they used to.”

“What the MNR needs to do when it comes to unregistered guns and what have you, they’ve got to start turning their heads the same way as they do with commercial fishermen that break the law,” Mr. Miller is quoted as telling the meeting.

“Let the farmers out there that have guns do a lot of this control.”

Greg Cull, a fish and wildlife technical specialist with the Ontario natural resources ministry, confirmed coyote numbers are peaking in many areas of Ontario and Grey-Bruce. With other coyote food sources depleted, they began attacking sheep more frequently in 2008 and losses have worsened since.

According to Mr. Murdoch’s petition for a $200.00 bounty on dead coyotes, the animals killed 6,000 sheep in Ontario last year. In last year’s meetings in Dufferin and in subsequent interviews, Mr. Cull and others were opposed to a bounty system but, at the same time, left no doubt that a solution to the problem of problem coyotes needs to be found.

Perhaps there is a problem with the number of coyotes in farming areas, but surely we have progressed beyond the archaic attitude that if we don’t like something we can just barbarically blast our guns at it until we have eradicated the species. There are other ways to manage wild animal populations. Trapping and relocation comes to mind. If euthanization is unavoidable (which I don’t believe for a minute) then trap and euthanize humanely. No animal deserves to have a bounty on its head, and no animal deserves to die a slow death at the hands of a blood thirsty sport hunter.

Basically what Murdoch and Miller are lobbying for is the right to go out and blast away at any coyote they see, any time of the year, and get paid for the privilege. This petition in my opinion is nothing more than the wish of two men who love guns just a little too much, to be able to go out and kill things legally all day, and get paid for it as an added little bonus.

Until Tomorrow Remember

BE THE CHANGE YOU SEEK!

Janette