“A deer was violently killed in city limits this am by a pack of wolves! Something has to be done before my son or someone’s child is seriously hurt!!!”
Normally I would not support any type of vigilante action…however this may be the time!
Vigilante education: don’t leave it in the hands of others…be a pro-active vigilante educator - educate your sons and daughters to the dangers of approaching wild life. What to do if they see wild life and how to act. (Remember Bambi can be vicious too!). Safe routes to walk to and from school etc and to how to form their own pack of friends to walk safely through the community. Safe play areas. How to use the phone to call for an adult to walk with them. Who to approach if they feel they need assistance. Etc., etc.
There, now I feel better - something has been done. (And hopefully I will not have to take vigilante action again).
By the way - I’m sure there is a support group for failed or failing helicopter parents….so if you feel the need for little bit of assistance you might look them up.
Wolves coming into town and picking off prey is nothing new. It happens every January… I can’t understand why this is the year that people choose to get excited about it. Does anyone know why? To propose picking off wolves (and their prey) within city limits is utter insanity. It won’t solve anything (except create anger and dead wolves). Let the conservation officers do their jobs in the event of an attack, it’s extremely unlikely (although wolf attacks are on a slight rise, there have only been 2 North American fatalities “reported” in the last 60 or so years). Keep your garbage and pets inside…and ask your non-compliant neighbors to do the same. Educate your children…and HEY! Why don’t we do something positive and get a jump on stopping the reproductive cycle of feral cats in town!?! We should do our part first by reducing human-related food sources for wildlife, and see how that goes before we start picking off animals which are only doing whats natural.
The wolves, foxes, eagles, and ravens help keep the feral cat population in check.
From a ecological viewpoint, unless you can sterilize all the cats or alternatively take a way all the food sources (then we watch the cats starve), you will always have a population of feral cats living on a subsistence basis. If you intentionally feed them, all you are doing is providing more nutrition so that the cats will be more healthy and produce more kittens that will have a greater likelihood of survival.
Incidentally, if you got rid of all the cats, I suspect that the rat and mouse populations in our town would explode as the cats prey on the rats and mice.
I am not saying get rid of the cats, only to reduce their populations by sterilization. Prince Rupert clearly has an issue with the feral cat populations, spay and neuter programs work, and if you think the feral cats out in the town right now arn’t already starving, think again. I’ve seen first hand the horrible lives these animals live when they are allowed to reproduce uncontrollably. I’ve been on the front line, personally shelling out cash for spay/neuter/vaccinations and have seen the positive results. Those cats lived longer, healthier lives and did less property damage than unsterilized animals (i.e. spraying urine and spreading parvo virus) as a result of the cash taken out of my pockets.
One of the issues leading up to the feral cat problem (and more recently the wolf eating feral cat problem) is the abundance of accessible garbage that we have in Prince Rupert (i.e. improper garbage storage, over flowing dumpsters, improper disposal of harvested animals (fish offal, deer carcasses)). I hope Prince Rupert will be able to step up and become a wildlife safe community (like Revelstoke, Kimberely, ect.) where citizens take measures to prevent habituation and food conditioning of wildlife (bears, wolves, yes! even feral cats). Before we decide to start picking them off we need to do our part. Reducing human-wildlife conflict start with the “human” not with the “wildlife”.
and yes, all my presented points are relevant from a ecological perspective. We wouldn’t have starving wildlife (cats ect) is we didn’t support those food webs through are garbage, and we wouldn;t have rats if we took measures to control our waste.