Article on the need to coexist peacefully with animals
Education and compassion are the keys to coexisting with any form of wildlife. As wild animals find their natural environment shrinking daily, their interaction with humans increases often with disastrous results for the animals. When they take up residence in someone’s home, destroy the garden, rummage through garbage cans or raid the songbird feeder, they are just looking for food or a place to live – they don’t deserve to be killed for such actions.
Chances are if you call an exterminator (which is very expensive) or animal control, the animal will be killed after it is caught. You may contact the Department of Environmental Conservation for referral to a wildlife rehabilitator who will humanely trap the animal. In most cases the trapped animal will be relocated. Ask first to be sure.
Before taking those steps, however, first read more about your wild neighbor to alleviate some of your fears and concerns and then try the suggestions for humanely encouraging him to move elsewhere. Be patient and compassionate. He doesn’t want to be any closer to you than you want to be to him – he is just trying to survive.
It is good to read in articles and letters over the past few weeks that many Greater Victoria residents are sensitive toward other species.
Deer, rabbits, horses, calves, etc., are sentient beings. Although some humans still assume we are the only species capable of emotions and physical pain, the truth is humans are not alone in feeling joy and suffering.
As for the term “cull,” what’s with that? A human word invented to cover up our guilt and insensitivity in sentencing other species to die, simply because we find them inconvenient to our way of life. We need to understand we are killing some other species’ child, mother or father in cold blood.
There is only one species that has overpopulated the planet and produced a way of life that is destroying the balance of nature on this planet. Getting back that balance will not be easy. Finger-pointing toward other species for human mistakes is not the answer.
The philosophy of primacy of the human species over all other species needs to ride off into the sunset. Thoughtful, compassionate solutions for co-existence are there.
Some examples are: The Luxton rodeo ending; volunteers giving donations, their expertise and time to come up with solutions to relocate rabbits left by some humans to fend for themselves in an unnatural environment on a busy highway interchange; those who care enough for deer to give their time and energy to voice concern over the planned killing of a beautiful species.
