B .C.’s senior conservation officers are taking a drubbing following a highly publicized refusal by one C.O. to euthanize two orphaned cubs.
Online comments refer to the officers as “blood thirsty” or call them killers.
Sorry, but that doesn’t wash. People join the conservation officer service because of their love of nature and wildlife and a desire to — keyword here — conserve it.
But the sad reality is, sometimes dispatching an animal is the most humane thing to do, especially if they’ve become habituated to humans.
We city dwellers have a bad habit of anthropomorphizing and projecting our emotions onto wildlife.
Relocating problem animals isn’t the bloodless panacea city dwellers seem to think it is. It’s highly likely a bear will get dropped into another bear’s territory. And a habituated bear will travel hundreds of kilometres to get back to its food source. Both cases increase the risk of a far less humane end for the bear.
Unless we start disassembling our mountainside suburbs, wildlife conflicts will continue to happen. It quite literally comes with the territory. A big part of a conservation officer’s job is educating the public on how not to attract wildlife in the first place.
But again and again, we see cases of bears being destroyed only after they became dangerously habituated to humans thanks to being lured by our garbage, garage freezers, birdseed, fallen fruit — even spilled coffee on the inside of a car has been known to draw them out.
Remember, when incidents like this happen, it may be a C.O. who pulls the trigger, but it continues to be us who bait the trap.
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