Because if New Mexico is indeed being overrun by
cougars, why are hunters killing only around 225 each year when 750
kills are allowed? Moreover, why would a state that finally said goodbye
to strapping razors on roosters for death matches decide the best way
to address an alleged overpopulation of a species is a device that can
lead to a slow, painful, terrified death for anything that comes in
contact with it?
Game and Fish spent 1 million New Mexico tax dollars on a
comprehensive, peer-reviewed cougar study that did not support the
claims of livestock predation. In fact it showed the opposite, that
cougars prefer to dine on mule deer, antelope, rabbits, coyotes, skunks,
small rodents, birds and reptiles. And Game and Fish has admitted that
attacks on humans are extremely rare. Yet the department instead is
proposing more, and more grisly, kills because some ranchers and farmers
around the state have voiced concerns about predation.
If there is in fact a cougar-livestock predation
problem, why aren’t those ranchers and farmers making a loud, public
outcry for help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which spends
$100 million a year killing bears, wolves, coyotes and mountain lions to
protect livestock? In fact, a USDA booklet says almost twice as many
lambs and goats are killed in New Mexico by eagles than cougars.
...Most of the United States has moved on from using this savage practice
for wildlife control. The Game Commission should look at the data,
dismiss this proposal and move New Mexico forward as well.
Whether you agree or not with the Albuquerque Journal's viewpoint on any particular issue, you can usually rely on reading a well-written and even-handed opinion. Not on this one. Trapping is described as "cruel", "slow, painful, terrified death", "grisly", "archaic", "like land mines", "more pain and suffering", "cruel and random" and a "savage practice".
All that in just a 438 word editorial and they accuse others of "histrionics"?
Their editorial reads more like a PETA piece than a reasoned argument from a respectable paper.
Their editorial reads more like a PETA piece than a reasoned argument from a respectable paper.
1 comment:
I thought exactly the same thing when I read it in the paper this morning, Frank. Unusual for the Journal, too, I thought, particularly the depiction of traps as cruel and archaic. I'm guessing there's one person on the editorial board who's vehemently anti-trap or lost a pussy cat to a leg hold.
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