According to the Animal Alliance of Canada, our Nation’s Capital is one cruel place indeed – when it comes to beavers anyway.
In a media release, the animal rights group pleads with Mayor Jim Watson that the City can no longer keep “crushing, strangling, gassing, poisoning and shooting wildlife.”
If you click on the link, you’re led into the group’s website and what I would refer to as the ‘back story’ on this issue – a letter from Donna DuBreuil of the Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre regarding a family of beavers in Stittsville.
In Ms. DuBreuil’s letter entitled; Ottawa’s Shame…a Death Sentence for the Stittsville Beavers, she recounts the story of a mother beaver and her kits removed from Paul Lindsay Park and relocated to a new area.
In the letter, Ms DuBreuil notes that a relocation of this nature would likely mean death to one beaver family…(I mean Lily and her kits, sorry)
Ottawa, the most wildlife unfriendly City in Canada?
Is it me or has the Animal Alliance of Canada totally lost their mind??
I know it may sound like cruel and unusual punishment but in the real world the only logical & ethical way to manage a beaver population is through trapping, which is exactly what should have happened in this situation. (But I do understand that trapping is not always a viable option within City limits.)
We Conservationists are not being heartless or mean, and it may come as a shock to many but there are actually more beaver in North America today than when Pioneers first arrived at this country! Reason being: their population is no longer trapped to manageable levels.
But calling Ottawa a ‘Wildlife Unfriendly City’ after they went through the effort of relocating a family of beavers instead of trapping them, is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard!
By the way, I have some raccoons at my place that need relocating…
Outdoorsguy