FROM Lohud.com
October 9, 2019
This summer, lohud and The Journal News ran a feature on the trophy
hunting of a giraffe and the intense backlash against the hunter responsible
for it. As people become more educated and anti-sport hunting sentiment
grows, there is similar support for bills against wildlife killing
“contests,” as have been enacted in New Mexico, California and Vermont. We
are calling on Westchester County and New York state to follow suit and pass
bills A00722/S04253 to ban them in our beautiful state.
These contests fly in the face of the Department of Environmental
Conservation’s purported “sound wildlife management science,” showing it for
the lie it is. Indeed, such a random, mindless slaughter of wildlife affects
everything surrounding them, such as other animals, plants and trees. It
directly harms the natural environment — already negatively affected due to
our urban sprawl — by causing a disruption in the food chain and undoing
natural predation and wildlife population growth.
Animals are sentient, intelligent beings. Killing living beings for prizes
would be considered abnormal, unstable social behavior in a psychiatric
nomenclature; these activities are legal due to the hunter-staffed DEC,
which was created by and for hunters almost 100 years ago.
Contests include killing crows and squirrels, urging children to join. The
animals they target are intelligent, sentient and love their babies. Crows
have been shown to make ingenious tools from multiple objects that are
individually useless; they generously call their friends when they find
food. Squirrels remember where their food is even after two years — and
“fake” bury food to deceive onlookers. They express emotions through their
tails and cuddle their infants as we do.
Westchester, too, has entered the killing contest realm by instituting a
lottery to slaughter deer in our public parks. In the short story classic
“The Lottery,” a town excitedly chooses which resident will be slaughtered
via lottery; how is this practice in Westchester different? Westchester
should be better than this, should be the leader in joining the humane
community.
Even hunters condemn killing contests. Jim Posewitz, founder of the
Hunter’s Institute, states, “I don’t think any form of hunting should be
competitive.” Ed Nuse, former executive director of International Hunter
Education Program, said, “We don’t like anything that smacks of
commercialization with money and prizes. These contests create very poor PR
for hunters.”
Fishing contests are exempt.
The world is changing: It’s time to examine our need to feel superior to
others in this cruel fashion. We’d never hold killing contests for dogs and
cats — what’s the difference? Killing contests incentivize the lowest form
of human nature. Children should be taught to respect the planet’s
inhabitants, not act violently toward innocent beings to win a prize. Let
New York state be known, not for the amount of wildlife we brag about
killing for kicks, but for treating all its inhabitants ethically — and not
just those who look like us.
The author, Kiley Blackman, from Tuckahoe, is founder of the Animal
Defenders of Westchester.
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WESTCHESTER4GEESE is an adjunct of ANIMAL DEFENDERS OF WESTCHESTER. We advocate against all forms of animal abuse and exploitation, including hunting, experimentation, fur, circuses and rodeos - https://www.facebook.com/Westchester4Geese