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Humans have to learn to live with urban wildlife

Editor: I’m writing about something I find very disturbing.

Editor:

I’m writing about something I find very disturbing. I am asking for an end to animal abuse by Lower Mainland/Fraser Valley pest control businesses and the barbaric practice of using leg-hold traps or snares to capture our native urban wildlife.

These traps should not be used during baby season and should be closely monitored when used. Rules were ignored in the following case.   

Critter Care Wildlife Society, Protection for Fur-Bearing Animals and three very caring Samaritans together put up a large reward for information regarding whoever left a steel trap in a treed area which led to a painful and inhumane suffering of a wild animal held in the trap too long.

On May 17, there was a report of a raccoon left in a steel trap for more than a week near 17A Avenue in Beach Grove.  It was reported the raccoon had tried to chew both legs off to get out of the trap. The animal was taken to Critter Care Wildlife Society, but due to the severity of the injury, the animal had to be euthanized.

It’s 2020 and this should not be happening. Unless a trap is checked daily for a life caught in its steel jaws, it is inhumane suffering for that animal to be left in the trap for a week.

For years we’ve been inviting the world to come and see Beautiful Natural British Columbia, see the beauty of our lakes, forests, mountains and enjoy our parks. In those parks and forests is our native wildlife. Wild animals also live within our urban cities and they try to cohabitate with us.

Why do we have to kill our urban wildlife by using steel leg-hold traps because some people consider them a nuisance? Humans have to learn to live with these animals. We can’t be so cruel as to want suffering and death for them at every turn.

Communication through conversation to capture and release wildlife is better. Call me a bleeding heart if you like, but I can’t stand by when I hear or read about such torturous ways we are trying to “get rid of” our urban wildlife. I need to speak up for them as they have no voice. I would like to see these animals remain for the future generations, not annihilated in my lifetime.

Gail Elliott