Re: Animal rights priorities skewed (Comment, Jan. 28)
Official attitudes to animals have certainly become bizarre: under proposed new laws kids feeding ducks at the beach will be treated like criminals. An elderly widow I know says she feeds the seagull who comes daily to her balcony because “he’s my best friend.”
Roszan Holmen adopts the rhetorical habit of labelling animal lovers “hysterical.” Yet isn’t there hysteria in the call to lock up pet cats and the statement that animals “pose dangers to the health of people, native ecosystems or local food supply”?
Since they do none of these, let’s hope our deer, raccoon, rabbit and squirrel co-citizens will remain safe from the American solution, which Holmen describes: deer caught in baited traps “were shot in the head with a bolt gun and ... ground into burger...”
We don’t have a deer problem, the deer have a humanity problem. More damage is done to plants and birds by the paving of landscape, than by all the deer, rabbits and cats in the world. It is easier to lock up cats and shoot deer than to grapple with human overpopulation and greed-based development.
What is the goal of the anti-animal crusade? Who will benefit? Not people who take pleasure in the wildlife around us. Urban children already feel the effects of “nature deficit disorder.” Let’s not make it worse.
Barbara Julian
Oak Bay