A few years ago, I read about an aboriginal senior citizen in Alberta who had insisted animal control officials not disturb a couple of adult bears that were invading her garbage containers.
As fate would have it, a few days later those bears, somehow, got into physical contact with the woman and mortally mauled her.
When I read about it, I felt admiration for that woman. I believed that she respected nature so much, especially animal life, that she in essence sacrificed her life for their lives and freedom, for bears had been on that land well before even Canada’s aboriginal peoples.
When are we going to clearly acknowledge the great injustices being committed against wild animals (in this case stray adult bears and their cubs near Port Hardy, B.C.) by human encroachment via deforestation and development on the animals’ natural home grounds? Too many bears, and other potentially dangerous wild animals, are being killed when they behave in a threatening manner towards humans. Thus we’re ready and willing to kill them when we could tranquilize and relocate them all, alive and well.
But it appears that humanity’s superior-minded nature allows our collective conscience to simply shoot dead such animals for reacting in their natural, predatory manner.
Frank Sterle Jr.
