Friday, April 25, 2008

Bella Vista's goose plan hardly worthy of respect

One can only hope that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service responded to the plan announced by Bella Vista by suggesting that Bella Vistans buy Arkansas hunting licenses and state waterfowl stamps and federal waterfowl stamps and hunt the geese legally during the season on Canada geese each fall.

Bella Vista leaves geese out of discussion of their future

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission spent a lot of money over the past three decades to stock Canada geese in Arkansas, creating large resident flocks. It is pathetic that our society has not only destroyed vast parcels of wildlife habitat for human convenience but also seems unaware that such magnificent creatures not only have as much right to live here as we do and that the natural order assumes that they will remain a part of our food supply.

I am not a vegetarian, but I understand and respect the thinking of people who choose to be vegetarians to avoid killing living things for food.
I do not understand or respect the thinking of people who eat meat from animals raised in captivity and slaughtered for their convenience but treat wildlife as pests.
The natural and legal hunting of wild game simply does the population control that other predators did before manknd became overpopulated. Wolves and coyotes and raccoons and hawks and crows and such would be thinning the broods of nesting waterfowl if that were not forced out of such areas.
Encouraging natural predators to share our space would eliminate such stupidity as the Bella Vista property owners' association has adopted: "The association spends between $50,000 and $100,000 per year to manage the problem, not including costs for loss of use of property," said General Manager Tommy Bailey.

If they won't kill and clean and cook an animal, why don't they all become vegetarians?

For people physically unable to hunt, there could be a nonhunter's permit to eat meat provided by others. That is the questionable practice in the natural world, where creatures that eat what others kill are known as "carrion eaters."
This returns the phrase "old buzzard" to its literal meaning.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You look so old you probably have the over-65 license and can now hunt free! How about trying to buy all the permits and stamps and licenses for a 16-year-old who still flinches when he pulls the trigger.