Thursday, December 3, 2009

Why Do Cities Hate Cougars?

So, I've been following this story about a cougar who wondered into a neighborhood in Rapid City, South Dakota a couple weeks back. The state's Game, Fish, and Parks people tranq'd the cat while it cowered in a tree and then took it to a vet to be euthanized. Read the full story here: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/article_6e92575c-d55e-11de-9a96-001cc4c03286.html

About a week later, the Rapid City Journal published another article after some had asked the question "if the big cat was already out cold, why not just relocate it." And of course the bullshit answer given by GF&P, the supposed wildlife experts, was that relocation never worked. John Kanta from SD GF&P said that they have done it "6 times that I can think of" without success, which is code for "it might have been a failure before, but I don't really care enough to actually find out how many times we've tried. Now quit asking questions, so I can get back to aiding in the annihilation of a species or two." Here is the link to that story: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/article_539ff74a-dbbe-11de-b893-001cc4c002e0.html

What may be more appalling is that Kanta says that the majority of citizen in the area support their cat killing program. Just read some of the comments from the second story. No surprise that the main argument made is the ever infamous "you don't live here, so you don't what it's like." Well, there is at least one person with a soul in the Black Hills area who wrote: "You're welcome to release the lion in my backyard. I chose to live in the beautiful Black Hills and share my property with quite an assortment of wildlife. I'm more concerned about gunhappy people shooting beagles, horses, etc, and deer jumping out in front of me while I drive..."

This citizen's statement helps remind us that wild animals like cougars did not invade our space, we invaded theirs.

I could go on and on, so look for more posts in relation to cougars in the near future.

No comments:

Post a Comment