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Letter: Too easy to blame the wildlife

Wildlife encounters with people, pets and traffic are not what you want to have happen
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Letters to the editor. Western News graphic

“Unleashing the beasts,” as letter writer Lynne Greene (Western News, March 3, Dangerous habitat for wildlife and humans, puts it, leaves me with a couple of points to ponder.

Firstly, I do agree that money has to be spent providing nutritious food and potable water to those that are in need. This is a basic human right. However, I suggest challenging the governments that allow bad ingredients into our food and pesticide modified seeds before food is even grown would be a more useful task that slaughtering some deer.

Secondly, I do agree the deer should be tranquilized and moved, (although not sure how that could be done), but more for their protection than people, pets and traffic.

What has been omitted in her rhetoric is that the deer are animals searching for safe places to raise their young away from the dangers of the forests. Much like what a human desires for their own young.

Wildlife encounters with people, pets and traffic are not what you want to have happen, but consider the hikers, bikers, and campers that crowd into the forests (supposedly for wildlife). Who suffers when there is an encounter there? Always the wildlife has to pay the price.

The human race somehow believes it has the right to every space and convenience this planet has to offer and at any cost to that environment, as long as it serves some humans purpose.

As far as traffic and wildlife, just take a minute to think about the drivers that invade us each and every summer. I’d rather take my chances with a deer.

It’s just too easy to blame the wildlife. What is really required is education.

Another point, a little off topic — I found a hypodermic needle full of blood on the street in front of my house. A neighbourhood full of children. I’m pretty sure the deer didn’t put it there.

Gladys Kusmack

Penticton