I’m not surprised by the Alberta government putting a fox in charge of the henhouse when it comes to wildlife protection. Minister Todd Loewen heads up the Forestry and Parks department and is also a hunting advocate with an outfitting company, taking Americans on treks to hunt game here.
These are the masterminds who plan on darting 90 wild mares in the Eastern slopes as a form of contraception/sterilization and to cull 30 stallions, effectually performing equine genocide. The area that some 1,500 horses roam is vast and mostly uninhabited by humans because of the harsh terrain, not suitable for farming or community living.
Over 15 years ago, I was a co-founder of WHOAS, Wild Horses of Alberta Society. The meetings with the governing officials were fruitless even then. They essentially ignored the thousands of cards the public sent, asking for protected species status for those animals.
Even when I was a part of WHOAS, our group frustrated me with their unwillingness to take a meaningful stand and become more proactive in stopping the poaching and removal of horses via baited, often illegal, capture pens. On one occasion, I opened a livestock panel and set free some terrified, trapped wildies in an unlawful paddock. It was exhilarating. Years later, I learned of the then newly formed HAWS (Help Alberta Wildies Society) team being arrested for peacefully demonstrating beside one of these detention corrals. The caught horses take a one-way trip to the slaughterhouse. Often, captors force nursing foals away from their mothers, the babes helplessly watch their moms being hauled off with the rest of the herd. They heartbreakingly cry out to each other. Starvation or wolves kill the abandoned youngsters.
During my time with WHOAS, I’ve also seen plenty of carcasses riddled with bullets by some bloodthirsty dirt bags.
Not much has changed since I moved back to Alberta last year after being out of the loop for the past eleven.
With the recent shooting of a beloved Canmore cougar that left behind two orphaned cubs, it saddens me. Adding female mountain lions to the hunting list caused this. Now the cubs are in the temporary care of the Calgary Zoo.
Furthermore, the introduction of hunting of wolverines that co-exists with humans is disheartening. Yet a female grizzly with three sub adult cubs attacked and killed one person and left another injured two years later. Why can’t we find them before they strike again, despite our advanced technology?
Please write to Alexandru Cioban Press Secretary office of the Minister of Forestry and parks, his email address is, [email protected] to stop the slaughter of wildlife. Otherwise, we will end up like much of Europe devoid of flora and fauna.
-Doreen Zyderveld-Hagel is a featured columnist with Castanet who resides in Crossfield, Alberta
