StratfordToday received the following letter to the editor from reader Larry Baswick.
I read two recent articles which are related if you are as prepared to reach for straws as am I.
First, apparently beavers and coyotes are "nuisance" animals. According to a Mr. Stocking who, I presume, owns a business which eliminates these resources upon which Canada was sustained during its embryonic stage, we need to be more assertive regarding their existence.
Beavers were trapped/killed and their fur, in particular, was capitalized upon by the Hudson's Bay Company with leased rights granted by the Crown. Canada grew to world recognition on the backs, so to speak, of these "nuisances".
Nuisance is defined in Webster's as an annoyance. I've always felt a great sense of pride as a human in being able to presumptively declare any member of the animal kingdom, short of other humans (except in the case of Jews and Yazidis and Ukrainians et al according to other more dominant and righteous groups), as inconvenient and, therefore, killable, extinctable, eradicatible, collectable and otherwise of a worth only known to us in our grand wisdom.
This is more contemptible in my opinion than any of the above. I mean, who do we think we are and what gives us the right except that we have bullets.
Second, researchers from UBC have found that a group of orcas with twice the amount of salmon available to it than another group which appears to be extremely well fed defies what they expected to find in their study. A Mr. Trites of the university is quoted as saying that he is learning not to jump to conclusions.
The two articles are related in the concept that as humans with titles in front of our names and letters behind them and, therefore, 'experts', we often give ourselves permission to arrive at conclusions which are premature, based upon specious or no evidence (just pop into our heads), or born of an undeserved imperiousness.
Some humility regarding wildlife and more generally regarding each other would serve the planet well. A lot of things annoy me. Beavers don't.
Larry Baswick
Stratford
