"What Do You Suppose the Elk Think of Us?" By Heather Steel
Parks officials in Banff, located in the Canadian Rockies in the province of Alberta, are concerned about reports of elk becoming more numerous and assertive there. The officials are now proposing controlling the elk through the use of contraceptives, starting by testing a vaccine on ten elk cows that should render them unable to have calves. Heather Steel, a correspondent for the Victoria-based office of Friends of Animals, had this to say:
It’s a striking and self-serving concept that elk in their increasing numbers are a nuisance. Couldn’t the elk say the same about us?
Canadians should be concerned about expanding our own population, and how that affects the indigenous animals. Certainly, no one is suggesting imposed birth control for the residents or tourists in Banff.
…While it is laudable that park officials have sought to avoid killing elk in order to curb the population, forced birth control is another form of human hegemony over other animals.
Free-living animals do not require our guardianship, nor should it be imposed upon them.
Elk have their own natural birth control — they simply cannot expand much beyond the available food sources.
Whenever humans meddle with nature, we end up creating some kind of mess further down the line. Let’s consider more deeply the ethics and the consequences of this act before signing the elk up for family planning.
Click here to read the full commentary in The Calgary Herald.
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3 Comments
On August 9, 2007, Alison wrote:
this is a long-running issue that more and more people are waking up to. however, those of us that air this point of view are still massively ridiculed, and completely unfairly.
as already detailed, the animal ‘kingdom’ is a self-regulating system. it does not need us to help it along, only to put right the damage we’ve done. if we’d stay as far out of these animals’ business as possible, there would be no need to correct mistakes at all.
On August 9, 2007, Dustin wrote:
Challenging human arrogance is, to be sure, a pressing matter, and an issue that continually pits us against the natural world—-whether it be the environment, our relationship to non-human animals, and even ourselves. Our collective fixation with subjugating nearly all that exists is deeply saddening, and it behooves us to ponder how we ended up in this mess, and how we’ll proceed in envisioning a future that is respectful to ourselves, other animals and our endangered planet. There has never been a better, or more important, time to become vegan.
On October 5, 2007, Margaret Geisler wrote:
Why don’t we humans ever learn, by introducing the wolf back into the chain of nature, the elk will be thinned out and the healthy and strong will produce and strengthen the herd. We do not need to have man out there shooting. Let nature handle it.