Quote:
Originally Posted by Marty S
For those not in the know, here's the story in a nutshell...
Cougar populations, for unknown reasons spike beyond comprehension. Many theories out there, yes, but nobody has all the facts as to why. Regardless, we have an astronomical cougar population. After years of cougar conflicts, the AB government allows landowners to shoot cougars on their own land, later allows a fall cougar hunting season without the use of dogs. Both steps in the right direction, but not enough cats being taken to solve the problem.
So trappers with our snares and 330 bodygrippers hit a number cougars annually, accidentally of course. We always did catch a few, but with the massive spike in the cougar population, the cougar bycatch spikes accordingly.
Trapper catches a cougar, turns it in and it is registered, then the cat is confiscated and is hauled to a freezer, trapper is given some lame excuse such as animal will be used for science, of which a small percentage is, and the cats hang in the freezer until freezer burned and or specific time, and the cats are incinerated.
Disgusting...
|
This is the nail on the head and disgusting is being kind.... It is illegal to burn these pelts and all other pelts they burn which is more than one would think( everything from cougars to blacks, lynx, grizzlies and everything else confiscated or accidental kill) but cause they are gov nobody fights it. Rape and Murder is against the law too is it ok for gov to do these too. When they were confronted on this and given a solution to follow like our neighbors in BC and salvage these animals and sell them with the profits going to education or maybe to hire more officers to protect and conserve, their response was "Alberta is not into trafficking wildlife". I know of big Rams confiscated from Cadomin sitting in freezers, look at what people pay for the ministry tag should be auctioned off and use the money to hire more F&W or something instead of rotting in freezers or burning. This is like Karma as years ago while running cougars a friend and myself were pleading with gov to increase the harvest on cougars as they gave out few tags for huge areas and could clearly see the populations soaring and like everything else GOA we got the cold shoulder even had officers say we just wanted to "murder everything", now they jump on the too many cat bandwagon and act like they always believed they should of increased the tags. lol Again like most issues in AB is the gov don't care about it's wildlife or biology. Our trapper local has also been trying to get accidental cougar catches to be kept and have a resolution through ATA which was carried but who knows if it ever goes anywhere, also sent multiple letters to MLA's etc..... Same old story in good old AB