/ Opinion / Letters /

Appalled by senseless slaughter

Tuesday, May 29, 2012 03:00 am
Noel West/Mountain View Gazette
Noel West/Mountain View Gazette
A small herd of horses in the wild found about 30 kilometres west of Sundre in a forestry area outside of Bearberry.
view all photos (-count-)

It was with great disdain that I took time out of my day to write to our representative in the Alberta Legislature concerning the malicious destruction of approximately 250 horses out of the Panther River reserve area this past winter. It is of greater disgust to find out that they were sent to slaughter – mares, foals and stallions.

Does Alberta Sustainable Resources have no pride in the history of these great herds that roamed freely in the West Country and how their ancestors performed the ranch work and worked tirelessly in the logging industry? I was totally disgusted when we went to a staging area last weekend and there was one lonely stallion present, scared, confused and trying to find his herd. He ended up in a paddock with domestic horses, trying to find his place. Now he has become a pest!

I find it frustrating that they deemed to take these animals as theirs and destroy them without the attempt to adopt them to private farms and ranches in this province. Who do these natural resources belong too? If you have recently travelled in rural Alberta anywhere, the deer are more of a menace, causing havoc for travellers, ruining crops and spreading disease. Why is there not open season on them too? Then the coyotes and wolves can starve in style, or take more elk or domestic animals and then be destroyed because they are declared a menace. Does it not make you wonder why the bear, cougar and wolves are moving further out into the prairies? May I point out that we forced them into the hills as we cleared land, declaring it farms and ranches? Now we are invading their areas in the foothills and western Rocky Mountain ranges, forcing them back to the prairies.

They have not taken appropriate action on all the quads and bikes in the back country that have done more harm to the environment in the last 10 years than the horses have in the past 100 years. Horses do not ruin the bull trout spawning beds or rip up a single bog in one weekend. How can they justify this action? Why did they not offer adoption? Why did this not go public? Where did the funds from the senseless slaughter go? What is Alberta Sustainable Resources Development going to do with regulating quads and bikes in the West County? I encourage you to write your MLA to protest this senseless slaughter.

Wayne Krejci

Bowden

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