Coyotes - God's Dog - Speakers’ Tour
The Peaceful Parks is hosting a speaker series to highlight the plight of 'nuisance' wildlife in Ontario. The campaign aims to foster a greater appreciation for common wildlife that are negatively labeled as 'nuisance', and promote a policy of peaceful co-existence.
The first of the speaker's series is scheduled for May 3, 2011 in Holmesville Ontario, just west of Clinton, Ontario where guest speakers: author and naturalist Hope Ryden and Camilla Fox of Project Coyote will discuss the North American Coyote. The town of Holmesville is located in the middle of the largest livestock production area in Ontario and is also at the centre of the coyote debate.
For the last two years, Ontario has experienced a frenzied hunt of coyotes encouraged by sport hunting clubs through the promotion of coyote killing contests. Such contests are defacto coyote bounties and are illegal in Ontario. They have continued for the last two years because the Ontario government has quietly approved the illegal activity by choosing not to enforce its own laws.
There is now a proposal to set a $200 bounty for every dead coyote, a bounty paid with taxpayer dollars.
Most livestock producers, including sheep farmers, do not support these renegade killing contests and bounties. They would prefer either direct compensation for livestock loss due to coyote predation or assistance in establishing preventative infrastructure. Neither is currently being considered by the Ontario government.
Of noteworthy is the fact that the percentage of livestock lost by coyote predation has not increased in the last ten years and has decreased in recent years in some areas.
The proponents of such bounties admit coyote killing contests are not intended to assist farmers but rather draw new membership to an otherwise fading industry of sport hunting and sport hunting clubs. This is true for many 'nuisance' wildlife, most of which are also 'game' species.
Please Join Us
When: May 3, 2011
Where: Holmesville Community Centre - Holmesville Ontario
Time: 7pm
Pay What You Can with a suggested donation of $10.
Holmesville Ontario is located off Highway 8 approximately 10km west of Clinton, Ontario. Clinton, Ontario is at the junction of Highway 8 (west from Guelph, Ontario) and Highway 4 (Richmond Street north from London, Ontario). Click here for a map.
For more information please contact Peaceful Parks: email ppc@peacefulparks.org or toll free 1.877.785.8636
About our guest speakers:
Hope Ryden- Author-Naturalist
 Hope Ryden has spent years in the field, studying and photographing North
American wildlife. Her behavioral findings have been published in National
Geographic, Smithsonian, and Audubon magazine, and in twenty-three books.
While studying and photographing the wild horses of the United States in
remote places across the West, the nightly rhapsodizing of coyotes sometimes
relieved the silence of her isolated campsite, and occasionally she caught a
tantalizing glimpse of one furtively traveling behind vegetative cover.
Here began the intrigue with the North American Coyote.
Ms Ryden's book 'God's Dog, The North American Coyote' describes with
eloquence and clarity the private life of the much-maligned coyote in a book
that has been heralded as the classic treatise on the subject.
Christine Schadler – Project Coyote – New England Representative.
Ms Schadler has raised sheep in New Hampshire for over 20 years without one loss to a predator. She will discuss her non-lethal management strategies which have proved effective for producers as well as for homeowners in rural areas. Ms Schadler’s research has focused on the eastern coyote as well as the red and gray wolf, and conducts annual wolf tracking expeditions in Algonquin Provincial Park.
Project Coyote is dedicated to innovative solutions that foster peaceful coexistence between people and coyotes. The Project champions progressive management policies that reduce the number of human-coyote conflicts and the number of coyotes destroyed. North America's native wild "song dog”’ coyotes are a vital component of our rural and urban communities, deserving respect for their adaptability, resilience, and intelligence. |
