Royal waste of money

Editor:

Up front, to cull or not to cull, I don’t care either way. The rabbits, a non-indigenous species, ate my petunia, a non-indigenous plant. On the other hand they kept the grass in my driveway low and even, as found only on a Scottish golf course.

The rabbit problem has been discussed most irrationally on both sides of the fence forever. The pro-rabbit camp’s opposition to a cull is mostly based on emotional and ethical grounds, how cute they are and how barbaric it would be to kill them. One letter writer from California suggested what great pets they made. Well, they are feral and there are hundreds of them.

The exterminators’ grounds are the damage they make, eating non-indigenous flowers planted by non-indigenous people and more importantly, attracting predators such as coyotes and cougars. Well, ever since I moved here, a quarter of a century ago, I have witnessed coyotes roaming around, long before there were any rabbits. Would you blame a coyote not passing on a snack? Who would dare to claim that getting rid of the rabbits would get rid of the coyotes?

As far as cougars are concerned I would feel sorry for any cougar that would have to make a living hunting rabbits. And any wildlife officer claiming that rabbits attract cougars into town may be in need of re-certification.

Rabbits are cute, yes. Rabbits are a nuisance, yes. But rabbits certainly don’t warrant a price tag of $50,000 to be commercially eliminated if there are better and cheaper options.

The past Town’s hunting and trapping bylaw, 33-91, Section III, states “... Trapping within the corporate limits of The Town of Canmore shall be prohibited...”.

The new bylaw provides exceptions, such as:

“This bylaw shall not apply ‘to a person that has been issued a humane live-capture trap’...”, i.e. to the $50.000 contractor to remove the rabbits.

The mayor has been quoted that he was still open to proposals. Well, here are mine:

cancel the commercial contract and pay any penalty that may apply;

spend a couple of thousand dollars or so and get a dozen or two live traps;

change the bylaw to allow anyone who wishes to live-trap rabbits on their property to do so;

make those traps available at no charge to anyone who wants to get rid of rabbits, much like Fish and Wildlife does;

considering that half of the population wants to do so, there ought to be enough volunteers;

donate $10,000 from the “cull the Bunnies fund” to the “Friends of a Bunny Sanctuary”;

considering that many rabbits have already been heading for the frying pan in the past, we now have a competition between “save the bunnies” and “fry the bunnies” factions. After all, bunnies have been kept for their meat so there is nothing unusually cruel about this;

wait for spring and assess what problem is left, if any, and deal with it then;

and take the balance saved by taking this approach and accelerate paying down the debt on the Multiplex.

It is so symptomatic for this Town to first have a bylaw that prohibits people taking the initiative, trapping and removing rabbits on their property and then allocate $50,000 and change the bylaw in favour of having it done commercially. Peak performance in squandering money once again. Had the action proposed above been taken three or four years ago the rabbits would have never grown into the problem they are now, physically and politically.

This disaster shows once again that creativity is to a bureaucracy what red is to a colour blind.

Dieter Remppel,

Canmore