At present, the absurd drama of "where has the golden leopard gone" that the whole network is watching has finally seen the possibility of ending. Although the third one is still in search, two have been captured, which finally makes the public's hanging heart relax a little.
A few days ago, wild Siberian tigers came down the mountain, entered the village to hurt people, and slapped the scene of smashing the window glass of the car, which still made people palpitate. Today, leopards have fled, and there have been "leopard concealment" incidents, and people have once again encountered the real problem of "how to coexist with wild animals".
In fact, in the face of a tiger who suddenly visits, instead of giving birth to the blind arrogance of "getting better environment" out of thin air, it is better to consider how to scientifically prevent, warn and deal with conflicts with wild animals in the future.
When comparing Chinese and foreign wildlife protection policies, many friends often like to use Canada as an example, and habitually believe that "Canada does not allow harm to wild animals". Is this really the case?
In early July 2015, someone in the Vancouver Island town of Hardy Harbor reported that a female bear repeatedly invaded a mobile home and stole frozen meat and frozen salmon stored in the freezer, and after the BC Provincial Animal Service sent personnel to shoot the mother bear, an accident occurred...
Wen 丨 Tao Short Room Traveling Canadian Scholar
Editor 丨 Wang Yiwen Lookout Think Tank
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1 "Humans invaded their territory"
A local Indigenous activist I met at a community event once told me that the reason why the mother and son were enthusiastic about participating in wildlife conservation activities was that "humans invaded their territory".
The mother had participated in protests against the development of a commercial real estate in the Garden City Reservation in downtown Richmond, British Columbia, where she lived (a land known as "the largest wasteland in a Canadian city"). According to photos and materials compiled by the mother and son, there were once as many as a dozen species of wild mammals and dozens of wild birds, and it was also a seasonal habitat for a variety of migratory birds.
Polar bear-proof trash cans in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. Figure | Figureworm Creative
"Decades ago, these animals were distributed throughout the city. Because of the rapid expansion of the cities, they can only retreat to the last territory of the city center, and if this place is occupied by humans again, we will lose each other forever."
Wildlife conservationists and commercial advocates engaged in a nearly 20-year game around the garden city reservation, and the two sides reached a compromise: about 2/5 of the reservation was developed into commercial facilities, and the other 3/5 was opened into parks.
When my family first came to Canada, we used to live on the edge of this wasteland, and we could hear the sound of frogs and insects on summer and autumn nights; after having children, we often encountered hares, raccoons and small foxes when we walked; after moving, we occasionally passed by and met neighbors who said, "There are still wild animals, but they are much less than before."
Although Canada is a sparsely populated country, with the process of urbanization and the expansion of human activities, the phenomenon that human communities and wild animals have to "mix" has become more and more prominent.
As a northern port city, Churchill Once occupied an important position in the "Age of Discovery" and the history of Canadian development, but due to the change of shipping routes and trade routes, it is now just a desolate and remote small city. But even the smallest cities are highly transformed communities, and this "human colony" straddles the main road where polar bears have migrated from generation to generation, hindering their "daily life".
Every summer, you can see the wonders of polar bears crossing the streets in groups - to complete their journey, polar bears have to risk helping the old and the young in broad daylight, and the wives will cross the center of Churchill in full view, and the strange feeling of "people are afraid, bears are afraid".
Black bears and coyotes are two of the most common wild animals in the North American wild, and they are usually very alert and do not easily approach human communities, but in recent years, almost every year, black bears and coyotes have broken into neighborhoods and even human homes to steal household garbage, and even because of the scramble for dog food and domestic dogs tore up the news. In February, in Tricity, not far from my home, a 14-year-old boy broke out in a cold sweat as he was followed by a young cougar on his way home, and the new city has seen similar incidents almost every year for more than a decade.
[Note: The earliest report the author can find was in 2013, when a young mountain lion appeared in a small park where children often moved.] 】
The British Columbia Wildlife Conservation Department pointed out that the urbanization process and the expansion of human communities have led to the habitat of the original black bear, coyote wolf, and mountain lion being cut apart by human activities, and they can only risk and "hide and seek" with humans.
The elementary school near where I live now is flanked by a large sports field that gathers large numbers of Canada geese, seagulls and various migratory birds every morning and evening during the rainy season, which is said to be a common scene on the west coast of Canada: the birds' original habitat is occupied by human activities, and they have to adapt to reality and try to live with humans.
2 Try to discipline human behavior
In this context, Canada strives to try to restrain human behavior in order to seek coexistence with "offended wildlife".
Due to lack of funding, the vast majority of Canadian municipal districts have streamlined government agencies, generally consisting of only a dozen elected officials. The municipal management team of more than a dozen people in this district includes "three blocks": city councilors (mayors and directors of administration), school commissioners, and park board members. Among them, the "indispensable" park bureau members have an important mission, that is, to coordinate the relationship between people and wildlife in the jurisdiction, and to protect the safety of "wild animals adjacent to human communities" as much as possible.
In Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies, a wild black bear gracefully crosses the road under the gaze of roadside tourists. Photo| Xinhua News Agency
In the neighborhood where I live today, there is a small stream outside the wall of the backyard of the house, and across the creek is a small wood. Not long after moving in, I took my eldest son to play in the open front yard, and suddenly saw four or five huge North American reindeer walking leisurely in front of the door. It was later learned that these reindeer, mistaken for "dogs" by the eldest son, were a wild herd that had inhabited the woods for generations, "the oldest Aboriginal family in the community."
In order to protect this ancient "indigenous population", the urban park bureau where the community is located can be described as painstaking, twice trying to develop the area into a park and remediate the creek, so that the community that looks a little "disorganized" looks "tidy".
[Note: Canada's municipal funds are scarce, and the cost of each fee will make the administrative department "flesh pain". 】
To this day, the banks of the creek outside my backyard are still overgrown, and the mysterious and stubborn reindeer still live and breed in the woods, occasionally crossing the river to "visit the door". From the woods to the street circle where I live, there are two streets that are open to traffic, and the municipal department has deliberately erected a conspicuous sign "Beware of wild animals crossing the street", and citizens will be careful not to "offend" them when walking and walking their dogs.
The Metro Vancouver metropolitan area is a large and medium-sized urban agglomeration with a population of more than one million, but between cities and cities, there are still large areas of woods and water surfaces, many of which are set aside as "parks" for tourists to visit for free. However, these "parks" are different from the urban parks understood in China, except for indispensable facilities such as visitor centers, garbage bins, toilets, etc., they are almost "wild" and do not have the various amusement facilities common in China. For example, the famous Burnaby Lake, the wide surface of the lake completely prohibits any boats and humans from going into the water, in order to avoid human activities disturbing the fish and waterfowl that inhabit the lake.
In the aforementioned city of Churchill, the local municipal authorities have learned how to make way for these "white natives" during the "polar bear season" and let them cross the streets and alleys safely and complete the traditional journey that has been passed down from generation to generation.
Since preschool, schools and non-profit organizations have repeatedly spread the concept of "don't disturb wild animals" to children, which is not only harmless, but also "not domesticated": don't feed them easily, lest they become dependent on the human community.
The original occupant of our house, a caring European aunt, deliberately erected a pair of artificial bird nests in the backyard to take care of the birds that nest under the eaves, and from time to time to feed some water. However, when we checked in, the expensive nest had been abandoned, and my aunt specifically told us to "not feed", because she had learned new knowledge from the Internet - "feeding is also a kind of disturbance".
As a result of the "don't bother" trend, the "neighbor wild animals" are no longer afraid of people:
Outside the Richmond Public Market, a lively place in richmond city, the female wild duck will lead a large group of toddlers through the busy streets without hurrying, and cars and people along the way will silently slow down and give way;
On the side of the car shop near my house, the herds of hares coexist peacefully with the new cars and testers that are constantly flowing, and some people do not dodge when they approach;
Even the hares, squirrels, hedgehogs, moles and the like that sneak into my backyard from time to time are swaying and making a big fuss, and they don't look at our faces at all.
In 2017, richmond Fisherman's Wharf, a famous "tourist punch card resort" on the west coast of Canada, had a news that was "hot search": a 6-year-old girl was dragged into the water by sea lions while teasing the sea lions in the water by the dock. In the midst of the screams, the girl's grandfather ventured into the water to rescue the slightly injured girl.
Afterwards, the local port authorities blamed the girl's guardian for being "irresponsible" and "unruly", because sea lions are wild animals that have inhabited the local area and lived in harmony for generations, and should not have been teased. The girl's family blamed the port authorities for "not having obvious warning signs" and making newcomers "unaware of them."
In the end, they are responsible for each other - the girl's family "bears the consequences", and the port authorities have also replaced larger and more eye-catching warning signs at the scene of the incident.
For wildlife that are far from human communities, Canada's national parks and protected areas are strictly restricted from human activities so as not to disturb the habitat of wild animals. For example, in Canada's most populous province of Ontario, the famous Agangkun National Park is a popular destination for campers, but campers must follow regulations such as "do not use any motor boats in the lake" (Canadian campers are accustomed to bringing their own small motor boat camping called "garage yachts") in order not to disturb the moose population that inhabits it.
[Note: Canada is one of the largest countries in the world with the ratio of national parks and protected areas. 】
On the choppy and complex coastline of Vancouver Island (which has nothing to do with the city of Vancouver), various marine mammals are often in distress and trapped, for which the famous Vancouver Aquarium has established the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Centre. Rescue is a long way away, and it takes a long time for the staff to arrive, but they rescue more than 200 marine mammals every year, including seals, sea lions, fur seals and sea otters, which have either recovered and returned to the aquarium for treatment and observation.
There is an opinion that natural selection, survival of the fittest, injured and sick aquatic animals are "unfit" and should be eliminated, and rescue centers should not spend time, money and effort to interfere with the natural elimination law of wild animals. In response, experts point out that "many of the injured marine wildlife are victims of human activities, and we have an obligation to make up for our mistakes".
To avoid disturbing marine mammals, the center has a number of "rules," such as "no one should walk near a healthy California sea lion," but in the event of an emergency, "the rule is that the dead are alive." In October 2017, Andrew Celmainis, an oceanographer at the center, spotted an injured sea lion that would later be named Campbell dying on the beach, approached and caught it despite "rules", managed to cure its severe lacerations and acute pneumonia on its flippers, and sent it back to sea after it recovered. If he had stuck to the rules at that time, Campbell would have died.
3 The measure of "using force"
Many friends often like to use Canada as an example while comparing Chinese and foreign wildlife protection policies and styles, and habitually believe that "Canada does not allow harm to wild animals".
Indeed, in Canada, the consequences of "using force" against wildlife for no apparent reason can be severe.
A raccoon sits with tourists on Mount Royal in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Figure | Figureworm Creative
When I first moved to my current residence, there were three vines in the backyard, and the vines snaked all the way to the second-floor balcony, and every autumn they would be full of grapes, which were sour and astringent and not suitable for people to eat, but the wild raccoons that inhabited nearby were good at this bite, and often the whole family went into the backyard to eat, and when they were happy, they would climb the vines to the second-floor balcony to crawl and play.
At that time, my youngest son had just been born, the baby room and the balcony were only separated by a glass door, and the raccoon blew his beard and stared at him, and sometimes he roared a few times with the glass door, which made us parents jump in shock.
According to the data, raccoons can transmit a variety of dangerous diseases, which is a great threat to newborns. I did not dare to be idle, so I took up sticks and nail rakes and went to the balcony to fight, just when I was seen by the neighbors who were policemen, and repeatedly discouraged "can not fight, hit the law." Helplessly, when the raccoon "family of five" came to be an uninvited guest again, I had to grit my teeth and catch them one by one, and throw them against the wall to the backyard of the police aunt. Don't look at the policewoman with a pistol, really dare not fight, and then found a "professional raccoon catching company" and arrested the raccoon family.
The "professional companies" actually did not dare to harm these wild "simply faces", they just sent these raccoons to the "safe wild". The most suitable "safe field" for "releasing" raccoons in the Metro Vancouver metropolitan area is a grove of small trees in Stanley Park, the world's largest urban park. Because the "professional companies" thought in one place, presumably the grove was now "full of bears".
Later, I learned that the policeman's aunt was for my own good: in a city in eastern Ontario, a Vietnamese immigrant was reported by a neighbor for injuring a raccoon that broke into his yard, and he ate a lawsuit.
But that doesn't mean that force can't be used against "neighbor wildlife" – in fact, Canada's wildlife conservation department kills "neighbor wildlife" every year in certain circumstances. Canadian federal and provincial law imposes an obligation on wildlife to be "humanely destroyed" if it is proven to pose a threat to the safety of people or communities.
[Editor's note: According to Canada's Ming Pao newspaper, in June 2018, three coquitlam lions in coquitlam in the British Columbia region of Canada had three cougars in need of humane destruction (Animal euthanasia) within 3 days.
Conservationists say that with the development of real estate and the range of human invasion of wild animals, the number of mountain lions infested with houses will only become more frequent in the future. According to him, studies have shown that relocating mountain lions that have become accustomed to human living environments to other places will create more dangerous situations because they have not learned or are no longer accustomed to hunting in the wild. When they feel hungry, their behavior is more aggressive. Relocating these mountain lions into the wild will hasten their death. 】
However, such behavior has also attracted a lot of controversy. British Columbia's wildlife conservation department kills many wild mountain lions every year, and a female police officer was once "searched for human flesh" by disgruntled provincial residents for killing mountain lions "one big and two small". Also unsatisfactory is the number of wild mountain lions recorded by the province's wildlife protection department for the monthly "humanitarian destruction" (April 2013) of four.
Ordinary citizens want to "use force", but it is not so simple. An old colleague of mine who worked in Africa immigrated to Canada and loved nature, settled in a quiet community halfway up the mountain. Once, a large black bear saw a walnut tree full of fruit in his yard, so he climbed up the tree and ate the "buffet". The friend was afraid of hurting his own child, so he took out an air rifle and shot it, but it did not hit, but he was seen and reported by the neighbors. As a result, the police and the Park Bureau who heard the news issued him a "vicious" ticket.
Then the friend inadvertently learned that the same park bureau, in the past winter, had "humanely destroyed" more than a dozen bears in the same community, and the "crime" was that they were rummaging through the residents' dumpsters for food.
Obviously, this kind of "humanitarian destruction" belongs to the "law enforcement action" and can only be carried out by law enforcement departments such as the Motion Management Bureau and the police, and ordinary citizens cannot do so.
But what constitutes a "threat to human security"? Once "force is used," how can we grasp the measure?
4 "Bear under the gun"?
In 2015, vancouver island's "Casavent Crisis" was a sensation.
In early July of that year, the BcLand Animal Service sent officers to shoot a female bear in the Vancouver Island town of Hadi Harbor reported multiple intrusions into a mobile home and stealing frozen meat and frozen salmon stored in a freezer.
Just as the animal protection personnel were preparing to collect troops, an accident occurred: a male and a female, two eight-week-old bears, suddenly appeared around the mother bear's carcass, apparently the children of the mother bear. To avoid accidents, the animal protection personnel shot and captured two bears with anesthesia guns and brought them back, and then instructed his colleague, Bryce Casavant, a sports protection worker, to "humanely destroy" the two bears.
Instead of carrying out the order, Casa Vent sent two bear cubs to the North Island Wildlife Recovery Association. After the incident was exposed, Casa Vent was suspended from her post without pay, and then she made the original cause of the incident public on the Internet, which caused widespread concern and heated debate.
Subsequently, the petition for Casawente's "boss", British Columbia Environment Minister Mary Polak, to "keep people under the knife" and resume Casa vent's work, collected more than 17,000 signatures in less than two days.
Grizzly bear on Grass Hill in Vancouver, Canada. Figure | Figureworm Creative
Robin Campbell, head of the North Island Wildlife Conservation Society, who first helped Casavinte and keep the cubs, argues that it was wrong to punish Casavant because she refused to kill the two bears — it was the mother bear who stole frozen meat and posed a threat to the human community, and there was no evidence that the bear also stole frozen meat or caused any trouble to the human community.
Unionists defended Casa Vent from the point of view of protecting the interests of employees. Stephanie Smith, head of the BCGSEU, to which Casa Vente belongs, said "Casa Vent's practices are not compromising on employee conduct" and should not be punished. She also accused the current wildlife management regulations of serious loopholes, "in fact, the responsibility for determining whether wild animals constitute a threat to human society and whether they need humane destruction is entrusted to specific animal protection personnel, which is obviously unfair to the latter." ”
As for Casavent herself, she insisted that "I am not wrong", and she spoke continuously on the online platform, saying that "it is my duty to let the whole society know the truth".
Of course, the public opinion of the "black bear incident" is far from one-sided. Others say that "whether bear cubs pose a threat to the human community should be assessed by experts", rather than by the size of the voice.
Some have pointed out that as an employee of a government function, Casavent refused to accept the directive and adopted the practice of making internal penalties publicly "inconsistent with her identity" and that "she has the freedom to choose, but she must also pay for this choice."
The ball kicked to the provincial environment agency, and The Minister, Pollack, apparently did not want the accident, which had become a sensation, to become a political burden, so she responded cautiously: she told the media that the incident was "very sad and unfortunate" and acknowledged that how to deal with such incidents was a "difficult choice" that should be jointly made by professionals such as wildlife scientists, official veterinarians and animal protection personnel, and promised to "investigate carefully and deal with it properly".
With the passage of time, the public opinion noise gradually subsided, and some calm and objective comments began to gradually surface.
Some media pointed out that the "truth" disclosed by all parties when public opinion was boiling up before was actually a deliberately screened "partial truth" that was conducive to their own arguments.
Animal protection departments did not tell the public truthfully how widespread the "humanitarian destruction" of wild animals invading human communities was, but only generally stated that "the number of euthanasias is decreasing year by year".
They're not lying: In the five years before the incident, British Columbia received an average of about 19,000 wildlife invasion alerts and an average of 527 euthanasias per year, compared with an average of only about 8,700 annual reports in the 1990s, while the annual number of euthanasias was as high as 700 to 1,600.
In fact, the number of 527 is already quite impressive. In the case of bears and mountain lions, the situation has not improved: the total number of euthanasias in mountain lions in 2001 was only 22, compared with 148 in 2014, and as for grizzly bears, the minimum record in the past 20 years is 13 and the maximum is 89, showing an irregular trend of more and less, but the proportion of euthanasia in reports has remained around 21%.
In the four years before casavent, the province had humanely destroyed 1,872 black bears, 352 mountain lions and 72 grizzly bears, including adults and juvenile animals such as bear cubs.
Some animal protection experts, such as Mike Badry, the province's coordinator for wildlife invasion prevention, point out that the claim that animal protection organizations and others say that "animal pups are 'not a threat' to the human community is one-sided, because these pups are also accustomed to foraging around human settlements, and once they grow up, they may endanger the safety of local residents, and if they only "release" the pups without taking corresponding measures, they will either starve to death because they have nowhere to forage, or become dangerous "thieves" around the house.
Some observers point out that many animal protection organizations and animal protection enthusiasts are very enthusiastic and enthusiastic about calling for "saving small animals", but they are neither able nor willing to undertake the work of sheltering and transferring large numbers of wild animals (especially wild carnivores) to suitable for survival and far from humans in the short term, because these tasks are both laborious and thankless.
What about the official animal protection department? Again, there is no one and no money.
In the past four years, fewer than 30 black bears and even fewer grizzly bears and cougars have been released by organized migration than the humanitarian destruction of thousands of black bears, grizzly bears and mountain lions, and the survival rate of these released black bears is difficult to know. Because one is short of funds, the other is short of manpower.
Reports from relevant agencies and comments from many observers point out that although the provincial government has reluctantly increased the staffing of 40 animal protection personnel in recent years, compared with more than a decade ago, the provincial government animal management bureau has become more and more like a "yamen", and the proportion of non-front-line off-the-job managers is getting higher and higher. Although the incidence of wildlife invasions into human communities has more than doubled due to the expansion of cities, the proportion of front-line animal protection personnel in 2012 has dropped by 32% compared with 2001, and in some places where manpower is particularly tight, one animal protection worker has to work for 9 people.
Proponents of "bears under guns" often cite the 2011 Coquitlam "Pinnacle High School Incident" in Canada, in which the mother bear was "humanely destroyed" but 3 bear cubs were adopted, but at the time the police pointed out that "this is just a special case" because "there is just the right agency willing to help", giving the police the possibility of "flexible handling".
[Note: On October 12, 2011, near Guilin Summit Middle School in British Columbia, a female bear with 3 bear cubs was caught foraging in the school garbage bin, and the result was that the mother bear was humanely destroyed, on the grounds that the "garbage bear" had developed the habit of shaving food in the garbage bin of the residential area, and once it encountered young children, the consequences were unpredictable. 】
Facts have proved that "surprise" not only requires affection, but also requires continuous investment of funds and manpower, otherwise the bear boy who survived the humanitarian destruction can only be a lucky person who hangs a thousand leaks at best, and it is difficult to say whether he can always be lucky.
As for wild animals far from human communities, Canada implements a "licensed hunting" system, that is, on the one hand, strict protection of rare animals, on the other hand, through the issuance of "hunting cards" for non-rare wild animals to carry out "orderly hunting" to avoid threatening the survival of their populations.
But this policy is also controversial: for example, the black bear hunting, which is recognized as the "most orderly management of hunting cards", has been repeatedly condemned by the authorities of the Canadian provinces in recent years, which accuse the distribution of hunting cards as "too commercial" and blindly cater to the "tastes" of commercial hunting enthusiasts, but ignore the original intention of maximizing the interests of black bear population protection.
As for Canada's largest and most controversial wild mammal hunt- seal hunting in the Arctic Circle, although the number is huge and the killing scene is bloody, but because it involves the interests of indigenous peoples (Arctic Inuit) this "political correctness", Canada's mainstream political parties and politicians not only dare not stop it, but have repeatedly borrowed "big occasions such as NATO summits, G7 summits" to engage in "seal meat tasting", and some of them even started the Idea of the Chinese market, and once eager to try, to sell 200,000 "frozen seals" to China every year ”。
In today's ever-expanding human community and the increasing prominence of the phenomenon of "neighbor wildlife", how to deal with the measure of coexistence between good people and wild animals is a complex science. Borrowing from the "stone of other mountains" should or even be necessary, the premise is to fully understand, comprehensive feedback, and absorb according to local conditions, rather than partial generalization, only pick up the "appetite" part of the display, with "curve to prove" their own argument is the "right root", others are "fallacies".
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