Mohammed Adam’s article on the unnecessary destruction of a wild elk in Ottawa will resonate with many people who have expressed anger and frustration on other occasions over the City of Ottawa’s inept and inhumane approach to dealing with wildlife.
He asks a number of very good questions such as do they have qualified personnel for the job, do they have the right training and equipment? He is unlikely to get any answers though. As a member of the City of Ottawa’s Wildlife Strategy group, organizations like ours were thoroughly stonewalled when it came to the secretive and unaccountable workings of the City and its partners at the NCC and the MNR with respect to wildlife.
In spite of the fact that the City has a Large Wild Mammal Emergency Response protocol that includes a Wildlife Service Provider on contract who is “trained and equipped and on call 24/7”, we were unable to find out who this individual is, what their qualifications are or their contract terms.
There is no question that incidents like that involving the elk will occur again. Headlines in the Ottawa Citizen in 2001, 2010 and now in 2013 are almost identical in the events that unfolded and the public’s outrage in the outcome.
As Mohammed Adam expresses, “we like to boast that one of the great attractions of Ottawa is how close we are to nature, so we have a duty to ensure that when an elk or such specimen calls, we don’t reach out for the gun”.
Donna DuBreuil
Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre
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