Instead of complaining about the wildlife, people who don’t want to live with wildlife should live elsewhere, and those who do want to live with wildlife should farm products, or plant and design their gardens, appropriately.
We think we are the supreme species, but humankind is the only species to cause climate change; ocean meltdown; rampant, cross-pollinating genetic plant mutation; super bugs and the decline of bee populations due to pesticides; antibiotic-resistant bacteria; industrial and domestic air pollution covering the globe; and a list of extinctions that grows daily.
We are the only species that has the capacity to discern and utilize vegetable protein, yet we clearcut the rain forests and destroy the prairie soil to maintain a seemingly insatiable lust for beef. Although we are the only species to understand how to control our own populations, we are at the eve of global destruction and enormous human suffering because we have not done so.
In this area the average home or business has a driveway unnecessarily covered with toxic petroleum by-product, a lawn unnecessarily maintained through constant watering and the use of toxic chemicals, and a garden maintained to ridiculous standards with a variety of unnecessary polluting tools.
Leaf-blowers alone, in addition to the appalling noise pollution, have the adverse health effects of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrocarbons, and particulates generated in the exhaust and problems related to dust.
Most areas have no municipal, enforced regulations in place to protect our environment from water pollution due to leaking marine engines; from the air pollution of small motors and the burning of wet leaves and toxic substances; and, with the exception of more enlightened Canadian cities such as Sarnia and Calgary, from songbird extinction due to unregulated outdoor domestic and feral cats; even though these are basic, simple procedures.
We have no right to complain about the deer or any other animal, but every other species on the planet has the right to complain about us.
Virginia Smith,
North Saanich