Naive suggestions

Dear sir:
I wonder how Laurance Catherall is making out with the bear that he’s invited to share his apartment. After all, this only would be fair compensation for its habitat lost due to Mr Catherall’s part of the “human activity [that] is the number-one threat to wildlife” (Letters to the Editor, Oct. 29, 2003).
Anything less would be hypocritical, no?
While I’m waiting to hear, I’d like to point out a couple of things. Firstly, neither the governments of Ontario nor of Canada ever “encourage(d), condone(d), and license(d) the killing of nursing mother animals with young.”
Sows with cubs always were protected by law and there was never any evidence that hunters wilfully violated that law. The only legitimate targets were adult male bears.
This actually benefitted many cubs that Mr. Catherall seems so concerned about, as bears are known to dine upon the young of their species.
Another favourite bear snack are moose calves—and hunters are reporting seeing far fewer of these in recent times as the bear population increases. Does Mr. Catherall not also care about poor little Baby Bullwinkle?
I do not know of any peer-reviewed scientific study that supports his wild notion that “hunting or culling bear populations is an ineffective and often disastrous means of controlling wildlife populations.”
Nature uses culls itself to do the very same thing—employing disease or starvation rather than arrow or bullet.
It’s his other naive suggestions that make no sense. His statement that “man should not interfere with the balance of nature” is similarly silly; indeed, man is part of nature.
(Signed),
Mark L Horstead
Newmarket, Ont.