"We can kill them, we don't even need a reason...."
L
Posted on 03/06/2003 9:19:38 PM PST by Shermy
By Roberta Rampton WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Animal rights activists are blazing mad at gun-toting Canadians in the rodent-infested Prairies who will try to kill thousands of ground squirrels this summer in a shootout offering rifles as prizes
A hunters organization in the province of Saskatchewan hopes to attract up to 1,000 people to enter the derby, which last year saw 63 entrants kill more than 60,000 Richardson's ground squirrels, or gophers.
Animal rights groups have blasted the contest as barbaric. But organizer Len Jabush fired back on Thursday and said it provides a helpful service to farmers with crops and pastures overrun by the rodents.
"It's not cruel," said Jabush, manager of the Saskatoon Wildlife Federation. "Gopher shooting has been going on ever since man got involved in the Prairies."
Farmers consider the gophers as pests because they eat and trample young crops.
The rodents -- slightly larger than a gerbil -- dig holes in fields, burying plants in large mounds of dirt, said John Bourne, vertebrate pest specialist for the Alberta government.
The mounds damage farm equipment, and cattle often injure themselves by stepping in the holes, Bourne said.
The rodents emerge from hibernation in mid-March and spend a busy 100 to 120 days gathering food. "Farmers see the crop -- virtually day by day --disappearing," Bourne said.
In Alberta, the rodent causes damages worth an estimated C$20 million ($14 million) to C$30 million damage each year. "It's no chopped-liver problem in the West, here," Bourne said.
Gophers have proliferated since 1993, when the Canadian government restricted the use of strychnine, a poison long banned in the United States because it kills a wide range of birds and mammals, Bourne said.
The rodents are now encroaching on suburban areas, he said, causing problems at airports when birds of prey lured by the rampant rodents collide with planes.
Lush crops would obscure the infestation, Bourne said, but two years of severe drought and sparse crops have exacerbated the impact.
Bourne is researching ways to prevent the rodent damage other than wide-spread poisoning, or by the more expensive and labor-intensive methods of shooting and trapping.
"I think that shooting gophers makes some people feel good, that they're seeking vengeance on this rodent that's causing all this problem," Bourne said.
"The fact is that rodents don't want to go out and make farmers mad, they just want to exist. It's the biological principle of life."
"We can kill them, we don't even need a reason...."
L
I smell varmint poontang....
L
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