Be Careful Who You Tell

The protection of wildlife has always been a major concern of mine.  It has always saddened me that whenever I had an experience viewing some type of exotic wildlife, that I had to be very careful about who I told it to, because there were trophy hunters and some unethical poachers in the Valley. 

         

        On one alpine hike I was on, we spotted a small herd of Mountain Goats on a distant slope.  Seeing Mountain Goats was a rare and thrilling thing for me, and what made the experience even more unique was that inside a cave like depression on the rocky slope, was a mother Mountain Goat with two kids.  I assumed the cave was a sheltered place where the goats birthed.

        That spotting of the mountain goats and the kids on the hike, was one example where I was very cautious about who I told my experience to.  I realized that if word got around about the herd of Mountain Goats, some sexually inadequately-feeling male, would want to go up there, shoot the biggest goat, so he could hang its head on his living room wall to prove what a macho-man he was.

During one of the Environmental Coalition meetings I attended, someone reported that there was a ring of local poachers killing grizzly bears for trophies.  I can’t express how much contempt I have for such lowlifes.

I often had to refrain myself even with news about something like seeing a black bear, who are fairly common around here.   A few years after moving to McBride, my wife and I enjoyed watching a black bear eating dandelions in our pasture.   We phoned our neighbors Kjell and Celine, who then came over to join us watching the bear.

When they returned home, Alistair, another neighbor, came by their house to return their lawn mower which he had borrowed.  Kjell and Celine, naturally told him about seeing the bear in our pasture, which caused Alistair to make a quick retreat home.  Later that evening, I heard gunshots ring out.   Alistair must have been on the lookout for the bear and when wandered onto his property, he shot it.  I saw the corpse in the back of his truck the next day.  I think he wanted a bearskin rug to decorate his living room.

Our good friend JJ, an ex-neighbor, had moved to Prince George to live, but he would periodically return to McBride to check up on his cabin.  On one of his trips back, he found the carcass of a black bear on the long driveway down to his place.  The dead bear had had its paws and gall bladder removed.  Those bear parts had recently been in the news, as being valuable in the Chinese medicine market.

Hearing JJ’s discovery of the bear corpse, reminded Kjell that he had seen a small black bear cub wandering around the neighborhood, so we suspected it had been the cub’s mother that had been killed on JJ’s driveway.  Hearing about the cub, increased our depression about the poaching. 

        There is just no basement to what some jerks will do for money.

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