Natural Resources Ministry Right to Protect Wildlife From Hunters

Natural Resources Ministry Right to Protect Wildlife From Hunters

Two weeks ago, I happened to drive past a small marsh where I frequently stop to look for birds. There were solitary sandpipers and other shorebirds tripping lightly over the mudflats.

From a birder's standpoint, those mudflats were a bonus. They were for the sandpipers, too. But what about the ducks and geese? Several of the latter were smeared with mud. Ducks were concentrated on bits of driftwood with barely enough water nearby to wet a web.

The marsh had dried up during the drought, leaving the birds exposed to predation. Like the minnows and frogs stranded in diminishing puddles, where green-backed herons and ring-billed gulls were feasting, the waterfowl were far more vulnerable than usual.

The small marsh was a microcosm for the problems an exceptionally hot summer - one of several in the last few years - was causing for wildlife in various parts of the continent. From the Prairies comes word of greatly decreased productivity in water birds, with the number of nesting ducks down 44 per cent. A bad situation became worse in the United States recently when a decision was made to use existing sloughs - vital waterfowl habitat - to irrigate parched crops.

Wildlife is under stress. To the duress of deleterious climate must be added a list of assaults to the environment, including acid rain; solar radiation increases; toxic chemical contamination of soil, air and water and massive habitat destruction; plus such natural resource population-limiting factors as predation and disease.

And that makes me wonder about the sincerity of a group of people who, while daring to call themselves conservationists, are after the hide of Vincent Kerrio, provincial minister of natural resources. A write-in campaign to oust Kerrio has been implemented by the more shrill components of the bait-and-bullet lobby.

The hunting fraternity is on the warpath because Kerrio provided wildlife some of the kind of protection the vast majority of Ontarians clearly want.

The previous government promised us 155 new provincial parks or additions to existing parks. Although 104 were established, there were no new ones added since the fall of 1985. When Kerrio announced last May the formation of 51 provincial parks, plus the two parks to be established in the Temagami region, he also announced there would be no hunting or trapping allowed in those parks.

That won't shock most people. According to a Gallup poll commissioned by the natural resources ministry, 86 percent of Ontarians opposed having sport hunting in provincial parks. This number remained remarkably consistent across socio-economic and regional divisions. If the issue of sport hunting in provincial parks were decided democratically, sport hunters would have to stop killing our wildlife in every single provincial park.

The sport hunters were already stung by the fact they didn't completely get their own way over the Bruce Peninsula National Park, which needed Kerrio's permission to become a reality. The permission was given. The problem is that, being a national park, hunters won't be allowed to kill animals within its boundaries. Never mind that Kerrio successfully sought to alter park boundaries to accommodate the hunters. Their support for the national park was contingent upon being allowed to use it as their private hunting turf, and to them, Kerrio is a traitor.

These people talk about land the size of Nova Scotia being given over to provincial parks, but leave out the fact that nearly half that land consists of one provincial park, Polar Bear, which occupies 2,408,700 hectares (5,951,897 acres) of the 5,659,105 hectares (13,983,648 acres) currently in the provincial parks system.

Some of the hunters have gone so far as to suggest that Kerrio's ministry has, gasp, been infiltrated by that most sinister of forces, the animal rights activist. All that has happened is that Kerrio has taken a few faltering steps toward recognition that the wildlife of this province is not the exclusive property of that minority of citizens who are sport hunters.

And since it would do Kerrio's reputation no good among these self-styled conservationists, let me clearly state that Kerrio is hardly the bosom buddy of Bambi-loving bunnyhuggers.

I am sure I speak on behalf of many conservationists when I say that I am annoyed by the fact that Kerrio's ministry gave away Holiday Provincial Park; that it has never established the James Auld Waterway Provincial Park; that Ontario still lacks a wetlands policy; that the 564 Areas of Natural Scientific Interest (ANSIs) identified for the province have not received the aggressive protection they require and deserve.

I am annoyed by the economically impoverished nature of the province's non-game program; the continuation of the baiting and use of dogs in hunting bears, especially in the spring; the apparent inability of the minister to have his staff enforce laws opposing the cruel trapping of raptors; the lack of updating of species, particularly flora, protected under the Endangered Species Act, and the widespread use of herbicides in our forests.

There is a lot that Kerrio has or has not done for real conservationists to be concerned about, but among the litany of failures little different from those of a long line of Kerrio's predecessors, the protection of wildlife from guns and traps in the newly named provincial parks is clearly not one.

Vincent Kerrio should not be vilified for daring to acknowledge the great majority of us who want our wildlife protected, if nowhere else, at least in our provincial parks.