HALIFAX, N.S. – A small group gathered outside the Nova Scotia legislature Monday to protest the NDP government’s decision to offer trappers a $20 bounty this fall to reduce the coyote population.
Protest leader Bridget Curran said the province has “declared war on wildlife,” suggesting the bounty represents a knee-jerk response to public panic.
“The government is rushing into this,” Curran said before the protest, which featured about 10 demonstrators carrying placards.
“They’re using lethal means where lethal means don’t need to be used. Public education is key, but it’s something that’s woefully lacking in the government’s strategy.”
The protesters yelled, “Ban the bounty!” One demonstrator carried a placard that said, “We live in a time of fact not fear.”
Coyote encounters in Nova Scotia became a hot-button issue last October when Toronto singer Taylor Mitchell was mauled to death while hiking alone in Cape Breton Highlands National Park.
Natural Resources Minister John MacDonell says he wouldn’t mind if trappers killed half of the province’s estimated 8,000 coyotes by next spring.
But Curran says the minister is misguided in his belief that increased trapping will make coyotes more wary of humans.
“It has no basis in science, it’s panned by experts and it’s using our tax dollars to subsidize the fur and trapping industry,” said Curran, who is also executive director of the Atlantic Canadian Anti-Sealing Coalition.
“We need to learn what we are doing that is unwittingly inviting these coyotes into our urban areas.”
Curran said studies have shown that bounties simply don’t work because coyotes compensate by having larger litters.
The minister’s own website once stated that “bounties don’t work.” But that passage was removed from the department’s site before the bounty was introduced on April 22.
The bounty, to be offered when trapping season starts in October, was introduced last month along with a provincewide education program.
Mitchell’s death marked the first recorded fatal coyote attack in Nova Scotia and only the second ever in North America. The first came in 1981 when a toddler was killed in California.
MacDonell said Monday he felt compelled to introduce the bounty.
“I’m scared that somone’s child is going to get hurt,” he said outside the legislature. “I’m not sure that this is enough, but I don’t know how we could do more.”
MacDonell said more than half of the messages he’s received from the public about the bounty have supported the measure.
It remains unclear why Nova Scotia’s coyotes have become more bold, an observation that has been challenged by experts who say routine coyote encounters are simply getting more attention from the media.
However, some experts have suggested coyotes are coming out of the woods more often because they’re having a tough time finding food.
MacDonell’s plan includes training 15 trappers who will be on call to track and trap nuisance coyotes.
The minister has conceded bounties have proven to be a failure as a means of population control, but he insisted the goal of increased trapping is to make Nova Scotia’s coyotes afraid of humans.
“Trapping was the one thing that … seemed to change behaviour,” he said Monday.
“There’s research that indicates that animals under stress have vocalizations that seem to send a message throughout the immediate population that there’s reason to be wary.”
