Stevenson: Care about wildlife? Look to your governor | Commentary

The governor also chooses the Fish and Wildlife Board. The Fish and Wildlife Board oversees and makes all protections and restrictions with regards to wild animals. The board associates can override Fish and Wildlife biologists. The Fish and Wildlife Board members are a small team of hunters, hounders and trappers. They are not voted in. They do not have to post their résumés. They do not have to have levels in environmental science, wildlife biology, conservation, or any related area. They are not experts.

The bottom line is that the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Office regulates by itself. Individuals who hound, lure and hunt build their personal guidelines that they abide by and implement. They can make the non-searching public abide by a completely different established of benchmarks, and they do. These double benchmarks have no basis in science, and are normally irrational, as properly as unethical.

Here are only some of the present-day challenges with how Vermont Fish and Wildlife operates:

— Wild animals are given zero protections with how they are addressed.

— There is not a single veterinarian on the department’s team.

— The general public is not authorized to ‘touch’ or aid ‘rabies vector’ species such as raccoons, skunks, foxes and so on. Yet hunters and trappers can bodily attack, beat, hold and skin these incredibly very same animals — no vaccinations required and without the need of restraint.

— If you have a hunting or trapping license, you can conquer, stab and bludgeon an animal and then go away that animal helpless and hurt.

— If you are a wildlife rehabber, you are not authorized to enable the the vast majority of animals in Vermont. You are not authorized to support juvenile or adult skunks, raccoons, foxes, deer, coyotes and a lot of other animals — even if you are vaccinated, and even if you are a veterinarian.

— When users of the community locate an hurt wild animal, they are advised by Fish and Wildlife to “Let mother nature operate its class.” But most wildlife injuries are human inflicted. Character didn’t trigger them. People did.

— Wildlife rehabbers are confused with calls from folks who want to assist hurt and orphaned wildlife. If any one phone calls the Fish and Wildlife Office, they are instructed to possibly let the animal endure or to kill it in some barbaric fashion, this sort of as beating, drowning or gassing it.

— Those people who treatment about animals are traumatized by the deficiency of guidelines in Vermont and how terribly wild animals are dealt with.

The previous wildlife commissioner publicly said that the Fish and Wildlife Office only does what the Legislature enables. Lawmakers have catered to hounders, trappers and individuals who take pleasure in searching for recreation. The Vermont Legislature has not listened to private landowners and householders, nonhunters, wildlife rehabbers, birders, hikers, ethical farmers or animal advocates, nor has it seemed to care about the procedure and safety of wild animals. This requires to modify.

The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board ought to be abolished fully, or voted in democratically, and so must the Fish and Wildlife Commissioner. If the governor will not capture up with the existing science and ethics in the way wildlife is managed and how wild animals are handled, and if he doesn’t care about the rights of home entrepreneurs preserving on their own from hounders and irresponsible hunters, then Vermonters will need to vote in a new governor.

Alana Stevenson life in Charlotte.