In a few weeks time, Wyoming in the United States is going to authorise a season for grizzly hunting. The principle is that those who want to practice this cruel hobby buy a lottery ticket in the hope of obtaining a right to kill.
Discover our latest podcast
Jane Goodall to the rescue
In an act of civil disobedience, the acclaimed primatologist Jane Goodall (aged 84) and the researcher Cynthia Moss (aged 78) bought one of these tickets, which they obviously won’t use. The hunt on grizzlies (the name given to a brown bear which comes from the other side of the Atlantic) has been forbidden for 44 years in this American state.
To counter this planned re-opening of the hunt, a campaign entitled ‘Shoot ‘em with a camera, not a gun’ has been launched.
Raising awareness
The success of this campaign surprised the Hunt Federation in Wyoming, which did not prevent the state from maintaining its decision to re-open the hunt on the great plantigrade.
This campaign ‘Shoot ‘em with a camera, not a gun’ was accompanied by the sabotaging of the lottery: countless non-hunters were invited to buy a ticket, thus reinforcing the chances that animal rights supporters would attain the right to hunt instead of madmen with axes.
Every ticket costs around 15 pounds, and once the ticket is won, the winners need to pay around 460 pounds in order to buy a hunting permit which is only valid in the state of Wyoming.
Citizens boycott
Wyoming gives out a very precise number of hunting permits. The campaign encourages non-hunters, ecologists and animal supporters to apply for a permit, again to prevent the larger number of hunters from getting theirs.
At the time of writing, thousands of animal rights supporters have participated in an attempt to sabotage the next opening of the hunt on the brown bear in the north-western American state.
A decrease in hunters
In the US, the management of wildlife was for a long time delegated to hunters, but their number is decreasing in the country, which explains why more nature enthusiasts are speaking out and rising up against this very unpopular practice.
Wyoming is trying to justify the decision with financial reasons (while Yellowstone park alone generates millions of dollars in revenue) and by a claim that those who live in the area are ‘afraid’ that they will cross a brown bear, while the bear is very much appreciated by inhabitants of the region.
They explain finally that the quota of bears that need to be killed this season (22 to be exact) will not endanger the species. We can only continue to follow developments of this situation in Wyoming, and hope that the tickets for grizzly hunting will be reclaimed by environmentalists and other animal-rights supporters.
