OFFICIAL COMMUNITY PLAN OF THE BEARS, WOLVES AND COUGARS OF QUADRA ISLAND

I should like to make the following
Public Service Announcement
On behalf of the

WOLVES, COUGARS AND BEARS OF QUADRA ISLAND

Re. their OFFICIAL COMMUNITY PLAN

As residents of the island since the last ice age, their voice has never been heard in the formulation of human OCPs. It has always been what people needed. How people needed to sell off their acreages to newcomers to finance their retirement or help out their offspring. Or how they needed affordable housing for seniors or young families so the school can stay open. Never a thought was given to the pressure of thousands more residents on wildlife. Just keep growing has been the mantra.

The majestic predators of Quadra would not assert their right to claim all of the island, but merely to maintain their place on it. But even the best game management cannot protect them from human over-population, which seldom over-takes us in one fell swoop, but incrementally through innocuous steps.

In 2007 it’s 2700 people and let’s say thirty years later it will be 10,000, the population of Saltspring Island today. How many cougars and wolves live on Saltspring now? Answer: zilch. Squat. Nada. Zero.

Clearly what is needed is not wildlife management, but human management. Not stewardship, but studentship.

Therefore the OCP for the Predators of Quadra Island calls for a limit on people. And in the same spirit of exclusivity, their hearings are closed to human input.