To anyone who is against
hunting:
Through my surfing through
MySpace, I have noticed one thing that I finally feel I
have to point out, which may offend the members and friends of a
certain group whose acronym is NWF.
In 1996, as a campaigner of
Western Canada Wilderness Committee
(WCWC -
www.wildernesscommittee.org
- 25,000 members), I spearheaded an anti-hunting campaign in British
Columbia, which entailed me to travel throughout the huge province (CA+OR+WA),
making anti-hunting speeches as I went. All in all, I gave some 50
presentations in 50 communities over a two-month period. About
two-thirds of these events were crashed and disrupted by large
numbers of hunters, numerous times exceeding 50, and several times
exceeding 100. Here are a few examples:
1996-07-05-5
The Prince George Citizen
by Gordon Hoekstra
[Fur flies at meeting to ban bear hunts]
It was barely civil and sometimes downright ugly. In the end,
it took a representative of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee
close to two hours to deliver a plea for help to ban bear hunting in
BC. Anthony Marr was interrupted, shouted down, and generally abused
by hunters in an audience of more than 100 that spilled out of the
conference room at the Civic Centre Thursday evening Marr had barely
begun before he was attacked�
1996-07-09-2
The Daily News, Kamloops, BC
by Michelle Young
[Activist pleads for bear-hunt ban]
With calm and respect, Anthony Marr faced rapid-fire
questioning from hunters and threw back a plea for them to stop
hunting bears
1996-07-09-2
Echo/Pioneer, Chetwynd, BC
by Rick Davison
[WCWC wants bear hunting banned]
It will be a tough fight, particularly in these parts, but
Anthony Marr of the WCWC is determined to stop the killing of bears
in BC His stand won him the admiration of some and the scorn of
others...
1996-08-01week
The Georgia Straight, Vancouver, BC
by Charlie Smith
[Hunters target Marr]
During a recent province-wide tour, WCWC wildlife campaigner
Anthony Marr discovered how difficult it will be to achieve a ban on
bear hunting. In public meetings to promote holding a vote on the
issue, he was usually hounded by dozens of angry hunters who tried
to intimidate him. "In Port Alberni, 60 of them showed up, and there
were only five environmentalists," Marr said. "They are organized
and they are hostile, and when they show up, it's 10 to one – ten
of them to one environmentalist. Marr will speak about this issue on
Thursday (August 8) at the H.R. MacMillan Planetarium at 7:30 p.m.-
and he expects to see angry hunters in the audience. "I'm beginning
to enjoy confronting them," he chuckled.
1996-08-02-5
The Vancouver Sun
by Larry Pynn
[Activist angers hunters with campaign to outlaw bear hunt through
referendum]
Anthony Marr is on almost every hunter's hit list for his
efforts to get bear hunting banned in BC… Marr has just completed
a seven-week-tour of more than 50 BC communities It hasn't been easy
for Marr, who has been dogged by hunters equally determined to kill
his campaign before it gets off the ground I know some gung fu, but
I can take on only one unarmed hunter at a time,' he says with a
smile."Deep down inside, it's
a moral issue," says Marr, who estimates that at least 90 per cent
of hunters shoot bears for the trophy and that 65 per cent actually
come from urban areas.
"It's immoral to kill for
entertainment. And abominable that adult teach their children to
kill for fun."...
The BC
Wildlife Federation has set aside $40,000 so far to
counter the environmentalists. The hunter lobby will place ads, and
attempt to shadow petition canvassers as they make their way door to
door...
(For a full account of this campaign,
which eventually was hailed by the Globe-and-Mail as "the highest
profile wildlife campaign in Canada in 1996", please see the
Anti-Trophy-Hunting section of
www.HOPE-CARE.org)
The whole point of these media excerpts
is to first give you a taste of the hunters as an organized force,
and to arrive at the name of the organization doing the organizing
of the hunters as a force - the BC
Wildlife Federation (35,000 members).
During the campaign, many people not
familiar with the hunting-v-anti-hunting scene got very confused.
"Why is the Western Canada Wilderness Committee fighting the BC
Wildlife Federation? Aren't they both on the same side?" was a
common question of the year in BC.
The truth of the matter is that the BC
Wildlife Federation, and the Alberta
Wildlife Federation, and the
Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, and the
Manitoba Wildlife Federation...
and the umbrella Canadian Wildlife
Federation, are all hunters' clubs.
And yet, using an animal-friendly word like "wildlife" and an
illusory name like "wildlife federation", they have scooped millions
of dollars' worth of donations from the anti-hunting yet
ill-informed general public.
Now, I see that almost all of my AR
friends in
MySpace have among their friends a
group whose acronym is NWF.
Now there is nothing against the law or
rule or protocol for an anti-hunting AR person to have the NWF as a
friend. I just want them to first of all understand the true nature
of these "WFs", and then decide if they still want its logo to
appear in their "top friends" list. I just don't want anyone whose
heart is pure to be fooled by a name and end up contributing to the
killing of our beloved wild animals.
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