Don't be fooled by a name and end up helping the enemy
An Environmental Article from All-Creatures.org

From

Anthony Marr, Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
February 2005

T.

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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