Washington Mulls Ban on Wildlife Killing Contests

​worldanimalnews.com/urgent-calling-washington-residents-to-add-their-comments-today-to-support-the-ban-on-wildlife-killing-contests-throughout-the-state/

Washington is currently considering a ban on wildlife killing contests throughout the state after asking for the public's comments.The public had until July 14th to send in their thoughts regarding the contests and whether they believed that Washington should enact a ban. It is currently undetermined what the outcome was but Washington would be smart to join the 6 other states in the US that have already moved to ban the cruel bloodsport.

These horrific contests award participants with prizes like money or new rifles for their success in shooting and killing the most animals within the allotted competition time. Animals like coyotes are typically the targets as they are deemed nuisance animals but some of these contests sickeningly give animals point allocations for scoring purposes. For example, smaller animals like raccoons or foxes award the shooter one point whereas larger animals like bobcats for example, will come with 3 points. Participants scour the area in search of these animals hoping to kill as many of them as possible to become the winner. Can you imagine how sick one must be in the head to willingly participate in a game that literally promotes the idea of slaughtering as many animals as possible? What is wrong with the human race?

There are so many things wrong with these contests on both a conservation level and a compassion level. First of all, these contests heavily disrupt the natural balance of an ecosystem by removing a hefty amount of natural predators. This can lead to an increase in herbivorous animals which leads to more plant and wildlife destruction. Unfortunately, when these animals start to overpopulate an area, hunters are then permitted to slaughter X amount of herbivorous animals to preserve an ecosystem contributing to a vicious cycle of unnecessary killing. 

Secondly, these contests are indiscriminate and non-target animals can fall victim to these games. Worse, some of these non-target animals can be endangered and even one of them being killed is detrimental. These games do nothing for wildlife conservation or population management as they allow people to slaughter as many animals as possible. There's simply no way to determine whether these games will negatively affect the wildlife population of an area  prior to or during their commencement. 

I also can't help but point out that there are children present at these horrific events. Children who watch as their parents happily slaughter animals for fun. Children who are impressionable and will take away from this that animals are only here for us to shoot and kill for fun. What kind of message are we sending to our children? That animals are nothing more than props for a "sport"? That their lives are meaningless and killing them is totally acceptable. It's disturbing to me that so many people willingly put their children in that position, handing them guns and letting them potentially shoot an animal for fun. There's something seriously disturbing about that.

Look, this "sport" is nothing more than stroking the ego of aggressive and compassion less people. Basketball is a sport, tennis is a sport, putting bullets in the heads of as many animals as you can spot is horrific, blatant cruelty, and immoral. There shouldn't be a debate on ending these contests, we need to ban them across the board. We are in the midst of an extinction crisis and yet somehow we are still allowing sports that allow for the slaughter of hundreds or thousands of animals at one time? Common, we cannot be this stupid. Ban wildlife killing contests.

HAPPY VEG