Those wascally wabbits
Chuck Poulsen, Kelowna Daily Courier
2008-12-29
No local issue created more controversy in 2008 than that of the wild bunnies.
Letters to the editor multiplied like the rabbits themselves, most denouncing the rabbit cull, although there were also plenty that defended it.
“The inhumane treatment and cruelty inflicted upon Kelowna‘s rabbits is appalling and unacceptable,” said Connie Mahoney.
“I think this whole deal is ghastly deplorable,” said Jeanne Finlayson.
“If they were rats or cockroaches, nobody would give a second thought to the method of their destruction,” said Suzanne Campbell.
The issue simmered for most of the year, but it blew up when someone saw an employee from EBB Environmental Consulting, the firm contacted by the city to do the cull, stomp a rabbit to death after a pellet failed to kill it.
The city put a moratorium on the kill, finally deciding that a bolt to the brain will be the preferred method of doing in the rabbits.
Called a penetrating captive bolt, the device shoots and then retracts the bolt from the animal‘s brain. Similar devices are used for killing livestock.
That was not good enough for The Responsible Animal Care Society, the organization that has led an effort to house and protect the rabbits.
“How in the world are they going to restrain these frightened rabbits properly in order to assure a humane kill?” asked Sinikka Crosland, president of TRACS. “Add to that a thoroughly terrified rabbit, and we have a recipe for a lot of suffering.”
The city‘s urban forester, Ian Wilson, said that trapping the animals doesn‘t work because so many people are feeding them. Poison was dismissed as a means of euthanasia because the rabbits could not then be used by sanctuaries as food for birds of prey.
An estimated three-quarters of Kelowna‘s wild rabbits have been rounded up or killed since control measures started early this year.
EBB has exterminated about 400, and TRACS has trapped and is caring for about 350 rabbits.
Before the trapping and euthanization programs began in earnest, the rabbit population was estimated at about 1,000 animals.
“It does seem that there‘s been a significant reduction in the number of rabbits that are out there,” said Wilson.
The rabbits go into underground warrens that were dug before the freezing temperatures struck, said Crosland.
She said they can survive the cold, although with so much snow, there is a loss of food that could prove fatal for some of them.
The issue will be back in the spring, when EBB will likely be on the job to stop the remaining rabbits from breeding.
And Crosland will undoubtedly be back in the news too, with comments such as this one made earlier this year:
“What will it take for Kelowna to rise above engaging in animal cruelty and consider humane, non-lethal intervention instead?”