Another excellent letter from Barbara Murray of Bear Matters BC. I would only urge everyone to stop playing into the P.R. hands of zoos by calling them refuges. That is what they call them, and so the public remains foggy, believing the argument is only about whether one refuge is better than another. Government (which knows very well which is a refuge and which is a zoo) also calls both "refuges". A refuge is a temporary safe place, not a lifetime cage and sideshow. Grouse and Kicking Horse are zoos. The repeated use of the word zoo by animal welfarists is the counterweight to their repeated use of the word refuge.

P.R. is mostly about the manipulation of words, and the most clever manipulator wins. AAS has been urging animal welfarists to stop reinforcing the SPCA's use of the words "shelter" and "euthanasia" for five years. A shelter is not a place that kills the inhabitants and euthanasia does not describe killing the healthy and the treatable. Most people do not even notice or question the SPCA's use of those words, and even "animal rescuers" repeat the words for the SPCA.