Oftentimes, contests bring us together in wonderful ways. The chance to hone a skill, win prizes, and spend time with your community can be an amazing thing. Pie-baking contests, vegetable growing contests, art-making contests — all things that bring us together while adding beauty to the world.
But one type of gruesome, tortuous contest does the exact opposite. Wildlife killing contests bring people together in the name of death and suffering, and that’s why many states are banning the disgusting tradition altogether.
Join us in applauding New York state in becoming the tenth state to ban wildlife killing contests! But there are still 40 states that allow wildlife killing contests, so will you take the extra step and sign the petition asking that New Jersey ban them next?
Oregon, Arizona, California, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington have all banned wildlife killing contests, and now New York. Why? Because they are widely considered as exceptionally cruel and shameful. Even many hunters themselves are against these contests, calling the practices used in them “unsportsmanlike.”
These contests are tournaments of death. In them, hunters are incentivized with prizes for killing the most animals, the biggest animals, the smallest animals, and so on.
Mama coyotes are killed, leaving their pups to die from starvation, predators, or exposure to the elements. Foxes’ bodies are piled high on top of each other. Bobcats are lured out using fake calls or terrifying dogs that flush them out.
Not only are the methods used during these contests despicable and the scale of the killing horrendous; the reasons these contests were created isn’t even legitimate.
Supporters of wildlife killing contests claim that they keep wildlife populations balanced and regulated.
But research tells us that mass killing of predators is ineffective in wildlife management, and only causes harmful patterns of breeding, migration, and ecosystem disruption.
For the sake of all wild animals, we can’t rest until wildlife killing contests are banned in every single US state.
New Jersey’s legislators have approved a bill that would do just that, so let’s ask Governor Phil Murphy to not delay in signing it into law the moment it passes his desk.
Sign the petition to protect precious wildlife in New Jersey!
This article by Mathew Davis was first published by One Green Planet on 14 January 2024. Image Credit :Annette Shaff/Shutterstock.
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