Black bears are remarkable…

Black bears are remarkable and beautiful creatures. Just their intelligence alone is sound justification to impose an outright ban on the annual government sanctioned slaughter. In experiments, captive black bears show that they can perform numerical tasks, including distinguishing the number of dots on an image. This is no small feat, shared only with a handful of primates, possibly crows and ravens, and, oddly enough, honey bees. This new research shows for the first time that bears and other animals that have been neglected by cognitive scientists may show abilities similar to species more like humans. How the collective wisdom of a provincial government (or federal for that matter) can sanction their pointless destruction is a head-scratcher of mammoth degree.

It never fails to bemuse me that science spends billions and billions of dollars in an attempt to determine if there is life existing beyond our planet and at the same time governments allow humans to destroy it here. If a single cell life form of the most simplistic makeup was uncovered on another planet or moon it would be one of the single most important discoveries ever uncovered. And yet here on Earth we actively allow some segments of the population to terminate the lives of the most beautiful and complex creatures. And for what!? To harvest body parts and create "medicine" of dubious worth in an effort to comfort the aging human male's loss of virility? To display in their homes the "trophy" of the body parts of a murdered exquisite animal? How can we as a collective continue to sanction and support the archaic and barbaric practice of trophy hunting?

Come on Ontario! Let's evolve together into a live-and-let-live mindset and instead of slaughtering these fantastic creatures, we should study and enjoy them. As James Madison said, " Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." Knowledge is dictating that humans have done enough damage to the natural world and if we continue to destroy it, it will be at our peril. Let us forever fight against the notion that the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. Thank you.