As if animal killing contests weren’t awful enough, there’s something particularly disturbing about a bounty hunt championed by a state’s legislative body. That’s why we’re calling out South Carolina in our latest Shame Campaign for a proposed bill that would give hunters up to $1,000 reward for hunting coyote in the state.
The proposed bill, approved last month by the S.C. House’s budget-writing committee, directs the S.C. Department of Natural Resources to tag and release at least 12 coyotes across the state. The tagged coyotes would have a bounty of at least $1,000 each, payable to any hunter who bags them.
The proposal was submitted by state Rep. Alan Clemmons and was shockingly passed unanimously on the 25-member committee who claimed it is “an attempt to encourage hunters to target the predators, not native to South Carolina, who are blamed for killing young deer, and domestic cats and dogs.”
If South Carolina legislators did their research, however, they would understand that experience shows these lethal methods to control predator populations not only have low success rates, but they also have a significant, negative impact on the local environment. Encounters arise when coyotes—the original inhabitants of these areas—find themselves in the midst of human development. So logically, the best way to reduce coyote/human interactions would be for humans to make modifications to the way they are living so that both wildlife and people can co-exist peacefully.
Friends of Animals’ Wildlife Law Program provides communities tools to implement non-lethal and non-invasive practices for communities to proactively address human-coyote encounters…learn more and download our free brochure here.
Take Action
If you are a resident of South Carolina, you can take action against this coyote-killing contest bill by contacting your local representatives and telling them to remove this coyote-killing prize money from the budget. Find your House rep here.
Non-residents can contact the governor of South Carolina, Nikki Haley, and tell her not to allow the inclusion of this coyote-killing prize money in the state budget. Find her contact information here
You can also leave a comment on her Facebook page.
Please also contact Rep. Clemmons, the outwardly coyote-hating representative who introduced this bill, and tell him that incentivizing the killing of wildlife is not a solution to reduce their encounters with people and that he should be supporting methods of peaceful co-existence.
– See more at: https://secure.friendsofanimals.org/news/2016/march/south-carolina-proposes-state-funded-coyote-bounty-hunt#sthash.btmeKQKq.dpuf