Cyrus calls on fans to fight B.C. wolf cull
VANCOUVER — Provocative pop star Miley Cyrus is urging her fans to join the campaign against the B.C.’s wolf cull.
The famous animal lover posted a link on Instagram to a petition against the cull, calling for more “kindness and compassion” for animals.
“I am not asking for $ or much of your time just your signature so the government will stop killing these beautiful creatures,” Cyrus wrote in her post on Tuesday.
“We [humans] are over-populating while more animals every day go into extinction! A life with more humans and less animals sounds like a very sad planet.”
As many as 184 wolves are set to be killed this year in a bid to save B.C.’s endangered caribou.
Government-contracted helicopters first took to the air in January over the South Peace and South Selkirk regions as part of a four-year plan to thin out the wolf population.
The Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations has said a wolf cull is the quickest way to improve the caribou populations in those regions.
There were just 18 caribou left in the South Selkirk herd by March of last year.
But environmentalists have slammed the hunt, suggesting that habitat loss is a bigger factor in the caribou’s decline.
In an email Wednesday, Forests ministry spokesman Greig Bethel wrote that the province is also setting aside key caribou habitat and reducing human disturbance of the animals in an attempt to save the herds.
“These efforts will continue, but ultimately for them to be effective and for at-risk caribou herds to persist, targeted wolf removal is also required now,” Bethel wrote.
The anti-cull petition from the conservation group Pacific Wild calls wolves “highly social and intelligent animals” and suggests that killing the predators might have unintended impacts.
“Killing all the wolves in B.C. won’t bring the caribou back in the absence of habitat protection,” the petition reads.
“Research shows that predator-kill programs increase reproductive rates in wolves and destabilizes pack structure, causing more predation of livestock and other non-native prey.”
By Wednesday, the petition had more than 197,000 signatures.