🚀 go-pugleaf

On Sat, 13 Feb 1999 18:54:14 GMT, petcrows@bigfoot.com
(Jonathan Higbee) wrote:

<clip>
>my letter to their editor:
>
>http://www.nunatsiaq.com/nunavut/letters.htmland 
>

Sorry. I got the URL wrong for the my letter. It's at:

http://www.nunatsiaq.com/nunavut/letters.html

Here is the text from the web sites. The copyright remains
with the original authors.

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From http://www.nunatsiaq.com/nunavut/nvt90212_03.html

Nunavut Edition Headline News

February 11, 1999

A bird in the hand is worth one search warrant

Iqaluit resident Craig Clark thought he could adopt a raven
with a broken wing. But that was before Nunavut's ponderous
wildlife management bureaucracy swung into action.

The Arctic Raven web page

JANE GEORGE
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT � If authorities knock on your door with a search
warrant, usually they're looking for drugs or some other
evidence of a serious crime.

But a humble raven with a broken wing was the focus of a
search that wildlife officers conducted last Thursday inside
the Iqaluit home of Craig Clark.

Shortly after the seizure, territorial wildlife inspectors
killed the seized raven, reportedly by sticking a knife
through its open beak into the back of its throat.

Clark, a well-known local artist, had been looking after the
badly injured raven for two weeks. The warrant said that he
was in "unlawful possession of wildlife, to wit, a raven,
according to subsection 53(2) of the Wildlife Act".

The seizure shocked Clark because he had been trying to
obtain the permits that would have allowed him to keep the
raven until its broken wing healed. But he was even more
devastated to find out that the bird was destroyed before he
had been able to make his case.

"This whole thing goes way beyond the raven, " he said. "I
feel like I've been treated like a criminal."

Help from vet

Committing a crime was far from Clark's intent when he took
in the raven on January 19. He spent the following week
contacting experts on ravens via the Internet and arranged
for a local veterinarian to help him with the bird's badly
broken right wing.

During his search for information, Clark had learned that
ravens can adapt to living with humans. He made the bird a
kind of enclosed pen with a perch, what he called a "raven
haven," out of a closet.

Clark then spent weekend hanging out with the raven, reading
it "The Magician's Nephew" while his eldest son played
music. His youngest child watched the bird with great
interest.

"She was really quite friendly," said Clark. "At no time did
she ever try to peck or bite me."

The raven ate and drank well, enduring dosages of
antibiotics and treatment for its fractured wing.

"With treatment, the wing could heal and the bird could be
rehabilitated," wrote veterinarian Heather Priest in her
assessment of the raven's health.

But the raven's presence in Clark's home, even on a
temporary basis, was apparently illegal, so Nunavut's
complex wildlife management bureaucracy swung into action.

Applying for permit

After talking to officials with local renewable resource
officials , the Qiqiqtaaluk Wildlife Board, and the local
hunters and trappers organization, Clark learned that he
could apply for a special permit to keep the raven.

The Wildlife Act says that "no person shall keep captive or
feed for the purpose of keeping captive...any wildlife...
unless authorized to do so by a license or permit."

Before the seizure, Clark had arranged for a letter of
support from the HTO, but following the seizure, he learned
that the HTO board of directors would look at his request on
February 10.

According to Joe Tigullaraq, a renewable resources official
in Iqaluit, inspectors moved in on February 4 because the
department had learned that the HTO was unlikely to approve
Clark's request.

Tigullaraq said that this is not the first time that
officials have seized wildlife. He said wildlife officers
had no choice but to kill the bird.

"If we had facilities, things would be different," he said.
"We have no facility to care for wounded wildlife."

But this explanation doesn't appease Clark. "Does that mean,
if it's injured, kill it?" he asked.

"Government run amok"

Last-minute efforts by Iqaluit MLA Ed Picco to intervene in
the raven's behalf couldn't stop the department's actions.
Picco called up Minister Stephen Kakfwi, but by the time
Yellowknife responded, the bird was dead.

"I think it's a case of government run amok," said Picco.

It looks like officials went too far in applying the letter
of the law, says Picco.

Clark wants to know why territorial officials � and not the
Inuit wildlife groups � had the last word on the raven's
fate.

And he doesn't understand why in this case the government
acted so swiftly.

Clark, an employee of the Qimaavik Women's Shelter for seven
years, says that many abused women and children wait too
long before there's any intervention.

Clark has set up a web page at
http://www.nunanet.com/~arctica/arcticraven.htm.

The site includes a photo of the raven, a chronology of
events leading up to its death, copies of letters and other
documents, and Clark's own commentary.

"Until things change I will NEVER try to do things by the
book again," he writes. "To me, the death of Arctic Raven
has become a symbol of a red-tape bureaucratic hell, with no
accountability, that we all have to deal with on a daily
basis. I encourage all people to stand up and scream
whenever the bureaucratic mud threatens to suffocate them."

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From http://www.nunatsiaq.com/nunavut/letters.html

February 11, 1999
Bureaucratic thugs execute Arctic raven

Nearly three weeks ago a man in your town, Craig Clark,
wrote to me and asked for help with caring for a raven he
had rescued. The raven had a badly injured wing.

I am writing this letter to you from the perspective of
someone who helped Craig, and who has taken great interest
in what happened to the bird he tried to save. The story I
relate is based on the facts as I have received them.

Living where he does, Craig found almost no resources to
help him care for the raven. However the availability of the
Internet allowed him to contact several wildlife
rehabilitators in Canada and the U.S. His local vet also
consulted with a vet at the Ottawa Wild Bird Sanctuary.

Craig and his vet fixed the raven up. The raven was healthy
and eating well, and apparently being well cared-for by
Craig.

Unfortunately, Craig then made the mistake of actually
seeking a permit to keep the bird. He became involved with
various wildlife boards and officers there.

But in the end, rather than wait and help Craig get the
appropriate permit, some local wildlife officers confiscated
the raven and killed it, after all the effort he went
through to save the bird, after the vet helped, after all
the people on the 'Net helped, and after he tried to take
the high road by seeking a permit to keep the bird.

What was the result? Some local wildlife officer thugs
killed an otherwise healthy and well cared-for bird.

Anyone who gets into birds soon learns that ravens are
highly intelligent. They are clearly as intelligent as any
parrot. Scientific evidence shows that these higher-order
types of birds do as well on intelligence tests as dolphins,
non-human apes, and on several tests as well as
five-year-old human children.

I think it's time we as a species start acting a little more
like breathing, thinking, conscious and considerate beings,
rather than like robots or automatons.

In small remote towns where there are few bird
rehabilitation resources, perhaps it would be appropriate
for the operators of the great machine to be realistic and
thankful to people willing to care for birds, where these
people clearly show they are willing to do what is required
to help the birds, as is shown by the actions Craig took.

On the other hand, perhaps the moral of this story is to not
get involved with the great machine at all.

Anyway, I wish Craig and the people of Iqaluit the best of
luck as you progress toward self-government. I knew nothing
of your town before Craig wrote to me and scores of other
bird people on the 'Net for help.

I hope the death of that beautiful raven Craig helped will
not be in vain, and that some progress toward proper
wildlife rehabilitation can take place there.

In my view, your local government should ask Craig to become
a licensed rehabilitator, as well as anyone willing to go
through the hoops that Craig went through to try and save
that raven.

Jonathan Higbee


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From http://www.nunatsiaq.com/nunavut/editorial.html

Editorials

February 11, 1999
The idiot factor

All bureaucracies, along with the paper structures and
protocols from which they draw sustenance, have a curious
and well-known effect upon the people who work within them.

After gathering decent, fair-minded human beings into their
sheltering bosoms � bureaucracies will always transform
those good people into idiots.

Nowhere will you find a better example of that principle
than a recent incident in Iqaluit, during which wildlife
officers armed with a search warrant stormed into a man's
home without his permission � to seize a lowly raven.

Neither the man � nor the raven � had committed any known
crime. Neither man nor raven posed any threat to the public.
Iqaluit, with a population close to 4700, is a big town, big
enough to fend off any danger posed by a raven that can't
fly.

But inside bureaucracies, paper is holy and what is written
on paper must be obeyed. When paper is holy, common sense
and simple decency are irrelevant.

The law that wildlife officials applied against Craig Clark
was never intended to deal with situations such as this. It
was intended to protect wildlife from being stolen, sold for
profit to zoos or wildlife ranches, or abused in other ways.

It was not intended to punish those who take in wounded
birds and try to heal them at their own expense.

Search warrants are state-sanctioned invasions of liberty
and privacy. But we accept them because we know that the
police and other law enforcement agencies must sometimes
enter citizens' homes to look for stolen goods, illegal
drugs, and other evidence of serious crime.

When wildlife officers used a search warrant to invade Craig
Clark's home and to violate his privacy and his liberty, the
letter of the law was on their side. The spirit of the law
was not, but for those who toil within bureaucracies,
"spirit" is an alien concept anyway.

Thanks to the Nunavut land claim, a bewildering variety of
bureaucracies now wield authority over wildlife, land, water
and other such matters. Each bears its own ugly,
unpronounceable acronym � NWMB, QWMB, RWED, HTO � and each
employs its own set of puffed-up paper-shufflers with
grandiloquent job titles to go with their corner offices.

If they're managed competently (and that's a big "if"),
these organizations contain the potential to serve the
public interest well. Their purpose is to ensure that Inuit
have an equal say with governments in the conservation of
wildlife, and that Nunavut's environment receives the
protection it deserves.

Those who negotiated the Nunavut land claim agreement and
those who conceived of all the little bureaucracies created
by that agreement could not, however, incorporate the idiot
factor into their thinking.

Nobody can protect themselves against the idiot factor. Just
ask Craig Clark. JB