Sanibel Island an Icon for Animal Advocacy

In areas around the USA there has been a bitter divide among those who want to kill deer in nearby reservations and forests to cull the herds , and those who don't believe that the kill is humane or necessary.


Like most tales, there are many elements too lengthy to go into here, but suffice it to say that the emotions run high on this issue.


What runs low is the outcome as the "powers that be" decide year after year that the deer must die. Despite alternatives available, the denouement is death to the deer.


Sanibel Island, on the other hand, had for years adopted a policy of live and let live with its alligator population. In fact, when discussion did arise about killing off alligators, there was such an outpouring of emotion that those for killing were not only out numbered, they were drowned out with a crescendo of nay sayers. The alligators, said the opposition to the killing, were here first. We, the humans, must live with their presence. It was a clearly shared philosophic position.


That said, residents and legislators alike realized that unlike deer, alligators are predatory and left to grow and multiply, were a danger. No one wanted to kill them, it was purely a life or death situation. Even now, Islanders are reluctant to report when a gator comes close to their home as they don't want to be responsible for it's being killed as a potential danger.


The recent and tragic death of a trainer at Sea World made me re-think and re-visit that philosophy as it goes beyond the act of lethal removal of a species from its environment.


All of the wild life organizations support Sanibel's wild life without trapping and imprisoning any of it. Their goals are to preserve and protect, and in doing so they hold the wild life close and then let it go. Education is important, but not at the expense of taking wild life out of the wild.


Contrast these philosophies with the theme parks, circuses, and other so-called entertainment venues where animals are kept in un-natural conditions, some times abused and always denied their instincts to be in the wild. Many of these industries claim that this is the way to learn about wild animal behavior, but is it really? Do we need to entrap dolphins and whales to learn how intelligent they are? Or is all of this "education" just a thinly disguised quest for money using these wild animals as currency for get-rich schemes?


The recent tragedy at Sea World certainly points to the inhumane conditions of the confined whale who just did what he does naturally and ended up taking a human life, tragically, needlessly.


I hope that Sanibel's "live and let live" philosophy might be a good model for a world view on wild life. Let it live free. Let it live in the wild where it belongs. There is no good reason not to do so.


The advocacy for animals on Sanibel Island is strong component in shaping the Island' s culture and appeal.