Popstar Miley Cyrus joined forces with a leading scientist to both blast BC’s wolf cull and trophy bear hunt as a horrific ‘war on wildlife’, during an expedition to the Great Bear Rainforest with her brother Braison on Sept. 20.
“When I first spoke out, I knew in my heart that the wolf cull was wrong,” said Cyrus. “But after this visit, I know science is on my side, not just on the wolf cull, but also on the trophy hunt issue. Both are unsustainable and both are horrific. Both have to end.”
So far, the BC government has ignored calls from scientists to stop culls and hunts, but when Cyrus posted her trip photo on Instagram, Premier Christy Clark responded – by mocking the singer’s dance style.
“If we ever need help with our twerking policy, we’ll go to [Ms. Cyrus],” said Clark.
Such remarks drew the ire of Ian McAllister, co-founder and director of Pacific Wild, who said that Cyrus was drawing attention to an increasingly serious issue through her visit to BC.
”It was really insulting and rather rude and quite unbecoming of a premier,” said McAllister, whose organization led the Great Bear expedition.
Despite Clark’s dismissive response, the province has faced a growing chorus of demands to stop animal killing, with Canadian-born actor Pamela Anderson joining the fray last week in an open letter to Clark.
“We all want to restore the populations of endangered caribou, but gunning down wolves is not the answer,” wrote Ms. Anderson, who is an honorary director of PETA. “Hunting is a grossly inefficient method of wildlife control, because more animals will simply move into the less populated area to replace the ones who have been killed.”
In remarks published by the Canadian Press, Anderson also condemned the wolf cull as “a very cowardly way to hunt, especially from helicopters," adding that "I believe nothing good has ever come from a gun."
However, efforts to combat the declining population of the endangered animals have so far emphasized predator control in the form a wolf cull, a tactic that Pacific Wild and other leading conservation and animal welfare organizations believe is ineffective and avoiding the real issue – habitat encroachment and fragmentation by industry, humans, and recreational snowmobiling.
“The government of British Columbia is waging war on wildlife, and it should come as no surprise that their policies are garnering international scrutiny and condemnation,” said McAllister.
Both Cyrus and her brother spent two days with Mary and John Theberge, who are well-known wolf biologists and outspoken opponents of the province’s cull, as well as American author and ecologist Carl Safina, and members of the Kitasoo/Xais’Xai First Nation, who are one of several coastal Indigenous groups fighting to end trophy hunting in British Columbia.
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