So in Alberta especially, with our booming economy we have, you know, lots and lots of people moving here every year. It’s rapidly growing and people have money and they’re buying up parcels of land everywhere. And so we have definitely begun to encroach on places that were traditionally considered wilderness areas. And this has a lot of potential risks for wild animals living in those areas. However, I also believe that it’s possible to do sustainable development in such a way that you reduce those risks so you can maintain viable animal populations. And for cougar, one of the things that’s really critical is that you find a way for human beings to deal with those animals, allow them to continue to persist in and around where people live. Because as people expand, obviously we take up more and more and more space and if we refuse to allow large predators to cohabitate with us in that space, eventually we’ll lose our predators.
Well, I think that predators actually have quite a high intrinsic value in and of themselves. Personally, I enjoy being in a place where I know there are predators. And I think that they also have a large ecological value. They play roles in eco-systems. They can increase biodiversity; they are a major factor in terms of ... as a predator, they are a major factor in terms of the population dynamics of their prey in lots of places. So they have a
really important affect and I think that to lose that would be a great shame.