Media: Stop Promoting Hunting!

Fund for Animals Asks Nation's Sports Media to Stop Promoting Hunting
7/12/2001, The Fund for Animals

SILVER SPRING, MD -- The Fund for Animals, a national animal protection group founded in 1967 by bestselling author and humanitarian Cleveland Amory, has sent an open letter to the editors of more than 2,000 newspapers asking them to stop promoting hunting and fur trapping in the outdoor columns that appear in most sports sections. A similar letter went to the presidents of sports cable channels ESPN and ComCast Sports Net, asking them to cancel their hunting programs.

Quoting Marv Levy, legendary former head coach of the Buffalo Bills, who said, "I don't consider hunting a sport; I consider it murder," the letter by Fund for Animals program coordinator Norm Phelps pointed out that in genuine sports all of the competitors are willing participants, the competition is roughly equal, the stakes are the same for both sides, and everyone lives to play another day. Phelps, a former hunter, wrote in the letter, "While the hunter is armed with a lethal long-range weapon, either a firearm or a bow, the animal's only hope is to be lucky enough to escape. Can you image a hockey game in which only one team carried sticks?"

Phelps further wrote, "People who do to dogs and cats what hunters do to deer, geese, doves, and squirrels are prosecuted for animal cruelty, referred for psychiatric evaluation, or both. But animals who live in the wild are just as capable of suffering fear and pain as our companion animals. What is cruel to one is cruel to the other. Hunting is legalized cruelty to animals."

Heidi Prescott, national director of The Fund for Animals, noted that sport hunting in the United States has been declining for the past quarter century. "America's values are changing," she said. "Today, only a tiny fraction of Americans hunt. We're maturing as a society, and The Fund for Animals is calling on America's sports media to reflect that change."

Michael Markarian, The Fund's executive vice president, added that, "Hunting teaches kids that it's OK to terrorize and kill for fun. At a time when violence in our schools is a national epidemic, that's the wrong message for America's sports media to be sending."

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