The pen may be mightier than the sword, but is the keyboard mightier than the shotgun? Let us hope so.
As I wrote in yesterday's update, EBRPD has not posted the agenda for Thursday's meeting of the Natural and Cultural Resources Committee. At the 15 December meeting of the Board of Directors, Director Ellen Corbett stated that EBRPD's policy of shooting and killing cats would be on the agenda for that meeting. When members of the public wish to communicate with EBRPD regarding an issue being discussed during one of their public meetings, EBRPD requires submissions to follow a specific format. You must preface your statement with the item number that corresponds to the issue on the agenda you wish to address. We cannot follow that format at this time, because we have been given no agenda, and thus no item number. EBRPD will not make the Thursday meeting's agenda public until Monday. Given the fact that EBRPD usually requests that all comments are submitted more than 24 hours before the meeting is scheduled to occur, they are allowing us only a very small window of time during which we can contact them via their preferred methods.
However, as was very helpfully pointed out by Holly Cuciz in the comment section from yesterday's update, the email addresses for the members of the Board of Directors and the interim General Manager are public, and we can appeal to them directly even though we cannot yet follow the proper channels and direct our comments to the Clerk of the Board.
I personally believe that the agenda will be posted on Monday, and I do believe that Ms. Barial-Knight, the Clerk of the Board, will follow protocol and provide packets to each of the Board members that contain copies of all officially submitted emails, as well as transcripts of all officially submitted voicemails. I myself plan to work this weekend on writing my appeal to the Natural and Cultural Resources Committee, and to follow EBRPD's guidelines and submit it once the agenda is finally posted.
It has been pointed out to me many times, by multiple people, throughout this entire nightmarish process, that I am too trusting, too naïve, and unrealistically optimistic. I acknowledge that I am frequently "guilty as charged." I've also been told that at least a few petition signers do not have faith that the agenda will be made available on Monday, or do not believe their comments will reach the Board if submitted via official channels, or simply feel that this matter is too urgent to wait until Monday. I understand and respect those who feel that way.
If you want to write directly to the entire Board, please do so.
If you want to write to the members of the Board who sit on the Natural and Cultural Resources Committee, please do so.
If you are local and you want to include the Board member who represents your Ward, and thus is the Board member whose name appears on your ballot, please do so. If you are unsure which Board member represents your area, you can see the ward boundary map if you scroll down to the bottom of this page.
That same page also includes email addresses of all seven members of the Board, as well the Interim General Manager. I will also provide that information here. Members listed in bold font are those believed to sit on the Natural and Cultural Resources Committee. (Ms. Cuciz wrote that the current members of the Natural and Cultural Resources Committee are Colin Coffey, Dennis Waespi and Beverly Lane. I am confident that she did her research and that those names are correct and current, but I'm going to add Elizabeth Echols just to be on the safe side, since I don't know how to contact Ms. Cuciz, and the Board members on that committee at its most recent meeting on 9 December were Directors Lane (committee chairperson, at least at that time), Coffey and Echols.)
Ward 1 Board Member, Director Elizabeth Echols: eechols@ebparks.org
Ward 2 Board Member, Director Dee Rosario: drosario@ebparks.org
Ward 3 Board Member, Director Dennis Waespi: dwaespi@ebparks.org
Ward 4 Board Member (whose Ward includes MLK Jr. Regional Shoreline) Director Ellen Corbett: ecorbett@ebparks.org
Ward 5 Board Member, Director Ayn Wieskamp: awieskamp@ebparks.org
Ward 6 Board Member, Director Beverly Lane: blane@ebparks.org
Ward 7 Board Member, Director Colin Coffey: ccoffey@ebparks.org
Interim General Manager (since Robert Doyle retired) Carol Victor: cvictor@ebparks.org
THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS TO MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD BY EBRPD, regardless of whether you choose to email now or wait until Monday. As always, I am just an average member of the public, with no special knowledge of any kind, and the following is just a personal suggestion, which you have every right to completely ignore: If you do email Board members directly, and the official channels become open to us on Monday, please consider taking less than a minute to send your email again, only changing the recipient and the subject line to follow EBRPD's guidelines. I only recommend this because I don't want any of your messages to be discarded or discounted, or even left out of the official record, simply because of the manner in which it was submitted.
I cannot emphasize enough how vital it is for the decision makers at EBRPD to hear from as many of us as possible. If you do not have the time to write an email, or find the prospect intimidating, please consider simply copy/pasting the following sentence and sending it to EBRPD.
I am writing to voice my strong support for a permanent ban to EBRPD's policy of killing cats.
If you agree with that statement, and don't have time for anything else, feel free to send that as-is. If you disagree with that statement, disregard it completely, but please write to EBRPD anyway and say exactly what you wish to say! You can also use that sentence as a "jumping-off point," and follow it with whatever matters most to you or whatever you think would be most effective. You can even look at the comments made by your follow petition-signers for inspiration. Here are a handful, chosen nearly at random. The people who have signed this petition give me hope for humanity.
Petitioner Karen Estok quoted Mahatma Gandhi: "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
Petitoner Tiffany Masters: This is disgusting and horrible. There are laws in other areas to prevent this and you are mandating it!
Petitioner Sharon Anderson: This is sick!!! Disgusting. Cats are totally innocent. They did not cause this problem; irresponsible people did.
Petitioner Monica Odgers quoted Harrier Beecher Stowe: "We should remember in our dealings with animals that they are a sacred trust to us...They cannot speak for themselves."
Petitioner Judith Roberts: A civilized people will act with compassion and humanity. Murdering hapless and innocent creatures does not demonstrate that. Let this agency act with resourcefulness, creativity, and kindness to relieve this situation.
Petitioner Aaliyah Macan: This is a stunningly vicious non-solution to the problem and I am deeply ashamed that this is taking place not in Wyoming or Texas, but in my own, supposedly "progressive" state of California. Whichever EBRPD employee disseminated the lie that the assassinated cats were taken to shelters needs to be outed and fired, and the entire organization needs to commit to undergo training in TNR, the only approach that actually will work.
Petitioner Stacy M: It is outrageous and inhumane that any government-run facility (or any human) would shoot these animals as a means of control. It has been proven that TNR is the only way to manage the size of a colony. The shooting of innocent animals must stop now. I'm beyond pissed that tax dollars are being used for such a horrific task.
Petitioner Anneke Malan: There are far more effective ways of controlling feral cat numbers than by culling. In fact, more and more research is showing that culling actually increases cat numbers.**
**This is absolutely true. From a study published in Australia in 2015: "Key results: Contrary to expectation, the relative abundance and activity of feral cats increased in the cull-sites, even though the numbers of cats captured per unit effort during the culling period declined. Increases in minimum numbers of cats known to be alive ranged from 75% to 211% during the culling period, compared with pre- and post-cull estimates, and probably occurred due to influxes of new individuals after dominant resident cats were removed."
For studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of TNR, Alley Cat Allies' Trap-Neuter-Return Research Compendium is a great resource. Note that both the second and third study listed were conducted right here in the Bay Area!
Anyway, I'm going off-topic. Every time I consider trying to reason with the so-called "experts" who advocated for and carried out this barbaric policy, I give up. They will not listen to me, and I am the wrong person for the job anyway. That is one of the many reasons I have been so excited since Alley Cat Allies formally announced their plan to challenge EBRPD. If there is any organization that can convince them that "lethal removal" is not only cruel, it is also INEFFECTIVE, it is Alley Cat Allies. EBRPD already knows their policy is barbaric and inhumane. Cruelty has not proven to be enough of a reason for them to cease and desist. Our best hope of achieving policy change and a permanent ban on the murder of cats lies with Alley Cat Allies and other advocacy groups, and with us continuing to voice our own outrage, as loudly as we can, and as many times as it takes. EBRPD MUST PERMANENTLY BAN THEIR POLICY OF KILLING CATS! Please email them and speak your mind, from your heart!