2017 / Camilla H. Fox / 60 minutes
Killing Games: Wildlife in the Crosshairs, a new film produced and distributed by Project Coyote (with some support from AWI), serves as an overview of wildlife killing contests: what they are, why they need to be prohibited, and how humanitarians can take action to try to stop them. Ranchers, Native Americans, and scientists are among those providing details about this inhumane, indiscriminate, and unethical activity, in which predators such as coyotes, wolves, bobcats, and foxes are targeted, with an award going to those who shoot and kill the most animals. There is neither regard for the intrinsic value of the individual animals nor a concern about the important role predators play within ecosystems.
The film contains striking panoramas and beautiful images of wildlife juxtaposed with innumerable bodies of animals that have been killed. Contest hunts, like bounties, should be shelved as an embarrassing relic of a barbaric period in American history when all predators were viewed as problems in need of extirpation.