Just over a year ago CAWES (Coast Animal Welfare & Education Society) conducted a survey with the help of some IPS students that focused on the health and welfare of Bowen Island’s companion animals and wildlife.
We wanted to find out about the relationship between children and companion animals; animals and the law; animals and medical care; animal emergencies and first aid; and how much or how little the community knows about CAWES and what we do. We have now had a chance to analyze the data from this survey with some interesting results, and have been able to identify some positive actions.
How To Interact Safely with Our Pets: Clearly cats and dogs are our favourite animals to have as home companions. No real surprise here! The responses mostly suggested that pets and children get along pretty well, but there was quite a lot of interest in learning how our children can interact safely with our animal companions. To this end, CAWES is considering holding a special workshop on this topic for children (or parents and children together).
Emergency Preparedness and Animal First Aid: When it comes to being prepared for an emergency evacuation, the responses are split fairly evenly between “no plan,” “on the to-do list,” and “have a plan,” which indicates to us that we need to know more about how to be prepared for, say, an earthquake. There also seems to be quite a lot of interest in learning more about first aid for companion animals. Based on this feedback, a hands-on workshop that incorporates these ideas is something we hope to develop before long.
Helping Wildlife: General concern was expressed about not knowing what to do when someone comes across injured wildlife, which leads us to believe that a workshop or session with wildlife experts might be of interest to community members. However, we will probably need to do a little more research first to find out how well this type of workshop might be attended.
Learning More About Our Bylaws: Animal bylaws are hot topics! Many responding seemed unsure about the details of our bylaws and/or whether they would support stronger enforcement, but nearly all of those who had strong views added comments to express exactly how they felt. We think a Q&A panel session involving our bylaw officers would be a great opportunity for people to ask some very specific questions about what is and is not allowed legally when it comes to our companion animals, and perhaps what could be changed and improved.
Improving Our Cat Bylaws: When asked whether there was any support for having a bylaw designed to control the feral cat population through mandatory spaying/neutering of free roaming cats over six months, we received an overwhelming “Yes!” This response confirms our longstanding belief that the community thinks it important to minimize the numbers of strays, ferals and nuisance cats on our island, and to keep our companion cats safe. With renewed confidence that the community is behind us, our efforts to get a cat bylaw in place will be reviewed and increased.
What Does The Community Know About CAWES?
The responses were disappointing. We are surprised at how little a large percentage of the people responding in this survey know about what we do or don’t do. With this in mind, we are trying to come up with ways to better get the word out there. To start off, we would like to direct you to our website, which describes our mission, objectives, and actions, as well as board members and volunteers: cawes.org. Second, if you have any advice or suggestions on how we can communicate what we do (or don’t do), and how we can better help the community at large or you personally, we’d love to hear from you. Please send your queries and comments to [email protected] or mail to Box 280, V0N 1G0.
To all of you who took the time to complete the survey, thank you so very much for participating!
CAWES
