Wildlife Damage Management, Internet Center for

 

Date of this Version

September 1968

Abstract

When Dr. Jackson called me to speak on the rights of the individual I told him he probably had the wrong person because I am an individual and I believe my company is an organization very prone to say "what is, is and you've got to go on with it." If I'd have heard some of the talks here today before he called me, I wouldn't be here at all, because I'm not sure what individual rights there are left! So let me change this thing around a little bit and state that instead of speaking of the rights of the individual I'd like to speak about the cooperation that we can achieve between the commercial pest control operator and regulatory authorities. I have to look at this thing primarily from the point of view of the pest control operator. The question: "Is this problem one we can control within a complete framework of federal authority and state authority, conservation, Audubon, and everything else? Well, not really. I think this is one that we'd better be very, very careful about what we teach our man to say. If we teach him to say too much, I'm afraid he might reach the error of our very high judicial authorities, and pest control for birds will be in much the same kind of situation as criminal control. We'll probably have to get permission from the bullies before we can conduct any control measures. Really, I think in commercial pest control, there are three areas we have to consider. One, of course is regulation that includes state, federal, municipal, or whatever domain may be involved. Second, is the commercial aspect of what we do. This may include the chemicals from the commercial companies, the cost of application, the price we have to pay for the material, and, of course, a moderating effect of what the competitor gets for the same type job. Third, is this individual right that we mentioned. In any commercial work we do, I think we must consider the individual right of our customer, the rights of the neighbors adjacent to our customer, and any others in the community who might be interested.

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