PETr

FoxNews reports: Animal Rights Conference Sparks Debate.

While road kill may be a dead issue to some people, transportation and environmental experts addressed the problem in a series of meetings in upstate New York this week.

The group gathered in Lake Placid at the Conference on Ecology and Transportation to discuss life and death issues as they relate to snakes, frogs and turtles. Meanwhile, critics blasted the event's $100,000 price tag.

That didn't seem to sway Nelson Hoffman of the Vermont Transportation Agency, who was on hand to explain how putting up fences helped his state preserve the life of its waning frog population.

"It's making sure frogs are fat and not flat," he said.

Among other things inspiring him to address the issue, Hoffman said, was a question posed to him by his 5-year-old son.

"Why do you need to spend a whole week talking to people about that? Why don't we just tell people to stop running over animals?" Hoffman reported his son asking him. 

That essentially was the argument being made by the forum's critics, who are thoroughly convinced that such extravagant sums of money should be spent on improving the quality of life for humans, not animals.

Posted by Forkum at September 3, 2003 07:26 AM