Petition Says Protect Bigfoot
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on April 5th, 2007
An Edmonton MP has presented the government with a petition to protect Bigfoot.
Edmonton-Mill Woods- Beaumont MP Mike Lake offered the petition up March 28 in the House of Commons on behalf of a constituent who’s convinced Bigfoot exists and needs legal protection.
“You don’t make judgment calls on petitions,” Lake told Sun Media yesterday. “We try to do it as a service to constituents.”
Asked whether or not he believed in Bigfoot, the Tory offered a firm “No,” followed by a chuckle.
“But if he did exist, I’m sure he would vote NDP,” Lake kidded.
Todd Standing, 33, is the Bigfoot seeker behind the petition, signed by about 500 people, he said.
He claims to have at least 12 seconds of video footage that proves Bigfoot exists. He’s worked it into a 30-minute documentary.
The movie is called Sylvanic, a derivative of a native word used in southern British Columbia to describe the “shadow guardians of the mountains,” said the moviemaker.
The fact the petition will now be considered by the government is a “huge victory,” said Standing.
“Now that we’re in the nation’s business, people are going to start taking me seriously. People ask me, ‘Why would you do it? It doesn’t make any sense.’
“Of course it makes sense, because I’ve really found the species. Anyone could go out and execute these animals, and I can’t allow that to transpire.”
He won’t say where in the Rocky Mountains he caught Bigfoot on camera.
“When you have a Bigfoot discovery, men with guns show up,” he said. “People lie and deceive and cheat because it’s worth millions when you (find Bigfoot and) become famous.”
The government hasn’t yet responded to the petition, but has 45 days from the time it was presented to do so.Max Maudie
Edmonton Sun
Read more about Todd Standing and Sylvanic here on Cryptomundo.
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
Bigfoot must be protected, but not on a reservation, but allowed to roam free in the wilderness.
Of course you know what this means? The U.S. won’t sign anything of the like if Canada does first. We have to do it first if there’s going to be any chance of anything happening here. Good for them up north.
I guess there is a precedent for this. I believe Nessie is protected by Scotland even though it’s existence, at least officially, is in doubt.
I think one fight I see brewing on the horizon is: if bigfoot is ever found, how many legal battles there will be over naming rights (species, genus) and who will be officially credited with its discovery. I noticed Todd Standing has already emphatically declared HE is the species discoverer. I wonder how many more will make that same declaration and try to back it up with lawsuits when the creature is finally found?
I don’t really like how he talks about how many millions he can make and how famous he become by finding Bigfoot. That really kind of rubs me the wrong way because to me that should not be the overall goal in this area of study. And Rillo777, remember Standing also claims he is the world’s foremost expert on Bigfoot, so I’m not sure how much vercacity we should give his claim on the find or how official that claim is! 🙂
Ol’ Todd is really grasping for that fifteen minutes of fame. I’m glad it’s by doing something goofy instead of something sinister.
I believe there are several lake critters that are officially protected these days…isn’t Champ?
I suppose philosophicalllllllllllllllllllly it’s a blow to the non-believers if BF gets some protection, but if BF doesn’t exist in their eyes to begin with, who cares…
Go petition!!!! I am also with Shumway…if Canada goes for it, you can bet the U.S. will never do it 🙂 I am a cynic, but what are you gonna do…
Sylvanic again, eh? Hmm. We’ll see. I agree with both mystery_man and joppa. Oh well, time will tell.
Rillo-I’m no legal expert, so don’t laugh, but how many of the concerns you bring up might be covered by laws which would put Bigfoot in the public domain? And certainly, there must have been precedence of this sort with regards to other newly discovered creatures. Of course, if Sas’ DOES turn out to be Giganto, then the issue of naming rights becomes a moot point.
Oy vey. There goes Todd grandStanding once again. Interesting how the only Canadian news source he gets to pay him any attention is the Edmonton Sun — a tabloid with which I wouldn’t soil my parakeet cage, as I’ve said before.
Todd’s crying victory by virtue of the fact that his local MP has introduced legislation. Clearly, he’s ignorant of Canadian legislative process, as it’s going to have to be passed in the House of Commons in order to be enacted. He’s jumping the gun a little bit, I’d say, but then, we’ve come to expect that of him.
As for being “in the nation’s business” and being taken seriously… well, perhaps… there are those who take Ivan Marxes, Tom Biscardis, and Ray Wallaces seriously.
It would seem that a lot of this noise is produced to create awareness, whether in a commercial sense remains to be seen. I can’t say for sure how things are done in Canada, or even in myown state, when it comes to hunting, but the general rule wherever I’ve gone is that all resources that at held in ownership by the state, especially when it’s on public land, is protected already. One’s hunting license is anything but a permit to shoot whatever you feel you can nail. I’m sure that deer-hunters seeing an escaped zebra would not be legally permitted to shoot it just because there’s nothing specifically saying they can’t. So why create the law? It does help to create awareness and implies that the resource and its habitat will be administered in a thoughtful and considered manner should it ever be definitively confirmed to exist, and should there ever be plans to exploit the other resources on the land (mines, dams, roads, right of ways) the potential that a protected animal lives there can require that considerations be taken and made.
In the mean time, I would love to discover that Mr Standing is telling the truth, but have to admit it seems like a strange way to convince people, however faced with the same presures he’s feeling, perhaps some of the things we’d do would be open to the kinds of criticism being leveled here and elsewhere.
If I were to go out tomorrow and score on some high quality video, I would be careful to never claim to have ‘discovered’ bigfoot, as the connotation could be taken improperly. I think it would be akin to Columbus claiming to have ‘discovered’ America, and we know how that worked out. Neither Patterson nor Standing will have ‘discovered’ the species. If anyone can take credit for ‘discovering’ the species, that would be the Native Americans and Native Canadians long long ago. But it seems that is not their desire either. They know sasquatch exists. They documented it in their own way, and some of that documentation lives on today. Of course the different tribes all had their own names like Skookum, Sesque, Sc’wen’ey’ti, Omah, etc. Just because video or photographs wasn’t in existence when Sasquatch made their presence known hundreds or thousands of years ago, makes the Native encounters no less significant in context of verifying the species’ existence.
After the arrival of Europeans and the mistreatment that followed, NA’s had little reason to trust most newcomers with this and other knowledge. If the day comes that a non-Native American proves the species’ existence, I sincerely hope that the NA nation will speak up, because thier knowledge will be needed in order to truly provide ‘proper’ protection. Not that I have personally paid much attention to Standing’s claims, but anyone who secures video or photographic evidence of sasquatch should be sensitive about what they claim, and to not omit those who were on this land first and lived side-by-side with sasquatch in ways we can barely imagine. This of course may be a little difficult too because times have changed and NA villages aren’t where they once were.
Just something to consider…
One way or another these two men believe that the sasquatch is a live being. It exists and deserves protection. My hat is off to them. Sure this law probably won’t do much as the law against murder has’nt worked to prevent murder. Bush, Harper and Blair still are sending children to murder or be murdered; eventhough, the weapons of mass destuction appear to not exist. the sasquatch and by many names exists, wake up.
All board participants should, in my opinion, swallow hard and go to the sylvanic website and sign the petition that goes to the U.S. Congress. It doesn’t matter what you believe Bigfoot is, the sooner a Bigfoot protection law gets passed, the better.