It’s no exaggeration to say that the pandemic is overwhelming, not just in the endless tide of information that it’s created but its effect on how we live our lives and focus our energies. The relentless siege that the virus has laid to our priorities and actions may even have affected our recollection of another very different pandemic that was directed toward the animals of Bath, replacing science with fear and resulting in questions which to this day still remain unanswered.

Whenever a governmental body acts like a private entity and ignores its obligations to the citizens who elect and support it through taxes, public trust is replaced by public suspicion. The Bath City Council provides a glaring example of that result. So far as the minutes reveal, there was no discussion at the Council’s regular meeting last February about hiring USDA to trap foxes, nor did anyone from USDA explain to the Council the services USDA could offer as differentiated from those of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW), nor was any other alternative to trapping discussed such as the distribution of ORV anti-rabies pellets – ironically, an approach recommended on the USDA website.

A public meeting was finally held, though it was learned later that the contract between USDA and the city of Bath had already been signed, minimizing the impact that local citizens are supposed to have on the decision-making process. From that point on, with some minor exceptions, the flow of information from the Council to its taxpayer employers dried to a near trickle and specific answers to questions were responded to with bureaucratic boilerplate such as the “city of Bath, as well as the USDA and MDIFW, are not releasing when the trapping will begin” or “information about the traps is not being released.”  Transparency was replaced by obstruction, and the predictable result of not answering questions led to more unanswered questions which, in turn, virtually eliminated the open communications expected between public officials and those who elect them.

The traps have been hauled away, and the animals, both sick and well, killed.  Now we await news from the USDA about whether or not the twenty-four raccoons and skunks (but not one fox) who were captured had rabies, a result that will be released in late June and probably described as a success, a claim that’s already been made by MDIFW.  It’s not an unexpected conclusion since one can hardly expect a public body – whether it be local, state, or federal – to admit that its efforts to accomplish what it was hired to do have failed and that public funds were unwisely spent.

After all, not a single fox was trapped -an outcome predicted by many who have experience with animals- and no preventive measures have been put in place to protect animals and the people they may come in contact with from rabies. Above all, there remain a number of questions that many have raised that still not received a response.  Here are several that have overriding importance:

• Why didn’t the Bath City Manager conduct more research on different options available to control the rabies outbreak, and then present those options to the Council?
• Why was the contract with USDA signed before a public meeting instead of the other way around?
• If the goal of the proposed plan was to control the spread of rabies by trapping and killing all foxes, raccoons and skunks, why did a press release from MDIFW state that “The operations planned in Bath are not specifically for rabies control”?
• MDIFW’s own Rabies Management Guidelines states “The reduction of wildlife populations is not considered a viable approach to rabies management.” Why then did the Council agree to a contract that Maine’s own wildlife agency does not consider an effective solution?

So as we battle the current pandemic, let us not forget the previous one of fear over science, rushed decisions instead of considered opinion, closed doors instead of open communication, and the pointless loss of innocent animal lives that swept through the City of Ships in recent months.  This epidemic – not of viruses or germs but of unproven approaches and poor judgment  – may not yet have run its course.  We need to make sure it’s over and that it never happens again.  That’s why these questions need answers.