Editor’s note: This commentary is by Lucy Goodrum of Reading.
[I]t’s that time of year when animal trappers post graphic pictures and videos on social media of various species of wildlife frantically struggling in traps before they are killed. Often the trappers take selfies with themselves posed in front of doomed and desperate animals moments before they bludgeon or shoot them to death.
Many hunters feel trapping is unsportsmanlike and do not want to be associated with the practice. Trappers represent less than 1 percent of the population, yet they are allowed to kill our bobcats, foxes, beavers and other iconic Vermont animals to sell their pelts (for as little as a dollar apiece) to Chinese and Russian buyers.
Please contact your legislators and ask them to support trapping reform.
Many Vermonters have had a pet injured or killed by a steel-jawed leghold or conibear (body-gripping) trap or know someone whose pet has suffered that fate. Trappers are not required to report take of “non target” animals such as pets like cats and dogs. Trappers are also not required to use signage to mark where their traps are set nor are they required to set traps back off trails.
Sadly, trapping is allowed on public lands, in highly populated areas, and even national wildlife refuges.
Trapping is a relic from the past which causes untold pain and suffering to countless species of animals, including dogs, cats, birds and endangered and protected wildlife. Trappers are required to check traps every 24 hours, but this is difficult to monitor and enforce. During those 24 hours animals suffer from hypothermia, exhaustion, predation, blood loss, broken bones and teeth (from trying to escape). The American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Animal Hospital Association, the World Veterinary Association, and the National Animal Control Association all denounce leghold traps as inhumane. Trappers also use underwater colony traps to drown aquatic mammals like beavers and otters, even though Vermont Fish and Wildlife’s director has spoken out against the drowning of wildlife.
The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department is supporting a trapper’s petition to extend otter trapping season, a decision that they acknowledge on their own website will adversely affect birthing mothers, and in spite of hundreds of objections from Vermonters.
Please contact your legislators and ask them to support trapping reform. Also ask them to force the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department to listen to all Vermonters, not just those who profit from the indiscriminate and barbaric trapping of our wildlife. For more information please visit www.protectourwildlifevt.org.
