I am a Vermonter who cares about wildlife protection, yet it is impossible to be heard through the impenetrable Fish & Wildlife Department and Board even when I attend in-person Fish and Wildlife Board meetings. I would like to include some concerning encounters I experienced just over the last month.
This recent comment made by the Vermont Fish & Wildlife commissioner is a good starting point. He accused those of us who challenge his staff’s policies on trapping and hounding as “misinformed or possibly something worse.”
So, if members of the public challenge his staff’s unscientific support of an open killing season on coyotes, we are misinformed? If we challenge his staff’s support of trapping seasons on animals like river otters whose populations are at risk due to water contaminants, we are misinformed? If we challenge the suggestion that, by adding a thin laminate strip to leghold traps, the traps are now miraculously humane, we are misinformed?
For a commissioner who has asked wildlife advocates to turn down divisive rhetoric, his own words, as the people’s commissioner, are dividing Vermonters, not unifying us.
OK, so now you got a taste of what I’m talking about. Let me provide another example. At the April 5 Fish and Wildlife Board meeting, I witnessed a fellow wildlife advocate be berated for his public comment by Fish & Wildlife’s longtime furbearer biologist, who oversees their trapping program.
My colleague used his limited two-minute public comment to ask a polite question about some discrepancies made by two furbearer biologists. The furbearer biologist approached both of us during the break in a very hostile manner and chastised him for challenging her credibility. She turned a simple question into an unnecessary confrontation.
How is the public supposed to feel comfortable participating in these meetings if our questions are viewed as hostile? They’re only hostile because they don’t fit Fish & Wildlife’s pro-trapping agenda.
And the cherry on the sundae is the Fish & Wildlife commissioner’s comment at this same Fish and Wildlife Board meeting. A board member asked him “what is recreational trapping” in response to two bills that seek to ban recreational trapping (H.191 and S.111). The commissioner said, “Recreational trapping is a misnomer.”
If it’s a misnomer, then why did his own department choose to include the following question on its 2022 furbearer survey: “Do you support recreational trapping?” The reason the commissioner is now calling it a misnomer is that Fish & Wildlife didn’t get the response it had hoped for. Only 26% of Vermonters responded that they support trapping for recreation.
So, when Fish & Wildlife doesn’t like the answer, it moves the goalpost. That is some serious cherry picking of data!
The wildlife advocacy community is tired of the continued underhanded tactics made by the higher-ups at Fish & Wildlife. This behavior is undemocratic, and it is unfair. Oh, and they’re the ones who are claiming that wildlife advocates aren’t being fair toward them! Cry me a river — and a river that’s not contaminated, but that’s another letter for another day.
Annie Smith
Westminster
