This commentary is by Jennifer Lovett, a resident of Starksboro.
The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department’s new furbearer biologist, who oversees and promotes trapping for the department, started off a recent commentary with: “Wildlife conservation is complicated.”
As a conservation biologist, I agree with that point, but for very different reasons.
The public has been led to believe that the trapping of bobcats, otters and other animals labeled as “furbearers” is somehow science-based and reflects sound conservation. That is inaccurate. There is zero science or biological imperative informing the Fish & Wildlife Department of the need to trap and kill wildlife.
In fact, there’s mounting evidence pointing to the need to protect predator species for the invaluable roles they play on our landscapes and in promoting biodiversity.
The Fish & Wildlife Department’s support of trapping is not science-based; it is value-based — yet that important point is never shared with the public.
Rather, the public has been duped into believing that trapping is conservation, a notion that is simply self-serving, disingenuous and environmentally dangerous. Ultimately, it is the inherent indiscriminate nature of trapping that belies its connection to any valid conservation initiative.
The often-used expression “regulated trapping” is an oxymoron intended to suggest that the Fish & Wildlife Department knows what trappers are doing, monitors their activity, and somehow utilizes data collected from their kills for research. In fact, trapping is impossible to monitor, and the department admits to a shortage of wardens to enforce even the existing regulations.
How can an activity that usually happens in remote, out-of-sight places, often in secret on private land, and routinely captures nontarget species, be regulated? Regulation implies some sort of oversight or accountability. These things do not exist in the trapping world.
The primary rationale used by the Fish & Wildlife Department to justify trapping is data collection and the resolution of human-wildlife conflicts. But to suggest that the only way to study the health of furbearers is by trapping and killing them is farcical, archaic and hypocritical.
Scientists study a whole host of species from bats to bald eagles effectively without the need to kill them. Among other tools, modern science utilizes DNA sampling from fur and scat, trail cameras, live trapping/release, and roadkill. There is a long list of non-lethal and more efficient options to study wildlife.
But here’s the clincher: Despite the Fish & Wildlife Department examining carcasses of fisher, bobcat and otter, and finding threats to their populations, such as rodenticide in fisher and PCBs and other contaminants in otters, it has never once enacted protective changes to trapping and hunting seasons for furbearer species.
In fact, the Fish & Wildlife Department extended the otter trapping season to accommodate a trapper’s petition back in 2017, even while knowing the threats that water contaminants present to otters. Most wild animals that are trapped and killed, such as gray and red foxes, beavers, and other species, are never studied. And, when it comes to data collection, approximately 30% of trappers do not return their annual trapper reports.
As for trapping to solve human-wildlife conflicts, the proposed legislation to ban recreational trapping would still allow landowners and towns to trap and kill wildlife that are causing otherwise unsolvable problems. To bolster support for trapping, the Fish & Wildlife Department has, for years, misrepresented the effects of trapping restrictions that were enacted in Massachusetts in the 1990s. But, in reality, countless animals, both wild and domestic, are now free from the threat of leghold and body-crushing kill traps and the only animals that are now trapped and killed are mainly those beavers that are presenting particularly challenging problems.
Protect Our Wildlife has an infographic on our website explaining the tremendous benefits enjoyed by Massachusetts trapping restrictions.
Wildlife advocates are calling upon Fish & Wildlife officials to cite their pro-trapping political biases when presenting information to the public. They are not a neutral party and their allegiance to a relatively small but vocal special interest group does not reflect the views of most Vermonters, as was evident from their own survey on trapping attitudes.
Unfortunately, today’s political situation encourages fish and wildlife agencies across the country to promote and protect trapping. But political attitudes often do not reflect current science and, in the case of trapping in Vermont, there is a very clear desire to enlist support from influential special interests that contradicts any true conservation objectives.
Wildlife scientists and advocates are imploring the Fish & Wildlife Department to adhere to its mission and spend its limited resources and energy protecting wildlife and representing the people of Vermont, not protecting a political agenda that’s mired in inherent cruelty, indiscriminate killing, and environmental harm.
