The Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department is taking public comment until June 30 on changes in furbearer regulations governing trapping and hunting coyotes with dogs.
The trapping changes purport to incorporate “best” management practices, while coyote hounding establishes a system of permits and other requirements to allow hunting and killing coyotes with packs of dogs.
There are two main problems with the proposed Fish & Wildlife regulations.
- Trapping “best” management practices still allow for a significant level of animal suffering and do not eliminate the need to ban recreational and fur trapping.
- Coyote hounding is nothing less than legalized dogfighting.
Trapping
Fish & Wildlife proposes to include “best” management practices to make trapping more humane. But there has been no media coverage to explain the background of those practices.
Best management practices were not initiated by fish and wildlife departments throughout the U.S. or their national advocate, the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies, based on concern for wildlife. It was driven by economics.
In 1991, the European Union banned leghold traps and the import of fur from animals caught in leghold traps. The U.S. was particularly impacted due to its fur trade with the EU and widespread use of leghold traps (also called foot-hold traps).
In 1996, the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies launched a program to test trapping devices and develop voluntary standards, or best management practices, for “humane” trapping. In 1998, the EU and U.S. reached agreement that these voluntary standards met EU requirements, enabling fur to be exported from the U.S. to the EU.
It was an exceedingly deft marketing move by the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies to get “best” management practices accepted without having to ban leghold traps in the U.S.
How were best management practices developed? To develop standards and certify traps as “humane,” animals had to be trapped to determine how long it took them to die in a trap or what type of injuries they suffered.
A research leader at the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies estimated 10,000 dead furbearers were studied through their program alone. The U.S. also relies on Canadian research, which included mink, muskrats and beavers being surgically implanted with heart-rate and brain-wave devices, then put in tanks to be trapped and drowned, while researchers monitored how long it took for their hearts to stop beating.
It is a “best” practice if an animal dies within five minutes. Best management practices-approved traps still allow up to 30% of trapped animals to suffer severe injury such as amputation or compound fractures.
So, to develop “humane” trapping, animals were subjected to unnecessary trapping, injury and death. I don’t think I can find a better definition for the word “irony.”
There are biases in best management practices research methods. For example, trappers played a significant role in collecting data on trap effectiveness. As one wildlife advocate says, “Would trappers trust the results if PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) volunteers did the fieldwork?”
If you think traps can be made more humane, watch testimony to the Vermont Senate Natural Resource and Environment Committee on March 23, 2023 (45-minute mark) to see examples of best management practices-approved traps.
And most importantly, best management practices do not change the fact that recreational and fur trapping in Vermont, which only about 350 people participate in, should be banned.
I predict that if the proposed furbearer regulation is passed, next year when H.191 to restrict recreational trapping comes before the Legislature, Fish & Wildlife will say, “We can’t restrict trapping; we need time to see if the BMPs have an impact.” But there is no practical way to monitor compliance with best management practices or to quantify how they make trapping more “humane.”
Nonetheless, Act 159 allows for the spending of public funds — yes, that’s taxpayer dollars — to pay for the replacement of trapping devices, estimated by Fish & Wildlife staff to be $300,000 to $400,000.
Coyote hounding
The proposed regulation includes a new section (4.22) on the “Taking of Coyotes with Dogs” (“taking,” ‘harvesting” and “dispatch” are all euphemisms for killing wildlife).
The proposed regulation definition for “control of dogs” states that having a GPS collar and a shock collar (called a “training/control collar”) are sufficient for “control of dogs.” This codifies what hound hunters already do — sit in their trucks tracking the location of their dogs, which may be miles away.
This “control of dogs” definition is inadequate. For any hunting with hounds, hunters must have voice and visual contact with their hound(s) to be able to exercise control in real time.
In an incident in Ripton, it took half an hour for hunters to arrive and stop their hounds from attacking a couple and their pet dog, all of whom suffered injuries. Remote control of dogs with shock collars is insufficient and inhumane.
Coyotes and domestic dogs are biologically members of the same canine family, even capable of interbreeding. Coyote hounding is the practice of training dogs to chase and kill other dogs. Dogfighting is banned as a felony in all 50 states.
Rather than legitimizing coyote hounding, the Fish & Wildlife regulation should ban the “taking” of coyotes with hounds.
And there is no amount of “best” you can assign to trapping and killing animals as recreation to make it acceptable.
