This commentary is by Brenna Galdenzi of Stowe, president and co-founder of Protect Our Wildlife.
A new peer-reviewed paper, “Best Management Practices for Furbearer Trapping Derived from Poor and Misleading Science,” was recently published that debunks the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department’s attempt to convince the public that “best management practices” for trapping result in more humane trapping practices. They don’t.
In 2022, S.201 was introduced to ban leghold traps. It was a straightforward bill that would have saved thousands of animals each year from broken limbs and teeth and other painful injuries. Vermont Fish & Wildlife opposed the bill because, like most state agencies, they are politically beholden to trappers.
Commissioner Chris Herrick and his senior team implored the Legislature to not ban leghold traps. Instead, he urged the Legislature to require regulations be promulgated to require that trappers adhere to so-called “best management practices” for trapping.
Fish & Wildlife spoke of an extensive study that resulted in criteria for more “humane” traps, all in an effort to assuage the public’s fevered opposition to leghold traps and to market a solution. But it was no solution, it was a ruse.
Upon first learning of the proposed “best management practices,” Protect Our Wildlife raised concerns, including the fact that trappers and their spouses, friends and other interested parties labeled as “technicians” in the study were often the only ones in the field recording data. Protect Our Wildlife released a white paper in 2022 challenging “best management practices” that were conceived, studied and evaluated by the very people that they aim to regulate: trappers.
The conflict of interest doesn’t end there.
The study was spearheaded by a private organization, the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies, a public relations adviser to state fish and wildlife departments, including the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department, a dues-paying member.
To say that they had a vested interest in the outcome of this “study” would be an understatement. A fact that was never raised by Fish & Wildlife during their promotion of “best management practices” is that they are inhumane by their own standards: 30% of animals are allowed severe injuries, including amputation, compound fractures, even death and still pass the test.
The topic of trapping has not quieted despite Fish & Wildlife’s attempts to greenwash it, including the department’s staff starring in a promotional video for Vermont trappers on the taxpayers’ dime. All one has to do is see an animal languishing in pain in a so-called “best management practices”-approved trap to know the truth.
To those legislators who are using the recent regulations to not take legislative action to restrict trapping, we encourage you to dig a bit deeper into the new peer-reviewed research paper.
The study reveals: “The fish and wildlife agencies represented by (the Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies) have specific goals of promoting trapping and its supposed benefits, yet we expect their research on the impacts of trapping on wildlife to be transparent, reproducible and unbiased. The close association of promotional aspects of trapping with wildlife professionals and the evolution of BMPs, should raise concern about the objectivity among those engaged in the BMP process.”
The study also states, “The analysis methods used by White et al. (2021) are flawed, not transparent, and irreproducible. Therefore, we question the outcomes of the study as representing best management practices for capturing furbearing animals in restraining traps.”
As for the new “best management practices,” Vermonters are still left with baited landmines on our shared public lands. Steel-jawed leghold and kill traps are set with no required signage, even on our National Wildlife Refuges. There are no required setbacks from public areas for large, powerful body-crushing kill traps that are placed in the water, including shallow streams where dogs often like to lap from.
If you cannot imagine your dog or cat painfully restrained in a trap, I ask: What is the difference between your domestic tabby cat and a majestic bobcat who is trapped during the recreational trapping season?
No animal deserves this, all in the name of recreation and tradition.
