The Cruelty of Trapping
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So I am sick to my stomach again. Recreational animal trapping season is right around the corner here in NH. AND N.H. Fish and Game is a department that I feel puts out heavily veiled information to the public. They defend trapping because it is a tradition in New Hampshire. Then there is the truth about how these animals are actually trapped and killed. Trapping is sport. A sport that some trappers enjoy clearly by the videos and pictures they take. First picture of these animals still alive in the traps. Terrorized and scared. Second picture trappers adding pictures of themselves laughing with the animal and taunting them, because it's all such a jovial good time, and then again as they kill them and after they are dead! It's just really good stuff and makes me feel so good to be here on this fine planet. If you are worried about your weight just take a look at the Facebook page “N.H. Citizens Against Recreational Trapping” and you won't want to eat....like ever again. Pounds will drop.
Trapping of wild animals is a legal activity in all of the United States. In fact, I am not aware of a single state “wildlife” agency that doesn’t promote trapping, instead of questioning its validity!
It’s amazing to me that in this day and age we still allow this barbaric activity to be justified in the name of “sport”. Leg-hold traps and snares are particularly treacherous devices. Animals caught in such traps suffer pain, exposure to weather, dehydration and often a long painful death. Snares are even more gruesome with animals slowly strangling to death as the wire noose tightens. Then there is the anal electrocution! How’s that for a plot twist! Anal electrocution! WTF!!!
The statistics are shocking. Surprised? I was not. More than 4 million animals are trapped for “fun” each year, many enduring immense suffering in the process. Millions more are trapped as “nuisances” or die as “non-target” animals. For example more than 700 black bear are snagged each year in Oregon as “nuisance” animals by timber companies (because in the spring bears eat the inner cambium layer of trees). Only a few states have banned the use of leg-hold traps for sport trapping and then usually only through citizen initiative process. Yet 90 countries around the world and the entire European Union have banned these horrid contraptions.
Most trapping targets “furbearer” animals like lynx, musk rat, beaver, marten, fisher, river otter, weasel, mink, bobcat, red fox, coyote, and bears, and in some states like Idaho and Alaska, trappers also take wolves. Most of these animals are important predators in their own right, and help to promote healthier ecosystems in many, many ways from the way that wolves reduce the negative impact of large herbivores like elk to reduction of rodent populations by coyotes. Thus indiscriminate trapping disrupts natural ecological processes, often in ways we don’t appreciate.
And while most trappers might scoff at the idea, their “enjoyment” of trapping comes at the expense of the pleasure of other wildlife lovers who might rather see a red fox scampering across a field, a river otter swimming in a stream or hear a coyote howling in the night than see it’s skinned and fur used for frivolous purposes like clothing—we have other alternatives to fur.
The major arguments used by trappers to defend the legitimacy of their “sport” can largely be refuted. One argument is that trapping promotes family time, learning about nature and gets people outdoors. However, there are many other ways to spend time together as a family, learn about nature or to get outdoors that does not involve traumatizing animals! What kind of family does that together? I know I am being judgy McJudgy but really???
Another argument is that if we don’t kill (& throw in a little torture) the animals, they will overpopulate and die of starvation and/or disease. Which would be so far worse than terrorizing them first! That makes for a clean departing from life. Right? A little terror sprinkled on your demise? Do you believe this line of self-justification, that trappers are really acting out of a sense of mission, responsibility and kindness by killing animals to save them from a greater misery? Beyond the obvious rationalization of such assertions, a problem with this logic that not all animals, or animals in all places are in jeopardy of overpopulation. And trapping doesn’t necessarily remove the animals that are most likely to die from these natural events. F*ck!
A third justification often heard in trapping circles and from state wildlife agencies, is trapping helps to remove “problem” animals—beaver that clog up culverts or coyotes preying on livestock. There are numerous issues with this line of reasoning. The first is that trapping, as practiced by most “sport” trappers, is indiscriminate. They are not taking the specific animals that may be “problematic”. Most trapping is random, killing any animal unfortunate enough to wander into a trap. What about the "problem" humans? We are everywhere!!!!
Beyond that, because agencies like to promote trapping (some like Wildlife Services entire existence is dependent upon having “problem” animals to kill) there is little incentive to educate or even regulate the public so that conflicts are not created in the first place. In many cases, the “problem” is “problem humans”. So livestock producers who fail to adequately monitor their animals and utilize guard animals along with lambing/calving sheds, have more issues with coyotes. Honey producers who do not use electric fences around their beehives have issues with bears. And so on.
I feel sick to my stomach still. Perhaps one day I will eat again. I will look to see what more I can do, if you can, support groups that are attempting to end this atrocity of a “sport” then we can meet for dinner and desert and talk about how things are getting better. Until then I will sit here with my airplane puke bag.
Trapping of wild animals is a legal activity in all of the United States. In fact, I am not aware of a single state “wildlife” agency that doesn’t promote trapping, instead of questioning its validity!
It’s amazing to me that in this day and age we still allow this barbaric activity to be justified in the name of “sport”. Leg-hold traps and snares are particularly treacherous devices. Animals caught in such traps suffer pain, exposure to weather, dehydration and often a long painful death. Snares are even more gruesome with animals slowly strangling to death as the wire noose tightens. Then there is the anal electrocution! How’s that for a plot twist! Anal electrocution! WTF!!!
The statistics are shocking. Surprised? I was not. More than 4 million animals are trapped for “fun” each year, many enduring immense suffering in the process. Millions more are trapped as “nuisances” or die as “non-target” animals. For example more than 700 black bear are snagged each year in Oregon as “nuisance” animals by timber companies (because in the spring bears eat the inner cambium layer of trees). Only a few states have banned the use of leg-hold traps for sport trapping and then usually only through citizen initiative process. Yet 90 countries around the world and the entire European Union have banned these horrid contraptions.
Most trapping targets “furbearer” animals like lynx, musk rat, beaver, marten, fisher, river otter, weasel, mink, bobcat, red fox, coyote, and bears, and in some states like Idaho and Alaska, trappers also take wolves. Most of these animals are important predators in their own right, and help to promote healthier ecosystems in many, many ways from the way that wolves reduce the negative impact of large herbivores like elk to reduction of rodent populations by coyotes. Thus indiscriminate trapping disrupts natural ecological processes, often in ways we don’t appreciate.
And while most trappers might scoff at the idea, their “enjoyment” of trapping comes at the expense of the pleasure of other wildlife lovers who might rather see a red fox scampering across a field, a river otter swimming in a stream or hear a coyote howling in the night than see it’s skinned and fur used for frivolous purposes like clothing—we have other alternatives to fur.
The major arguments used by trappers to defend the legitimacy of their “sport” can largely be refuted. One argument is that trapping promotes family time, learning about nature and gets people outdoors. However, there are many other ways to spend time together as a family, learn about nature or to get outdoors that does not involve traumatizing animals! What kind of family does that together? I know I am being judgy McJudgy but really???
Another argument is that if we don’t kill (& throw in a little torture) the animals, they will overpopulate and die of starvation and/or disease. Which would be so far worse than terrorizing them first! That makes for a clean departing from life. Right? A little terror sprinkled on your demise? Do you believe this line of self-justification, that trappers are really acting out of a sense of mission, responsibility and kindness by killing animals to save them from a greater misery? Beyond the obvious rationalization of such assertions, a problem with this logic that not all animals, or animals in all places are in jeopardy of overpopulation. And trapping doesn’t necessarily remove the animals that are most likely to die from these natural events. F*ck!
A third justification often heard in trapping circles and from state wildlife agencies, is trapping helps to remove “problem” animals—beaver that clog up culverts or coyotes preying on livestock. There are numerous issues with this line of reasoning. The first is that trapping, as practiced by most “sport” trappers, is indiscriminate. They are not taking the specific animals that may be “problematic”. Most trapping is random, killing any animal unfortunate enough to wander into a trap. What about the "problem" humans? We are everywhere!!!!
Beyond that, because agencies like to promote trapping (some like Wildlife Services entire existence is dependent upon having “problem” animals to kill) there is little incentive to educate or even regulate the public so that conflicts are not created in the first place. In many cases, the “problem” is “problem humans”. So livestock producers who fail to adequately monitor their animals and utilize guard animals along with lambing/calving sheds, have more issues with coyotes. Honey producers who do not use electric fences around their beehives have issues with bears. And so on.
I feel sick to my stomach still. Perhaps one day I will eat again. I will look to see what more I can do, if you can, support groups that are attempting to end this atrocity of a “sport” then we can meet for dinner and desert and talk about how things are getting better. Until then I will sit here with my airplane puke bag.
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And I'm saying this as someone who has worked in wildlife field studies and management!
Things to think about. Thanx!