Tag: Trapping

Activists Disappointed by Oregon Trap-Checking Limit

In 2001, the Oregon legislature passed a law that, among other things, required that traps set for “nuisance animals” be checked “on a regular basis.” It was left to the state Fish and Wildlife Commission to determine what qualified as “a regular basis,” and it issued a decision on that in February that pleased farmers and trappers but disappointed animal rights activists.

State law already requires traps set for fur-bearing animals be checked every 48 hours. On a 4-2 vote, the Fish and Wildlife Commission ruled that traps for nuisance animals must be checked every 76 hours. In addition, if a trapping is done for “damage control” the traps only need to be checked every 7 days, and conibear traps need to be checked only ever 30 days.

In Defense of Animals’ Connie Durkee told The Oregonian that the Fish and Wildlife Commission was putting the interests of trappers ahead of the animals,

The message that the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife sends is that convenience for the trapper outweighs being humane. No wild animal should have to suffer needlessly.

Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society for the United States said the trap-check limits were inhumane and would likely spur his and other groups to bring a ballot initiative to address “inhumane traps.” Pacelle told the Bend Bugle,

The Commission has abrogated its responsibility to provide the most elemental humane standards for trapping. Animals caught in inhumane traps will languish not for hours, but for days. The Commission has all but incited humane and wildlife protection organizations to renew their effort to pass a comprehensive ballot initiative to halt the use of inhumane traps in Oregon.

HSUS Oregon program coordinator Kelly Peterson noted that many states require traps to be checked every 24 hours and argued that Oregon should have brought its trap-check limit in line with other states. Peterson told the Bend Bugle,

Given that more than 30 states mandate 24-hour or daily trap check requirement, it is most disappointing that the state will allow animals to linger in traps for three to thirty days. The suffering the animals will endure is immense.

The 76-hour limit was favored by a majority of a citizen’s committee that looked at this issue in 2003. It was favored in order to accommodate federal Wildlife Service so that such individuals could set traps on Friday and not have to check them again until the following Monday.

Sources:

Oregon panel sets 76-hour trap-checking limit. Mark Larabee, The Oregonian, February 7, 2004.

Humane Society dismayed by trap check rules. Bend.Com, February 6, 2004.

Trapping decision angers animal-rights activists. Mark Freeman, Mail Tribune (Jackson County, Oregon), February 7, 2004.

Paul Watson Attempts Takeover of the Sierra Club

Paul Watson’s announcement last summer at AR 2003 that he was just three seats away from controlling the board of the Sierra Club suddenly started getting a lot of media attention in early 2004 as the Sierra Club’s April election deadline comes closer.

The Sierra Club, of course, has a $95 million budget which Watson wants to control in order to push his agenda. According to the Center for Consumer Freedom, Watson said at that time,

One of the reasons that I’m on the, um, the Sierra Club board of directors right now is to try and change it Â… we’re only three directors away from controlling that board. We control one-third of it right now. And, uh, once we get three more directors elected, the Sierra Club will not, no longer be pro-hunting and pro-trapping and we can use the resources of the $95-million-a-year budget to address some of these issues. And the heartening thing about it is that, in the last election, of the 750,000 members of the Sierra Club, only 8 percent of them voted. So, you know, a few hundred, or a few thousand people from the animal rights movement joining the Sierra Club — and making it a point to vote — will change the entire agenda of that organization.

According to Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope, about 18 percent of Sierra Club members fish or hunt, and Pope worries that those individuals would be driven from the organization and that it would end up marginal,

It’s important to have hunters and fisherman in the Sierra Club. We are a big-tent organization. We want the Sierra Club to be a big-tent organization. We want the Sierra Club to be a comfortable place for Americans who want clean air, clean water, and to protect America’s open spaces.

The most amusing commentary on the controversy came from FARM USA’s Alex Hershaft who distributed a letter charging that it was, in fact, the hunters and fisherman who were trying to take over the Sierra Club rather than vice versa. According to Hershaft,

The Sierra Club, with 750,000 members and a $95 million annual budget, is being hijacked by the hunting, trapping, and fishing cadres in the forthcoming Board election. Their leaders have been urging members to join the Sierra Club in droves. We can not do any less.

Hershaft parted ways with reality long ago, so this claim should not surprise anyone.

According to Hershaft the three candidates the animal rights activists want to win are activists Kim McCoy and Robert Roy van de Hoek as well as Cornell University Professor David Pimentel.

Pimentel is part of the other group that is trying to hijack the Sierra Club — an organized effort by right wingers and extreme environmentalists to turn the Sierra Club into an anti-immigration organization. A few years ago this coalition managed to put up to a vote by the members a proposed anti-immigration stance that they wanted the Sierra Club would take, but that failed. Along with Dick Lamm and Frank Morris and promoted by racist web sites like VDARE.Org, the anti-immigration effort has also seen the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Morris Dees enter his name as a candidate for the board in order to protest and highlight the anti-immigration effort.

Sources:

Keep the Sierra Club Out of Hunters’ Clutches! Letter, Alex Hershaft, January 23, 2004.

Sierra Club: Ever More Radical. Center for Consumer Freedom, September 4, 2003.

In Defense of Animals Starts Letter Campaign Against Proposed Pro-Trapping Postage Stamp

On December 8, 2003, In Defense of Animals included this item in its weekly newsletter,

A pro-trapping postage stamp is currently under consideration by the U.S. Postal Service. The National Trappers Association (NTA) is pushing the stamp and if they go forward with their campaign to institute the pro-trapping stamp, the trappers will inundate the USPS with vocal requests for these stamps.

Each year approximately 10 million animals are trapped in the wild, so that they can be skinned for fur coats. The primary tools used by fur trappers are the following: leghold trap, the body grip (Conibear) trap, and the wire snare. Volumes of documentation proving that leghold traps mutilate wild animals, are non-selective in what they catch, and are a danger to companion animals and children.This is not something to be promoted on a stamp. Learn more about trapping here.

Contact the national Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee and ask it to deny any pro-trapping stamp requested by the NTA. Tell the Committee that the USPS should not promote animal cruelty.

But a couple weeks later, New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance activist Joe Miele posted a copy of a letter he had received from the USPS dated November 4, 2003, denying that the postal service had plans for a trapping stamp,

November 4, 2003

Dear Mr. Miele:

Thank you for your October 24 letters expressing your opposition to the
issuance of a stamp honoring trappers and animal trapping.

There are no plans to issue such a stamp as part of the annual stamp
program.

Each year the Postal Service receives thousands of letters suggesting
hundreds of different topics for new stamps. The Citizens’ Stamp Advisory
Committee was established in 1957 to review all suggestions and make
recommendations to the Postmaster General. Committee recommendations are
based on national interest, historical perspective, and other criteria. We
rely on the Committee to produce a balanced stamp program that touches on
all aspects of our heritage. Enclosed for your reference is the Creating
U.S. Postage Stamps brochure.

We appreciate your interest in our stamp program.

Sincerely,

Terrence W. McCaffrey
Manager
Stamp Development

If IDA wants to keep activists busy on a wild goose chase, more power to them.

Sources:

Trappers push pro-trapping postage stamp. Animal News Center, December 22, 2003.

E-Newsletter. In Defense of Animals, December 8, 2003.

USPS correspondence. Terrence W. McCaffrey, November 4, 2003.

Maine Governor Comes Out Against Anti-Bear Hunting Initiative

In a talk to sportsmen, Maine Gov. John Baldacci expressed his opposition to a proposed initiative that would ban bear baiting, hunting bear with dogs, and bear trapping in that state.

With the help of the Humane Society of the United States and other animal rights groups, Maine Citizens for Fair Bear Hunting has been working to place such an initiative on the ballot in Maine. They have collected more than 100,000 signatures, virtually guaranteeing that it will be on the November 2004 ballot unless the state legislature adopts the initiative on its own first.

Baldacci, speaking at a meeting of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, said,

Groups, funded by out-of-state organizations committed to ending hunting, are backing a referendum that would make it illegal to hunt bear with dogs, to hunt bears with bait or to trap bears. They believe they know better than the state’s biologist and animal management professionals how Maine should manage our wildlife resources. They have gotten out early to tell their story to Maine voters. We need to tell our story.

HSUS maintains that baiting, trapping and hunting with dogs are not necessary. In a press release on the ballot initiative, it said,

The recreational hounding, baiting and trapping of bears is unnecessary. Most bear hunting states do not allow these unsporting methods, yet hunters in the states are able to hunt bears without them. Pennsylvania, for example, prohibits baiting, hounding and trapping bears, yet hunters there kill more than 2,000 black bears annually.

Recently, Massachusetts, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington approved similar ballot measures to ban cruel bear hunting practices. Statistics from these states prove that inhumane practices are not necessary to control bear populations, as hunters are able to kill the same number of bears without them.

The full text of the ballot initiative can be read here.

Sources:

Baldacci backs vote against bear-bait ban. Misty Edgecomb, Bangor Daily News, December 6, 2003.

Baldacci opposes bear referendum Says current hunting laws benefit biologists. Dwayne Rioux, Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, December 6, 2003.

Maine: Initiative to Ban the Baiting, Hounding, and Trapping of Bears. Press Release, Humane Society of the United States, 2003.

Debate Over Beaver Trapping in Massachusetts

In 1996, the Massachusetts legislature passed a ban on the use of body-gripping traps. In the seven years since, the beaver population in the state has tripled to 70,000. Some lawmakers want changes to the 1996 law to bring back some traps banned under the law.

Currently, the law in Massachusetts reads,

Chapter 131: Section 80A Leghold traps and certain other devices restricted; punishment

Section 80A. Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, a person shall not use, set, place, maintain, manufacture or possess any trap for the purpose of capturing furbearing mammals, except for common type mouse and rat traps, nets, and box or cage type traps, as otherwise permitted by law. A box or cage type trap is one that confines the whole animal without grasping any part of the animal, including Hancock or Bailey’s type live trap for beavers. Other than nets and common type mouse or rat traps, traps designed to capture and hold a furbearing mammal by gripping the mammal’s body, or body part are prohibited, including steel jaw leghold traps, padded leghold traps, and snares.

The above provision shall not apply to the use of prohibited devices by federal and state departments of health or municipal boards of health for the purpose of protection from threats to human health and safety.

State Rep. Mark Carron (D) wants the state to legalize “soft catch traps” which use rubber pads instead of metal teeth on the jaws of the trap. State Rep. George Peterson Jr. (R) has introduced legislation that would legalize conibear traps — a metal trap that is designed to kill animals by applying great force to the animal’s neck.

The law banning traps was amended in 2000 to allow public health boards to authorize the setting of traps, dam breachings, or waterflow prevention devices. A major problem with the large beaver population is flooding created by beaver dams.

But such measures are expensive, and don’t seem flexible enough to deal with the problem. The Boston Globe notes, for example, that the town of Sturbridge installed 12 grates to protect culverts from being stopped up by beavers. But the town currently still has to spend about $10,000 annually just keeping those grates clear of debris.

Gregory Morris, director of the Department of Public Works for Sturbridge, told the Boston Globe,

There is most definitely a huge issue here. If we get an 8- or 10-inch rainstorm, there will be roads totally wiped out. It’s [the grates] not solving the problem or reducing the waterflow, it’s strictly to maintain. I would most definitely like to see trapping come back.

Sources:

Beavers’ rule gets swampy. Brendan McCarthy, Boston Globe, July 8, 2003.

Beavers, Humans Harmonize ‘Deceiver’ Seen As Safe Way To Limit Damage. Kathy McCabe, Boston Globe, July 17, 2003.

House Bill, No. 200. Massachusetts Legislature, 2003.

Washington State Governor Vetoes Trapping Legislation

In May, Washington Governor Gary Locke vetoed legislation that would have overturned an initiative approved by voters in 2000 banning the use of body-gripping traps to capture animals.

Timber companies and others in Washington complain they cannot control pests such as mountain beavers without the use of body-gripping traps. Locke had said that he supported more limited legislation that would have specifically allow the use of body-gripping traps in dealing with pest animals, but that the final version that passed the legislature went too far in completely overturning the voter-approved initiative.

In a prepared statement announcing his veto, Locke said,

Early this session, I supported legislation that would have addressed the specific problems associated with Initiative 713. This legislation would have allowed the use of traps on moles, gophers and mountain beavers, and provided additional protections for livestock. At that time, I also indicated my opposition to legislation that would repeal the core principles underlying the initiative. Whenever possible, improvements to address unintended consequences of an initiative should be pursued before consideration of a repeal. Because this bill effectively repeals the initiative, even though an alternative legislative solution exists to address the problems of the initiative, I have vetoed the bill in its entirety.

We need to put this issue behind us by looking for ways we can creatively implement solutions, rather than perpetuate problems. With this message, I am requesting members of the Fish and Wildlife Commission to closely oversee DFW?s implementation of Initiative 713, consistent with its spirit and intent. Specifically, I would like the Commission to recommend changes to help protect livestock and reduce damage to public property, and to conduct an educational outreach program around the state that explains the availability of the special permit program allowed under Initiative 713.

The full text of the bill that Locke vetoed can be found here.

Sources:

Gov. Gary Locke Vetoes Body-gripping Traps Legislation. Press Release, Office of Governor Gary Locke, May 20, 2003.