Let Trapping Die

Sunday’s Denver Post featured a picture of an old man wearing a dead coyote’s skin on his head and an accompanying article about current attempts by trappers in Colorado to get permission to trap minks, martens, long-tailed weasels, short-tailed weasels (ermine), swift foxes, grey foxes, opossums, ringtails, and western spotted skunks.  These are all illegal to trap in Colorado because the Colorado Wildlife Commission ended the commercial harvest of them in 1995 and Coloradans voted to ban trapping in 1996.  Leg-hold traps, lethal body-gripping traps, snares and poisons were all banned, but not baited cages, “box traps,” a loophole that, along with provisions for “nuisance” animals, has allowed trapping to survive, and coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and others are still trapped. 

Trapping was the white man’s first industry in Colorado, with beavers providing the raw materials for stylish hats back east, and the trapper in the article, whom the article identifies as a “wildlife biologist” says the animals, “are flourishing.  There’s no reason we shouldn’t trap some of them.”  Isn’t there, though?  Trapping bottomed out in the 1830’s because beavers were nearly extinct and the hats went out of fashion.  Good riddance.  Romantic allusions to mountain men aside, the reason we shouldn’t do it now is because it’s cruel and unnecessary.  “I believe in utilizing wildlife,” he says, and that’s the problem – trapping and skinning animals reduces them to a resource, something to be used, like oil or aluminum (not that the landscapes that those come from should simply be seen as resources either).  Talking about the high demand for beautiful bobcat fur – 12 are needed for a single jacket – ignores the fact that these animals have lives of their own, and trapping would take their lives for nothing better than the trapper’s enjoyment of killing and for someone’s vanity. 

Furthermore, there are only 350 members of the trapping association – such a minority should not be allowed to overturn an amendment approved by the majority of Colorado voters.  An interesting observation reported by the article is the trapper's belief that killing with traps is no crueler than hunting elk with a rifle.  Yes, if killing cruelly with traps for fun and ego are wrong, perhaps killing cruelly with rifles for fun and ego are wrong also.  Perhaps it is a sign of moral progress that sport hunting is declining in popularity.  Trapping, for that matter, has been fading in Colorado for 175 years.  Let it die.

Comments

[Bwana]

Your comments show a basic lack of understanding of wildlife management. Ask the starving deer herds in the upper midwest how they feel in the brutal plains blizzards because they do not have enough food to survive. I pose this question. Would you rather starve to death, or have your life ended by a clean bullet or killer trap? If this doesn't convince you, perhaps you should take a look at some of the elk in Estes Park this winter, sometime around January.
If that isn't enough, perhaps you should look up some of the various "champions of the animal kingdom" who have been killed by their "harmless" friends. There's plenty of them out there, and I get to have a good laugh at their expense at least once a year.
Without wildlife management (ie. hunting, trapping) nature will resort to its natural cycle of boom and bust. This creates scenarios where disease and decimation of lower sections of the food chain occur. This does not kill off a few animals, as does the hunter and trapper, but large populations of them, as well as affecting the agricultural and ranching industries in a negative fashion.
Of course you would probably argue that wildlife management should be handled by the government ("nuisance" animal removal). This is a foolish idea that only would serve to waste taxpayers' dollars. There is a large section of the population that is still willing to handle that, and not only do they handle it, but they actually PAY the government for the privilege of doing so, which allows the government to spend that money to balance the animal populations in such a way that they are stable, not in a constant state of flux.

[Whitney]

I didn't realize I could post comments here...

Anyway, you're my hero! :) Trapping is a disgusting practice, as is its brother hunting (not that there's much difference...). Wildlife does not exist for humankind's benefit, and hopefully the trappers will be voted out once again.