When Judy Goss of Aspen, Colo., recently found her
neighbor’s missing dog, Pooh, caught but unhurt in a wire snare
trap in the White River National Forest, she got angry.
Now she and Pooh’s owner, Cody Lacy, have joined
others in a fight to clamp down on sport trapping of wildlife such
as badgers, bobcats, beavers and coyotes. While opposition in
Colorado hasn’t reached the level of protest in Arizona – where
voters passed an initiative banning lethal trapping on public land
– it has prompted new state restrictions.
The
Colorado Wildlife Commission voted July 13 to shorten the state’s
recreational trapping season, cut back on the number of species
that can be trapped, and restrict the use of certain traps.
Todd Malmsbury, a spokesman for the Colorado
Division of Wildlife, calls the new rules “a dramatic change.”
Effective this November, it will be illegal to trap several species
of foxes and skunks, as well as pine marten, ringtail and mink in
Colorado; by 1997, all non-padded steel-jawed traps and snare traps
that kill must be phased out. The commission also plans to require
training for trappers as a condition for permits. Animals causing
damage to livestock or property, however, may still be trapped
year-round.
Anti-trapping activists say the
changes don’t mean much because the Division of Wildlife hasn’t the
person-power to enforce the new rules. Carol Buchanan of Wildlife
2000, a coalition of wildlife activists, says her group is now
working on the only real solution: an initiative similar to
Arizona’s.
But not all wildlife fans agree. Dan
Kitchen, a Snowmass Village resident, says irresponsible people who
let their dogs run loose in national forests “do more harm than all
the trappers and hunters in Colorado put together.”
* Cameron
Burns
The writer works for the
Aspen Times.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Clamping down on trapping.
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