“It's time for the people of Montana to speak up against the barbaric and archaic practice of avocational trapping.”
“The whole concept of trapping is morally unacceptable to most of us. The idea that an unsuspecting creature can wander into these deadly situations to suffer and die in such a brutal way is repulsive and unnecessary.”
“Haven't we moved beyond fur for fashion?”
“Our ancestors had no choice but to use and wear fur. We are lucky that there are so many wonderful alternatives that do not represent suffering and death.”
Those are some of the heartfelt sentiments expressed by Missoulian readers in recent letters to the editor decrying trapping of fur-bearing animals as a sport, hobby and business. Trapping mostly is a wintertime pursuit - that's when an animal's fur is at its best - and contention over trapping generally flares this time of year, when trapping is in progress.
Trappers have been on the defensive for decades throughout much of the country. Public opposition stirred by animal rights groups is working to thin the ranks of trappers - so much so that wildlife agencies in some states have big problems controlling populations of fur-bearing animals. Anti-trapping fervor is a more recent phenomenon in the Northern Rockies. The growing public intolerance toward trapping is palpable even in Montana. It's another sign of change here in the West, change that's not altogether good.
I ran a small trap line for a while several winters ago. You might roll your eyes when I tell you about it, but the experience shapes my thoughts about trapping and the growing clamor in Montana to ban it.
My previous exposure to trapping was limited - mostly to the books I read long ago as fuel for adolescent fantasies about living in the Montana or Alaska wilderness. As a newspaper reporter and editor, I'd had a few encounters with trappers. To better understand the issues arising with greater frequency and intensity in my newspaper, I also completed the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks-sanctioned trapper education course. But I'd never had much exposure to actual trapping.
That all changed several years ago after I spent a late-winter afternoon mucking out the garage at my Missoula home. Among the clutter were a couple of boxes of gear hastily stowed after camping trips the previous fall. Sorting them out, I noticed that I'd carelessly left quite a bit of food - cereal, rice, granola bars, pasta - out in the garage. I also noticed ample evidence suggesting mice were taking advantage of it. Further tidying up revealed a well-used mouse nest and yielded fleeting glimpses of a couple of small, furry fugitives. Mice are unwelcome in my garage, partly because of the mess they make but also because of their potential to infect me or my wife with potentially deadly hantavirus. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adamantly advocates rodent control in and around the home precisely for that reason.
I know. A little d-Con would have ended the invasion. But poisons unnerve me with their potential for collateral damage. So instead, I made a quick trip to the hardware store and returned with six or eight mouse traps - the same old-fashioned kind I remember my grandma using to rid her Kalispell kitchen of vermin. The traps consisted of small, rectangular pieces of wood with spring-loaded bows that you bend back and hold with bars connected to triggers. The slightest pressure on the trigger releases the bar. It snaps down lightning fast and hard. I know because I caught my thumb a couple of times while placing the traps. I baited the triggers with dabs of peanut butter, placed the traps in mousy-looking nooks and corners, switched off the lights and closed the door as I left.
When I checked my traps the next morning, I found a dead mouse in one. It was remarkably tiny, obviously not long out of that nest I'd found among my garage clutter. He had been living in the only home he knew and meant no harm to me. Some people might kill a baby mouse without remorse, but not I. I felt a little sorry for him. Yet his home happened to be my home first; he was an unwelcome intruder. I dropped his carcass in the garbage.
Catching a youngster confirmed my suspicions. I didn't have a mouse. I had mice - a whole family of them. I rebaited my trap.
I caught 11 mice over the next couple of weeks: little ones, medium-sized ones and one rather large one. Then, after several weeks of finding empty traps, I pulled my trap line. I haven't seen any sign of mice in the garage since. That may have ended my trapping career. I hope so.
I think about that episode today, amid the emotion-charged debate over fur trapping. I've never heard anyone say that trapping mice is cruel and immoral, but I see absolutely no moral difference between trapping a mouse and trapping a pine marten or muskrat. Animals are animals. So am I. None of us lives a benign existence. We all take a toll on other organisms. Life involves a lot of killing, one way or another.
Anyone who eats meat kills or hires the killing of animals. Vegetarians kill animals indirectly - through habitat destruction involved in plowing fields, rivers drained to irrigate crops and pesticides used in growing plants. The mere shipping of meat, grain, fruits and vegetables to market exacts a toll - directly, such as roadkill, and indirectly, through habitat destroyed by roads, fuel production, pollution and global warming. And for what it's worth, I'm certain that aggressive rodent control is standard operating procedure throughout the farming and food industry.
Fortunately, we animals are among Earth's renewable resources. Many animals have adapted to thrive amid the human menace. And people successfully manage many critters so their populations prosper even while we hasten individual animals to their doom.
I know some people who draw distinctions between killing domestic animals and wildlife - just as some see a moral difference between killing mice and muskrats. Some people also see a difference between killing for food and killing for, say, a pelt - or in the case of my mice, because they're a nuisance.
These are distinctions lost on the animals. Many people anthropomorphically project great angst and suffering on animals snared or caught in a leg-hold trap. I understand their sentiment, but I'm not sure there's as much difference between that and plodding into a slaughterhouse, being caught in a net or hooked, or being crushed by the wheels of a combine or tractor. Absolutely the cruelest thing I've ever seen was a videotape of workers gathering chickens for slaughter. People have preferences in the manner animals die, but I'm sure any sentient creature prefers none of the above.
Debate over the morality of killing animals is a relatively modern affectation. It wasn't all that many centuries ago when much of the world's population depended on hunting and trapping for food, clothing and shelter. Textiles give us alternatives to fur, but fur still serves useful purposes - mostly, but not exclusively, for fashion. Take a close look at those trout flies in your vest or at the sporting goods store, for example, and you'll see a lot of different furs being put to constructive use.
Leather is ubiquitous in our civilization. It's useful, attractive and economical. Man-made alternatives to leather exist, of course, but ride in a leather saddle after sitting in a synthetic one and you'll agree there's no substitute for the real thing. The only difference between leather and fur has to do with the species of animal and retention of hair. Animals that surrender their hides recognize no difference.
I also know people who insist trapping should end because it's no longer necessary. I wonder about their sense of “necessity.” It's not necessary to grow your own tomatoes, hunt deer, catch fish or pick huckleberries - or, for that matter, even to practice a particular religion. People do some things as a matter of culture, simply because it's their heritage, part of their identity. Robbing someone of his culture steals some of his humanity. Even the most politically correct people I know honor the hunter-gatherer practices of American Indians and other indigenous cultures around the world. Too many people forget hunting and gathering are part of everyone's culture. I suspect cultural abandonment and mass denial of our part in the natural world have something to do with many predicaments we find ourselves in today. Nothing but profound disconnect between people and their environment explains nonchalance in the face of human-accelerated global warming, for example. We‘d sure make better land-use decisions in western Montana if more people had a clearer sense of how our actions affect the environment - and vice-versa.
People who fret about trappers killing fur-bearing animals ought to read the report I have on my desk - “Trapping and Furbearer Management in North American Wildlife Conservation.” Underwritten in part by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and endorsed by the authoritative Wildlife Society, the document pegs loss of habitat due to human development as the “first and most critical issue challenging furbearer conservation.” Animals targeted by trappers aren't exactly imperiled. The report calls them abundant and adaptable. But continued habitat destruction could change that.
The report also cites “public intolerance” of certain animals as a significant threat. Unlike trappers, who are happiest when fur-bearing animals are most abundant, many non-trappers are no more accommodating to them than I was to my mice. “Wildlife managers,” it explains, “are confronted with new challenges: coyotes killing pets, beavers cutting ornamental trees and flooding roads and driveways, raccoons invading buildings and threatening public health with diseases and parasites. These kinds of human-wildlife conflicts reduce public tolerance and appreciation of furbearers.” For that reason, the report explains, the public tolerates smaller populations of furbearers than the habitat can support biologically. Treating trappers as pariahs discourages them from trapping, sometimes causing animal numbers to surge unchecked, leading to even more human-wildlife conflicts.
“With the decline of traditional fur trappers,” the report points out, “ ‘nuisance animal control' has become a growth industry. ... This trend is of concern to wildlife biologists, for it indicates that a growing segment of the public is coming to view furbearers as problems that should be removed and destroyed, instead of valuable resources that should be utilized and conserved.”
Perhaps I come off as an unabashed advocate of trapping. But I'm not. I find the commercial aspect of trapping troubling. I have a pretty clear picture of my role in nature. I understand killing something to consume or use it. Making a buck strikes me as the least compelling reason to kill anything. I recognize, however, the parallel between trapping and commercial logging, firewood cutting or berry-picking on public lands - all are commercial endeavors; all besides trapping are generally accepted as legitimate by the public. So long as our wildlife is well managed and trapping is well regulated, I can defend it.
I can't say the same about wastefully killing animals just because they're mildly bothersome or worrisome - as I did with the mice and as we're all likely to do once all the fur trappers are gone. People may feel morally superior then, but they'll be kidding themselves.
Steve Woodruff is the Missoulian's opinion page editor.
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