The C.A.S.H. Courier Newsletter
Spring 2012 Issue
Oppose Snaring
Facts Sleuthed by Joe Miele
The necropsy study uncovered the fact that one-third of the animals had
suffered slow, agonizing deaths
http://www.meepi.org/files03/pa031103.htm
The following facts offer us pretty damning info on snaring. The Maine
Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is one of the sources, so it’s
definitely not coming from an animal rights slant - http://tinyurl.com/6oqlv79
Beavers who are snared
are often drowned. Confirmation that this type of trapping is inhumane
comes from the American Veterinary Medical Association, which on page 35 of
its publication “Guidelines on Euthanasia” condemns drowning as being
inhumane. In addition to drowning, trappers will commonly kill animals
with a blow to the head – a method the AVMA describes as being an
unacceptable way to kill animals of most species.
Lynn Rogers, a wildlife
research biologist with 35 years experience working in government, academia,
and private nonprofit organizations reports:
“All snares share the same
failing—they restrict the flow of blood back to the heart through surface
veins while the deeper arteries continue to pump blood into the foot or
head. The result is painful swelling. I quit using snares 30
some years ago.”
- “Another problem is that so many non-target animals
are snared. The man who was neck-snaring wolves caught everything from
bears to deer to a moose that stepped into the snare.”
- “Another problem
is that Maine law allows snared animals to suffer so long in the snares.
Before I quit snaring, I could see that it was necessary to check the snares
two or three times a day to minimize injury. Allowing an animal to
suffer for days under a state-sanctioned recreational practice is extremely
inhumane. On top of that is a possible problem of these cheap devices
being abandoned in the woods similar to gill nets being abandoned in the
Great Lakes or the ocean.”
- “I find it just unbelievable that any state
would condone recreational snaring with all that is known about modern
wildlife management.”
Biologists from the Maine Department of Inland
Fisheries and Wildlife repeatedly observe that killing coyotes stimulates
reproduction and that in order to lower a population you have to kill at
least 70 percent of the animals every year.
Chuck Hulsey, one of Maine’s
seven regional wildlife biologists recently wrote to his bureau director:
“Killing an animal by strangling it with a wire loop often results in a
slow, painful death, sometimes lasting days ...” and “It would violate state
humane laws to treat a domestic dog in the same manner.”
Last fall Wally
Jakubas, the agency’s top mammal scientist, got concerned when, checking 94
snared coyotes during a study to determine the genetics of animals, he
noticed a large proportion of carcasses with grotesquely swollen heads,
bullet holes, fractured limbs, and broken teeth. Of particular interest were
the animals with swollen heads-”jellyheads,” the snarers call them. When the
snare doesn’t close sufficiently, it constricts the jugular vein on the
outside of the neck, cutting off blood returning to the heart; meanwhile,
the carotid artery keeps pumping blood into the brain, eventually rupturing
its vascular system. In a memo to his supervisor, Jakubas wrote: “I think it
is also safe to say that [this] is an unpleasant death. Anyone who has had a
migraine knows what it feels like to have swollen blood vessels in the head.
To have blood vessels burst because of pressure must be excruciating.”
Almost a third of the animals Jakubas looked at were “jellyheads.” Almost
another third had been clubbed or shot, indicating that, contrary to
department claims, the snares hadn’t killed them quickly. Coyote-control
agents have to check their snares only every three days, and under the
liberalized regs suggested by the legislature, they can get permission to
check them only every seven days.
The department of Inland Fisheries and
Wildlife organized an ad hoc “study group” to make recommendations for new
snaring regs, but ignored a lot of advice from its own biologists who had
expressed concern for the nontarget wildlife that have been found dead in
coyote snares - eagles, deer, moose, bears, fishers, foxes, bobcats, and
especially Canada lynx, now federally threatened.
Whenever the public
expresses concern about the threat to lynx, the department responds that no
snarer has reported killing a lynx since the species was listed. Of course
no snarer has reported killing a lynx: Such a confession could elicit
prosecution under the Endangered Species Act!
Go on to
Ask Uncle Joe
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