Trapping regs snagged in red tape and fiery debate

A hunter sets a leg-hold trap.

Photo courtesy the Missouri Department of Conservation

When it was introduced in the Legislature last year, a bill called S.201 proposed prohibiting the use of leg-hold traps in Vermont — rigs with metal pressure plates that, when stepped on, trigger spring-loaded claws to ensnare an animal’s leg. That was in its name and goals, as introduced by Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor. 

But by the time lawmakers passed the bill that session, it had been altered unrecognizably through amendments. Leg-hold traps weren’t banned, and the bill’s name and purpose were revised entirely. 

Act 159 of 2022 instead only required the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife to establish “best management practices” for recreational (commonly called furbearer) trapping, send them to legislators this past January and enact rules by January 2024. 

Now, in the interim, some legislators and animal protection groups are incensed by what they view as the department’s slow progress on, and lacking proposals for, trapping regulations. 

“This entire year, we have been working on providing recommendations to the Fish and Wildlife department and board on how we think these traps could be made better than they are currently,” said Brenna Angelillo-Galdenzi, president and co-founder of the group Protect Our Wildlife Vermont. “Unfortunately the Fish and Wildlife department and the (fish and wildlife) board has ignored most of our recommendations.”

“So we're currently fighting Fish and Wildlife recommendations because we feel that they're grossly insufficient,” Angelillo-Galdenzi said. 

One of the primary complaints with the “best management practices” put forward by the department this year is that there’s no prohibition on leg-hold traps like the initial intention of S.201. The proposals continue to allow recreational trapping, though under stricter circumstances, something Protect Our Wildlife Vermont also opposes.

This past legislative session, Rep. Larry Satcowitz, D-Randolph, introduced H.191, which sought to prohibit recreational trapping by requiring people to obtain a license to trap only nuisance animals, but that bill never left committee. 

“Furbearer trapping is inhumane,” said Satcowitz, an outspoken proponent of trapping reform, in an email. “The animals that are caught suffer immensely. If you were to intentionally cause such pain to a dog you would be in violation of Vermont's animal cruelty law.”

Satcowitz acknowledged that “some trapping in defense of property is probably unavoidable,” which is represented by the nuisance trapping license the bill proposed. 

“But otherwise,” said Satcowitz, “furbearer trapping has no good reason to be practiced other than for the enjoyment of a small number of people.”

Satcowitz commended the knowledge and capability of the Fish and Wildlife department but said he too would “like to see them pay more attention to how perspectives around these issues have been evolving in recent years.” 

Two heated public comment meetings held by the department in June demonstrated perspectives ranging from calling the best practice proposals an attack on “individualism” to characterizing them as “inhumane.”

Brehan Furfey, a wildlife biologist and the furbearer project lead for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, explained that the department tries to accommodate all public opinions — which necessarily means compromises must be made. 

“We try to stick as closely as possible to what the Legislature had mandated and has required of us,” Furfey said. “So, we do read every single comment. We respond to all the comments. And so it's a balancing act, and we try to do the best we can.”

Trapping is a difficult topic for the department to address, said Furfey, because it tends to elicit “ very extreme views in one way or another. And so we really try to incorporate everybody's perspective and, you know, meet in the middle.” 

Asked about the humanity of trapping practices, Furfey said the department has been working to address complaints. “So, we've done a lot to improve trapping — what's legal or what will hopefully be legal in Vermont. So it’s just to reduce that incidental take and that risk and just improve overall selectivity and safety.”

The department allows trapping for two reasons, said Furfey. “Our funding comes from allowing wildlife management areas to be open to the public for recreational use. And so we allow trapping on wildlife management areas and public land. People have the right to trap on their own lands.” 

The other reason, said Furfey, relates to “damage control.”

“If people are having issues with raccoons or coyotes or anything like that, there are people who are licensed in the state to go and remove the issue, if that's what people want to do,” she said. Trapping, she clarified, is allowed on all public land and private land at the permission of the property owner. 

A common complaint with recreational trapping, especially on public land, is the risk to domestic pets. In 2022, an East Corinth woman lost her dog to a trap out on a walk and brought the story to the news. The trap, set on private land, was likely illegal.

David Sausville, the Fish and Wildlife department’s wildlife management program manager, said the agency receives “very few reports” of pets being ensnared by traps. As for the safety of people, especially children, he said: “We've had zero reports of somebody being caught in a trap because of where the trappers placed them.”

For Protect our Wildlife Vermont and Satcowitz, the fight to prohibit certain types of trapping lives on. “We're going to go back to the Legislature in January, asking them to ban (leg-hold) traps again,” said Angelillo-Galdenzi.

Satcowitz is “optimistic” his bill to prohibit recreational trapping will be passed next session. “I'm finding a great deal of support for it,” said Satcowitz.