Albuquerque Journal: “Animal Trapping Denounced”
Friday, November 18, 2005
By Tania Soussan
Journal Staff Writer
Recent cases of unlicensed steel foothold traps snapping on a hiker's dog in the Gila and a coyote in Eldorado that dragged the trap around for weeks highlight problems with trapping in New Mexico, activists say.
"There are no bag limits, no limits to the number of traps set out and very little oversight of cruel and indiscriminate trapping in New Mexico," Winston resident Mary Katherine Ray, a volunteer for the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, said this week.
The group has campaigned to ban trapping on public lands across the state.
Jon Schwedler of Animal Protection of New Mexico said state numbers show more than 18,000 animals were killed by traps in New Mexico last year.
The New Mexico Trappers Association does not condone unlicensed trapping and educates trappers on ethical and legal practices, said the association's president, Ernie Ray Current.
Done correctly, trapping is humane, he said.
The state requires traps be checked every 24 hours and non-target species be released. The fall trapping season for most animals started Oct. 15.
In the Eldorado coyote case, the animal carried a trap on a leg for several weeks before being caught by Santa Fe Animal Control and eventually euthanized.
Earlier this month, a woman walking in the Gila National Forest reported her dog's leg was clamped in trap. When the woman tried to free the dog, she stepped into a second trap that grazed her toes, drawing blood and then clamping onto the end of her sandal.
Current said his dog has been trapped as well.
"It's not hurting the dog," he said. "That's a myth if your trap's set up right."
In another case in October, an endangered Mexican gray wolf in southern New Mexico was found running with a trap on her right front paw. By the time she was caught, her paw was so badly damaged that the toes and pad had to be amputated.
Although the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses traps to catch wolves, that trap was not set by the project team.
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