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End coyote snaring cruelty now |
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Written by Robert Fisk, Jr.
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Thursday, 07 April 2005 |
Coyote snaring is back in the news. A recent internal memorandum by
Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife regional biologist Chuck
Hulsey reiterated the lack of IF&W support for the coyote program,
and had an accompanying necropsy report that detailed the horrific way
in which these snared animals died.
It is an indefensible program that exists solely because of the work of
special-interest groups and the lack of public awareness.
For the past two Legislatures Maine Friends of Animals has submitted
bills to end coyote snaring. We testified about a program that was
totally ineffectual, extremely cruel, a waste of tax payer dollars, and
one the department does not believe in nor wishes to administer. Yet
both times the bill was unanimously defeated in the IF&W Committee
under pressure from the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine and the Maine
Trapper's Association.
A snare is a lethal wire intended to catch and strangle a coyote to
death in a matter of a few minutes. However, the necropsy report shows
that 2/3 of coyotes snared did not die a quick, humane death.
Instead, to quote from the report, "hemorrhaging was evident in most of
the coyotes' swollen heads. Their eyes and mouths were bloody, their
lips split and their teeth broken from trying to chew their way out of
the snare. There were broken limbs resulting from long struggling. And
in many cases, because the coyote was not even dead when the snarer
returned, it was clubbed to death." this surely would be animal cruelty
if these were domestic dogs.
Instead of acknowledging the ineffectiveness of the program and
listening to their own wildlife biologists, the IF&W Committee
asked the department to conduct an "analysis" of the Animal damage
Control Program.
The department's report on coyote control again urged the
discontinuation of the snaring program because it has always been
controversial and ineffective by scientific standards; essentially, it
has not worked and never will.
Another IF&W wildlife biologist, Henry Hilton, publicly stated,
"Just on financial grounds, the snaring program borders on fiscal
irresponsibility when there are so many other IF&W needs." This was
before the department's present $8 million budget deficit.
This was not what SAM and the members of the IF&W Committee, many
who are SAM member and/or share its views, wanted to hear. As a result,
they then submitted a resolution directing the department "...to submit
a proposal to encouraging the harvest of coyotes;" thus forcing the
department to spend more time engaging in finding ways to increase the
practice after it just reported it can't work.
 Coyotes deserve better treatment
There are a number of other reasons the end coyote snaring - snares
regularly catch not target animals, coyotes can withstand mortality
rates of 70 percent and thrive again; they are an important species to
the ecosystem; deer herds are at an all-time high; the Canadian lynx,
an endangered species has similar habitat and prey; and Maine is only
one of two states that allow this inhumane practice.
But the real issue is the obstructionist ways of SAM, the Maine
Trappers Association and the IF&W Committee. The fate of wildlife
resources of this state should be determined by our wildlife
biologists, scientific data and all of our legislators, not by special
interest groups. Why was such a controversial program allowed to
increase without even a public hearing? Why is a special interest group
managing what wildlife issues the public gets to know and debate and
what it doesn't?
It is time to end special-interest obstructionist legislating, the
over-inflated rhetoric from the outdoors community on coyotes, a
wasteful program that can not be reasonably justified, and this slow
and cruel death in the woods.
Special to the Press Herald |
January 2011