Ending the Use of Cruel Traps
One of Project Coyote’s priority campaigns in the overall effort to replace killing with coexistence is our work to end the use of lethal traps, including Conibear body-crushing kill traps, neck snares, and steel-jawed leghold traps (body-gripping traps), across North America.
Facts about trapping:
- Body-gripping traps are cruel, inhumane and often kill individual animals indiscriminately and often quite slowly.
- Body-gripping traps cause tremendous pain and suffering to their victims: painful injuries from the trap and from trying to flee capture; thirst and dehydration (some states allow trapped animals to suffer for up to 96 hours before the trapper is required to check his traps); orphaning of young (which most often leads to death for the orphans who are unable to fend for themselves).
- Trapping can impact the precarious recovery of imperiled species like lynx and gray wolves.
- Predator populations need no management by trapping or any other lethal means to maintain stable, sustainable, and ecologically effective populations, and are best left to their own evolutionary devices of self-regulation and predator-prey cycles.
- More than 80 countries and seven states have banned leghold traps—yet the U.S. government employs more leghold traps than any other country in the world (leghold traps are a primary tool used by the USDA’s “Wildlife Services” program).
- Every year at least 100,000 bobcats, coyotes, wolves, foxes, mountain lions, and other wild animals are trapped and killed by USDA Wildlife Services (this figure does not include the tens of thousands of animals trapped and killed by commercial and private fur trappers).
Those that defend trapping claim it aids in wildlife management—but science shows that trapping serves no legitimate wildlife management purpose, it’s torture that causes immense suffering and harm to individual animals, which would be considered a violation of state anti-cruelty laws if used on companion animals. Wild animals deserve the same considerations and humane treatment as domestic animals.
What we’re doing:
Project Coyote is leading the way in ending the use of cruel traps across North America. Here are a few highlights:
- We helped California become the first state in the nation to ban bobcat trapping and subsequently all commercial and recreational trapping.
- We helped achieve the momentous win for wildlife in New Mexico with the passage of Roxy’s Law to ban traps and poisons on public lands in the state.
- We’ve expanded our efforts—in collaboration with our close allies— to ban trapping in Nevada by helping launch a new coalition: Silver State Wildlife. We’re working closely with regional and Nevada-based groups to end gruesome wildlife killing contests and cruel trapping on public lands.
- We hosted a webinar raising awareness on wildlife trapping in Nevada with partnering organizations including WildEarth Guardians, Humane Society of the United States, TrailSafe Nevada.
- We continue to raise awareness on the use of cruel traps across North America.
What you can do:
- Contact your U.S. Representative to ask them to support and co-sponsor H.R. 4716, Refuge From Cruel Trapping Act of 2021, which would end the use of body-gripping traps in the National Wildlife Refuge System.
- Contact your U.S. Representative to ask them to support and co-sponsor H.R. 5578, The Public Safety and Wildlife Protection Act, which would restrict the use of steel-jaw leghold traps and Conibear traps on animals in the U.S.
- Read and share about our latest investigation into trapping in California in which a single trapper caught 5,255 raccoons and 435 coyotes during fiscal year 2021.
- Sign this petition calling for an end to cruel trapping on Nevada public lands.
- Write a letter to the editor of your local paper asking readers to end cruel trapping in their state.
- Sign up for our e-team and never miss an opportunity to take action.
- Support the fight with your dollars.
Further resources on ending cruel trapping:
Camilla Fox and Christopher Papouchis’s book CULL OF THE WILD and complimentary documentary film CULL OF THE WILD
Camilla Fox’s many statements on the issue
Michelle Lute’s opinion editorial It’s Time to Ban Trapping on New Mexico’s Public Lands in the Las Cruces Sun