Nashua Telegraph (NH)
Lawmakers mull banning pelt sales
By Matthew Spolar
February 8, 2010 06:34AM
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/worldnation/600981-227/lawmakers-mull-banning-pelt-sales.htmlYears ago, Deerfield resident Petra Gazzola would find herself stuck
inside her secluded home in the Pawtuckaway Mountains because her
property had been inundated with six feet of water from beavers
damming up nearby culverts.That's why Gazzola, a vegetarian who runs a
shelter for stray dogs taken from Mississippi "kill shelters," is
thankful for local trapper Fred Shepard.
"I don't believe in wantonly just killing animals," said Gazzola, who
said she would never wear fur or raise animals in cages. "But there
are times when you just have to be practical."
It's cases like Gazzola's that animal rights advocates say caused them
to rethink their approach to anti-trapping legislation and that led to
a bill introduced by Rep. Steve Vaillancourt last month.
In 2007, Vaillancourt brought forward legislation to ban certain types
of commonly used animal traps, including a leg-hold trap he said has
been banned in 88 countries and eight states, including Rhode Island
and Massachusetts.
That bill failed in a 241-118 House vote. This time, with co-sponsors
Rep. Peter Schmidt and Rep. Peter Leishman, the Manchester Republican
has altered his approach slightly - instead of banning trapping
altogether, he's attacking its commercial incentives by trying to make
illegal the sale of fur.
"I don't make any bones about it," Vaillancourt said. "This is an
attempt to ban trapping except when absolutely necessary."
Vaillancourt's position has attracted the support of local animal
rights groups, which hosted a luncheon in support of the new
legislation as the Coalition to End Fur Trapping. They stressed they
were not trying to ban trapping, just the sale of fur.
"These devices are archaic," said luncheon attendee Joanne Bourbeau,
the U.S. Humane Society's senior state director for New Hampshire and
Vermont. "They torture animals who can't get away from them."
Down market
Vaillancourt's latest bill has drawn strong opposition from
cash-strapped trappers, state officials concerned about a spike in
wildlife populations and gun owners who see the legislation as an
affront to a New Hampshire way of life.
Shepard, the full-time trapper who oversees Gazzola's property and the
New Hampshire Trappers Association's liaison with the state Fish and
Game Department, said times are already tough with the fur market
down. These days, he averages about $10 per adult beaver and makes the
majority of his money from clients who want him to catch nuisances, he
said.
"It used to be a dollar an inch," Shepard said.
Advocates of the bill point to the diminished profitability of fur as
evidence that banning its sale would not significantly threaten
trappers' bottom lines.
"It's not a big moneymaker anymore," said Linda Dionne, president of
the New Hampshire Animal Rights League.
But Shepard said he believes the market will turn around eventually.
And Dan Dockham, a trapper who owns a farm in Gilmanton, said now
isn't the time to take away even a supplemental source of income for
some New Hampshire residents.
"I don't know why in this bad economy they would want to do stuff like
that," he said.
Last year, Shepard said the hobby trappers who take a fortnight's
vacation when trapping season starts in November were noticeably
absent because of low fur prices - a trend that would continue if fur
selling were wiped out entirely.
"They want to make some money in those two weeks," he said.
Under the proposed legislation, Gazzola said she doesn't see the point
of Shepard being forced to discard the animals he kills on her
property.
"Why not sell the pelt and use the whole animal?" she said.
Dionne said banning the sale of fur would eliminate the need for
trappers to kill what they've caught, and potentially encourage the
use of traps that would cause less damage to the animals and allow
them to be relocated.
"It takes away the incentive for the trapper to kill," Dionne said of
the bill. "At that point he may choose to let the animal loose."
Population control
However, state officials and local road agents say trappers do New
Hampshire a service by killing off a portion of the state's wildlife
populations, primarily beaver.
Alex Cote, Deerfield's road agent, said preventing local trappers from
making money by selling fur would be an added cost to the town, either
by having to continually pay the trappers - he said he hasn't paid
Shepard for a job in about two years - or by the town doing its own
trapping. The alternative, allowing beavers to run wild, would result
in persistent road flooding, he said.
"There would be no more incentive for a trapper to come into my town
if he can't trap a beaver and sell the fur," Cote said. "We would have
no recourse. We would be at nature's mercy."
In 1996, Massachusetts voters passed a referendum outlawing the most
effective forms of trapping. At that time, the state's beaver
population was about 20,000, said Marion Larson, an information
biologist with that state's division of fisheries and wildlife. By
2001, estimates showed there were just under 70,000 beaver in the
state and nuisance complaints to the department had tripled, she said.
"Over the past 10 years, the beaver has gone from being a valuable
natural resource to most people now looking at it as a pest," Larson
said.
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