About Trapping
UTILIZING OUR ABUNDANT MISSOURI WILDLIFE
Quick Facts
- There are more wild furbearers in the U.S. today than there were 100 years ago.
- Government quotas and strict conservation practices keep wildlife, including furbearers, at optimum levels.
- No furbearing animals in the U.S. or Canada are endangered or threatened by fur harvesting.
- Millions of North Americans depend on fur harvesting for their livelihood and have a vested interest in protecting the natural environment.
- Natural fur, used in coats and other garments, is a renewable resource.
- Nothing is wasted in the production of a wild fur garment. Furbearers provide food, organic fertilizer, medicines, and other biodegradable products.
- Conversely, synthetic materials exhaust our limited supply of oil and other nonrenewable resources.
- Sound wildlife management programs ensure the necessary supply of natural wild fur for today’s needs and those of tomorrow.
Information for the General Public
Interaction
In a world where humans interact with wildlife habitat in countless ways, management of certain animal populations will always be necessary. Uncontrolled, many species can infringe on real human needs. We may only think of rodents or insects in a grain storage facility to appreciate the need for action.
Urban Challenges
Parts of the world, like Western Europe, are now so heavily urbanized that the main challenge for conservationists is to protect what little is left of wildlife habitat. Even in these countries, however, wildlife must be managed. In Holland and Switzerland (often cited as places where trapping has been discouraged), state employees must now be paid to trap and shoot muskrats which are seriously damaging dikes, canals, and riverbanks.
Uncontrolled muskrats are capable of astounding rates of reproduction: females can produce more than twenty young each year, while females born in the first spring litter may produce their own young by fall.
Renewable Resource
Some countries—including Canada and the United States—are fortunate to still have vast undeveloped lands and plentiful wildlife. The “surplus” produced by most wildlife species each year represents a valuable natural renewable resource for people living on the land in these countries.
Regulated Trapping
Regulated trapping helps to smooth out the “boom and bust” cycles which characterize some wildlife populations when nature is left to do the managing.
Population Control
In many areas, animal populations must be controlled to protect human activities, including—but not limited to—the following situations:
- Bears destroying beehives; coyotes killing livestock.
- Wolves preying heavily on young ungulates relied upon for food and income.
- Raccoons raiding cornfields; beavers flooding farmland and roadways.
- Foxes, mink, and weasels preying on domestic poultry.
- Deer and elk damaging winter-stored hay.
Disease
Wildlife can serve as a reservoir for diseases (e.g., rabies, tularemia) which are potentially dangerous to humans. Beaver and muskrat can suffer for weeks before succumbing to infectious diseases. Household pets are susceptible to distemper, rabies, heartworm, parvovirus, mange, and leptospirosis—some of which can be acquired from infected furbearers.
“While trapping is not the solution to every wildlife disease outbreak, under certain circumstances it can reduce threats to the health of humans and domestic animals…. By removing population excesses which promote diseases such as canine distemper… in a localized situation, trapping can reduce and even stop the spread of a disease outbreak.”
For all these reasons—even if furs were not valuable—trapping remains an important wildlife management tool.
Rebuttal to “Trapping Information”
The following items respond to statements published by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), providing context about trap types, regulations, animal welfare, and wildlife management.
1) HSUS Statement: Body-gripping traps cause severe distress, fear, and pain to wildlife and pets.
Factual Rebuttal
The correct classification of trap types includes: (a) live-capture restraining devices (e.g., foothold traps) which allow release or harvest; (b) killing devices (e.g., body-gripping traps such as Conibears) designed to provide near-instantaneous death; and (c) devices (e.g., snares) that can function as either, depending on how/where they are set.
Well-designed foothold traps are widely used as humane live-capture devices and have been employed to capture and re-establish species such as red wolves, gray wolves, Mexican wolves, lynx, and river otter.
2) HSUS Statement: Trapped animals may suffer thirst, starvation, exposure, or predation.
Factual Rebuttal
Regulations (e.g., daily trap-check requirements) are designed to prevent or severely limit these occurrences. Economic realities also discourage allowing animals to remain in traps, as a non-functional trap cannot capture additional animals.
3) HSUS Statement: Animals still alive at trap-check are killed by bludgeoning, stomping, strangulation, or shooting.
Factual Rebuttal
Foothold traps are live-restraining devices—animals are alive and may be released or harvested. While not aesthetically pleasing, blunt force trauma and shooting are recognized as humane euthanasia techniques by the American Veterinary Medical Association, and trapper education covers humane dispatch.
4) HSUS Statement: The steel-jawed foothold trap has been declared “inhumane” by veterinary organizations.
Factual Rebuttal
Small-animal practitioners typically encounter worst-case scenarios. Wildlife health professionals and conservation agencies recognize the role of foothold traps in safe capture and management of free-ranging wildlife.
5) HSUS Statement: Body-gripping traps are indiscriminate and frequently capture protected species and pets.
Factual Rebuttal
Studies have documented low non-target capture rates with foothold traps, which are live-capture devices that allow release. Traps pose no realistic threat to public safety; only a handful of minor injuries were documented over decades of regulated trapping.
6) HSUS Statement: Commercial trapping is not a wildlife management tool; activity is driven by pelt prices.
Factual Rebuttal
Professional wildlife organizations endorse trapping as a critical management tool. Season lengths, bag limits, permissible trap sizes/types, and total traps per trapper are considered to meet species-specific objectives and maintain stable, healthy populations.
7) HSUS Statement: Trapping is not useful in fighting wildlife diseases.
Factual Rebuttal
Regulated trapping can reduce population densities that exacerbate disease transmission (e.g., rabies, distemper, tularemia, mange), mitigating the severity and duration of outbreaks in localized situations.
Contact Missouri Trappers Association
Get in touch with the Missouri Trappers Association by filling out the contact form. We appreciate your support!
For questions regarding your membership, please call
Joslyn Search: (660)292-1911
