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[baarn] California proposal would boost trapping

Sat, 26 Jun 2004 13:14:14 -0700

Kate Danaher <kdanaher

Jamie Ray <jamieray, <baarn >

 

 

 

[From today's San Francisco Chronicle]

 

CALIFORNIA

State proposal boosts trapping and hunting

More red foxes, bobcats could be killed under rules

 

Jane Kay, Chronicle Environment Writer

Saturday, June 26, 2004

 

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The state Department of Fish and Game has proposed new rules that

would legalize the hunting and trapping of red foxes and nearly double the

number of trapping days for bobcats, whose pelt prices have jumped to $186

apiece.

 

The rules also would exempt thousands of backyard wildlife trappers

from the licensing provisions of a law passed two years ago to regulate

their burgeoning businesses.

 

The state agency presented draft regulations to the Fish and Game

Commission in Crescent City on Thursday. The commission will vote on the

proposals on Aug. 27 after public hearings that are expected to bring out

animal protection advocates, hunters, backyard wildlife trappers and

commercial fur trappers spurred by rising bobcat, beaver and badger pelt

prices.

 

In March, the California Trappers' Association in Elk Creek asked Fish

and Game for a four-month hunting season, allowing an unlimited kill of red

fox. Dogs, bows and arrows, traps and guns could be used. The group also

requested the extension of the bobcat trapping season to 120 days.

 

Red fox hunting would be allowed statewide, except in a special zone

in the territory of the native Sierra Nevada red fox.

 

The Animal Protection Institute, a Sacramento animal advocacy group,

opposed the proposal, charging that Fish and Game " is catering to a minority

of Californians who like to kill red foxes and bobcats for fun or profit.''

 

Camille Fox, director of wildlife programs with the institute, said,

" The vast majority of Californians neither hunt nor trap, and value the

state's wildlife. Most citizens would love to see a red fox in the wild, and

would be sickened to see one either chased and pursued by hounds or shot by

bow and arrow or trapped.''

 

Red foxes were brought to California in the late 1800s to use as prey

in fox hunts, then farmed for fur through the early 1900s.

 

There are no estimates of their numbers, but they can be found in

parts of the Central Valley and close to the coast.

 

Fish and Game associate biologist Jesse Garcia said his agency has

supported a hunting season on the red fox for some time.

 

" It's been a problem for years, " he said.

 

The red fox is " well documented in killing sensitive, threatened and

endangered species, whether they be ground-nesting birds, rodents or

reptiles, " he said. " We've also had requests from private persons who have

had losses of poultry and some anecdotal observation of pheasant losses.

 

" I question that people will actually don the British garb and all the

pomp and circumstance to hunt fox in the California heat.''

 

Fox said a current law already allows for the removal of red foxes if

they pose a danger to threatened and endangered species.

 

In the mid-1980s, the San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge in

Fremont started a program to capture the red foxes that were coming to the

marsh and eating the eggs and young of the endangered California clapper

rail. Hundreds of foxes have been trapped and euthanized.

 

Instigating a trapping and hunting season " will do nothing to mitigate

the conflicts between red foxes and wild and domestic animals,'' Fox said.

 

Red foxes provide free rodent control for many ranchers, she added.

 

In its request to extend trapping season on bobcats by 51 days, the

California Trappers' Association had argued that trappers have 69 days a

year, compared with 137 for hunters.

 

According to Fish and Game, in the 2002-03 season, trappers took 394

bobcats and sport hunters took 342, a 21 percent increase from the previous

year. Driving the proposed extension of the season is the increase over a

year in the average pelt price -- from $66 to $186.

 

Fish and Game officials estimate there are 72,000 adult bobcats in the

state and say 14,400 could be killed a year without harming the population.

But other scientists say no sound surveys have been done.

 

The proposed regulations also say that trappers capturing certain

animals that venture into urban territory and bother property owners

wouldn't have to get Fish and Game licenses that could have mandated humane

handling.

 

Under a 2002 law, people who trap for profit fur-bearing mammals or

nongame mammals designated by the Fish and Game Commission must obtain Fish

and Game licenses, which require showing competency in the field. But the

draft regulations state that the commission would exempt raccoons, skunks,

opossums, ground and fox squirrels, gophers, moles, rats and voles -- the

most commonly caught backyard animals -- from the training and licensing

procedures. Exemption doesn't extend to badgers, beavers, muskrats, bobcats,

coyotes, gray fox, mink and weasels.

 

Michael Taber, president of the California Nuisance Wildlife Control

Operators Association in Fresno, a trade group, doesn't want to see these

animals left out of the new law.

 

" The department is required to come up with the testing guidelines and

the licensing requirements, " he said. " When you're naming a handful of

species to exempt, you're abdicating your responsibility as the agency with

oversight. ''

 

Tom Belt, a retired patrol captain at Fish and Game, had worked six

months with Taber's group, as well as animal advocacy and wildlife

rehabilitation groups, to come up with draft regulations to meet the new

law. However, their work on a training manual and tests wasn't included in

the package presented Thursday.

 

Belt was disappointed. He said wildlife trappers need training and

guidelines. Over 27 years, he's heard horrendous stories of botched animal

removals.

 

" I've heard of tying a bag with live animals to the end of a car

tailpipe, leaving them unattended to die of thirst or starvation, and

stabbing them to death.''

 

The provisions included using approved euthanasia techniques and

reducing the time limits to check traps to better free pets or reduce

suffering of wildlife.

 

E-mail Jane Kay at jkay.