Update: Sadly, this legislation did not receive the support of the committee to which it was assigned.
Bill Description: If passed, this bill would eliminate a provision that allows individuals to use steel jaw leghold traps to capture “nuisance” animals on their property.
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Rhode Island does not require trappers to take a trapper education course nor does it offer a state-sanctioned trapper education course. Leghold traps are indiscriminate devices that capture any animal that steps into the trap’s jaws, including threatened and endangered species, birds, and family dogs and cats. Most animals caught in leghold traps react to the pain and restraint by frantically struggling, often enduring fractured bones, ripped tendons, blood loss, amputations, and/or tooth and mouth damage from biting the trap. Since Rhode Island does not address how animals found alive in the traps are to be killed and since it is likely that novice trappers don’t have easy access to techniques approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association, it is likely that the animals are clubbed, suffocated, strangled, or drowned.