Update: Committee on Fish, Wildlife & Water Resources voted unanimously to remove the provision on snares, 1/24/14.
Bill description: This bill would amend various requirements relating to hunting, fishing, or trapping in Vermont. In particular, it would repeal the 50-year-old prohibition on the snaring of animals.[teaserbreak]
Background: There has been no demonstrated need to expand hunting to include cruel and indiscriminate snares. These traps are particularly brutal, and the Humane Society in VT has compiled a list of reasons why:
A snare is simply a wire noose attached at one end to a stake or anchor; it catches an animal either by the neck, midsection of the body, or foot. As the trapped animal struggles, the snare tightens.
As with leghold traps, animals caught in snares can severely injure themselves as they struggle to free themselves. Neck snares can strangle their victims or crush vital organs, leading to an agonizing and often prolonged death.
Audubon magazine (Sept 2002) described what snare users call “jellyheads”—snared animals with grotesquely swollen heads as a result of the blood moving through the jugular vein toward the heart being restricted while that flowing from heart to brain through the carotid artery is not. The result is an agonizing death.
For animals that survive neck snares, pressure from the wire ligature can damage cellular structure and lead to necrosis (rotting) of tissues, with death coming days following release.
Snares are indiscriminate — non-target species can suffer in these devices. Snares do not distinguish between coyotes and domestic dogs, or any other animal.
The “Collarum” is marketed as a “humane” snaring device, but it is still indiscriminate, it still holds fast an animal who will struggle to free herself, it still will prevent an animal it has captured from escaping from a predator, and it still is marketed with the claim that: “70% of the coyotes caught showed no significant damage.” What about the other 30%?