Get The Facts:

Exposing the Myths: The Truth about Trapping

Each year, more than 4 million animals are trapped and killed for their fur in the United States. Millions more are trapped and killed in the name of “livestock” and “game” protection and for “nuisance” animal control. Whatever the purpose, the consequences for the trapped animals are the same — pain, suffering, and death. Proponents argue that traps are humane and selective, and that trapping is tightly regulated, an important source of income for many people, and necessary for managing wildlife. These claims, however, are far from the truth.

Myth: Trapping is humane and selective.

Despite what trappers would have you believe, animals frequently sustain severe injuries from being trapped. When not killed outright by the trap, animals can suffer physiological trauma, dehydration, exposure to severe weather, and predation by other animals until the trapper returns. When the trapper returns he usually clubs, suffocates or strangles the animal to death. Fur trappers rarely shoot trapped animals because bullet holes and blood reduce a pelt's value.

Traps set in or near water are designed to drown aquatic mammals, which can take up to 20 minutes for some species.¹ The American Veterinary Medical Association deems drowning to be inhumane and a 1999 study concluded “drowning cannot be considered euthanasia.”²

Most traps are notoriously indiscriminate, capturing almost any animal that triggers them. Sometimes called “trash” animals by trappers, non-target species that have been found in traps include threatened and endangered species, raptors, domestic dogs and cats, and even humans. These animals can sustain the same injuries as target species. Even if released, they may perish later from internal injuries or reduced ability to hunt or forage for food.

There are three general types of traps used today: restraining body-gripping traps; kill traps; and live traps. Restraining and kill traps are most often used for commercial and recreational fur trapping as they are cheap, portable, and easy to set. Live traps are more often used by private “nuisance” animal control trappers for trapping raccoons, cats, skunks, etc.

The most commonly used trap in the U.S. is the steel-jaw leghold trap, a restraining trap with spring-loaded steel jaws that clamp on an animal's foot or leg when triggered. Leghold traps can cause severe swelling, lacerations, joint dislocations, fractures, damage to teeth and gums, self-mutilation, limb amputation, and even death.³ The steel-jaw leghold trap has been declared inhumane by the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Animal Hospital Association, and the National Animal Control Association, and has been banned or severely restricted by more than 80 countries and 8 U.S. states.

Dick Randall, a former federal trapper, told Congress, “My trapping records show that for each target animal I trapped, about two unwanted individuals were caught. Because of trap injuries, these nontarget animals had to be destroyed.”⁴ Nontarget animals comprised 76% of all animals captured in leghold traps in a 1981 study.⁵ Although trappers may use pan tension devices, which may exclude smaller “nontarget” species by increasing the force needed to trigger a trap, species similar in weight or larger than the target species are still captured.^6,7

In response to criticism over the steel-jaw leghold trap, trap manufacturers designed the padded leghold trap, which has thin strips of rubber attached to the trap's jaws. Padded traps can reduce limb injuries in some species. However, they can still cause serious and debilitating injuries. For example, a 1995 study by the USDA's Animal Damage Control program (now called “Wildlife Services”) found 97% of coyotes caught in padded traps had severe swelling of their trapped limb, 39% had lacerations, and several had simple or compound fractures.⁸ Despite such findings, and even though as of 1992 less than 2% of traps owned by U.S. trappers were padded leghold traps,⁹ trapping proponents claim that padded jaw traps have made trapping “humane.”

Other modified leghold traps include the offset jaw and laminated jaw traps, though these devices have also been found to cause serious injuries.

Snares are primitive wire nooses that, depending on how they are set, are designed to tighten around an animal's leg (restraining trap) or neck (kill trap). Some researchers suggests that certain leg snares may be a more humane alternative to jaw-type leghold traps, but research has been limited.

While small victims of neck snares may become unconscious in five to ten minutes from strangulation, larger animals may suffer for days. In one study, researchers recommended neck snares not be used in areas with livestock or deer after snares set for coyotes killed 50% of deer accidentally captured.¹⁰ The Federal Provincial Committee on Humane Trapping concluded after years of study that these snares “do not have the potential to consistently produce a quick death.”¹¹

Conibear traps are kill traps consisting of two metal frames hinged at the center point and powered by two torsion springs to create a scissorlike action. Conibear traps are supposed to kill animals instantly by snapping the spinal column at the base of the neck. However, traditional Conibear traps kill less than 15% of trapped animals quickly, and more than 40% die slow, painful deaths as their abdomens, heads, or other body parts are crushed.¹² Some newer modifications have improved the Conibear's killing ability,³ but for only a few species, and mostly in controlled lab settings. Conibear traps are also notoriously indiscriminate and have been shown to capture 2 nontarget animals per target animal.¹³

Myth: Trapping is tightly regulated.

Trapping regulations vary widely from state to state and are, in general, poorly enforced. Many states have few restrictions on the types of traps that can be used or the number of animals that can be trapped. Only a handful of states require or offer trapper education courses so most trappers learn “in the field.” Four states do not require trappers to check their traps at all, and twenty states allow animals to suffer in traps for 2 to 4 days. Only Georgia regulates how a trapped animal must be killed.

Very few states monitor the number of target animals trapped each year, and most do not require trappers to report nontarget captures at all. Some state wildlife agencies rely on voluntary or mandatory “fur dealer/buyer reports” to estimate annual trapping totals. Others obtain their data through random telephone or mail surveys, then use these partial reports to estimate the total numbers of animals trapped each year. Additionally, millions of animals are trapped by private “nuisance wildlife control operators” — or NWCOs — in this growing and largely unregulated industry.¹⁴

Myth: Only abundant species are trapped.

Historically, unregulated trapping almost wiped out beaver, sea otter, lynx, wolverine, and other species in many areas of the U.S. Today, some state wildlife management agencies continue to allow the trapping of highly sensitive species, including wolverine, fisher, marten, kit fox, and lynx. For example, while the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) considered listing the Canada lynx under the Endangered Species Act, Montana continued to allow lynx to be commercially trapped — even when a 1999 U.S. Forest Service report concluded, “Lynx appear to be extremely susceptible to trapping, and where trapping is permitted it can be (and has been) a significant source of mortality.”¹⁵ Unfortunately, because population modeling and furbearer data collection are so poor in many states, we do not know the impact trapping has on sensitive species — often until it is too late.

Myth: Trapping is a necessary wildlife management tool.

Trappers and wildlife managers claim that trapping prevents species from overpopulating and destroying their habitat by removing “surplus” animals from the wild. This simplistic argument, however, belies the dynamics of wildlife populations. First, the term “surplus” as used by trappers is an ecological fallacy — every animal, alive or dead, plays an important role in its ecosystem as either predator or prey. Second, available habitat and food resources generally limit the size of wildlife populations. When a wildlife population approaches the limit that the habitat can sustain — the “carrying capacity” — reproduction and survival decrease because less food is available to each individual, and the population begins to decline. In this way, nature has been regulating itself for millennia without our help.

Trapping generally removes healthy individuals from the population rather than the sick, aged, infirm, or very young animals most often subjected to natural selection. It would be “blind luck” if a trapper were to trap an animal that would have otherwise died of starvation or any other natural cause, so trapping actually works against nature's selection process.

In truth, trappers are mainly interested in manipulating wildlife populations for their own benefit. State wildlife agencies actively manage populations of furbearers to ensure that there are enough animals for trappers to kill, not to prevent biological overpopulation.

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