After several months of debate, the Montana
Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks commissioners recently voted
on new trapping regulations.
Most of the rules
will remain the same.
“The trapping community in
Montana has done quite well,” says Kevin Feist, a Kalispell-area
man who advocates more stringent rules. “They only have to do a
couple Fish, Wildlife and Parks meetings a year, show up with their
big loud voices, and the commission seems to listen to that
constituency more than the rest of the public.”
Feist spent seven months on a committee set up
by the state wildlife department to write recommendations for new
trapping rules – a process set in motion after his dog Buddy was
killed in a Conibear trap while out for a romp with Feist’s wife,
Liz Kehr (HCN, 4/12/99). The couple formed a group called Friends
of Buddy, and have been lobbying for tighter restrictions ever
since.
Among the proposals the agency failed to
adopt are mandatory trap check periods, limits on the kind of bait
allowed, and large buffer zones between traplines, roads and ski
trails. Feist says he’s mystified by some of the agency’s
decisions: While polls showed the public supported larger buffer
zones around traps by a nine-to-one margin, the agency nevertheless
went for a lesser 30-foot option.
One positive
change, Feist says, is a new measure that requires so-called
“breakaway devices’ on snare traps, so that animals like deer and
elk can break free if they get caught by
accident.
Brian Giddings, the agency’s furbearer
coordinator, says Feist’s expectations were too high. “A lot of
people think that because they write a letter, that’s the way
things will go,” he says. “Public comment gets taken into
consideration, but it doesn’t mean the commission will make those
changes.”
For their part, trappers are pleased
that the agency made no drastic changes. “We say, “educate instead
of regulate,” “””says Fran Buell of the Montana Trapping
Association. “If there’s too much regulation, a trapper can’t do
his job.”
*Andrea
Barnett
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Trappers set free in Big Sky state.
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