Initiative Would Effectively End Commercial Trapping In Washington Vote-Yes Campaign’S Funds Come Mostly From Out Of State

In an age when Washington is best known for its aerospace and software industries, Roy Breeden participates in a far older trade.

Each year, he and about 600 other state residents head into the woods and marshes to trap animals for their skins. It is a pastime that is both romantic for its image of the solitary and self-sufficient outdoorsman, and startling for its undeniable brutality.

Trappers in Washington last year legally captured more than 11,000 furbearing animals in devices designed to grip, crush, choke or drown. Opponents call the traps barbaric and archaic. Trappers and ranchers call them indispensable.

On Tuesday, Washington voters will make the final call when they vote on Initiative 713. It would ban the most productive forms of trapping.

Oregon has an identical proposal on the ballot, and four other states have passed anti-trapping initiatives since 1994.

“If Oregon and Washington pass these measures, it will give momentum to the national effort to ban these traps,” said Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States.

That’s why Pacelle’s Washington, D.C., group has donated $135,000 to Protect Our Pets and Wildlife, the group promoting Washington’s initiative. The International Fund for Animal Welfare chipped in $125,000 and the Doris Day Animal League donated $65,000. All told, the vote-yes campaign has gotten 75 percent of its $829,000 from outside the state.

Citizens for Responsible Wildlife Management, the group fighting the initiative, has $367,000. Slightly more than half its money comes from out-of-state sources. Weyerhaeuser, the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council and logger Bruce Vandervort are the biggest in-state donors.

“I’ve never gotten involved in anything political before, but I feel strongly about this,” said Vandervort, who donated $35,000 to the cause. He said he earns $2,000 to $3,000 a month when logging or trapping on the Olympic Peninsula.

Initiative 713 would ban “body-gripping” traps. The state could grant exceptions to protect human health or safety - if a beaver dam is backing up sewers or threatens to wash out a road, for instance.

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife could grant exceptions to protect livestock or property, but only if landowners first try “reasonable” nonlethal controls. Those alternatives might include guard animals or electric fences.

Even when exceptions are granted, the furs could not be sold legally, a provision included “to prevent people from claiming that they have problems just so they can continue killing animals for profit,” said Lisa Wathne, a campaign organizer and state representative for the Humane Society of the United States.

The initiative also would ban two forms of animal poisons. One is not used in Washington and the other is used only by federal agencies.

The initiative specifically exempts mouse and rat traps. It does not mention the lethal traps used on moles or gophers, or to control the population of marmots in downtown Spokane.

Wathne said trapping for those animals would continue - and has in other states with trapping bans - since their pelts have no commercial value. But the state Department of Fish and Wildlife says rats and mice are the only animals unaffected by the initiative.

I-713 would not ban the use of box traps, which capture animals to be dispatched or relocated later. And the pelts of animals caught in such a manner could still be sold.

But trappers say many species, such as coyotes, bobcats and otters, are too wily to step into box traps.

Besides, the contraptions are too expensive and bulky to be a reasonable alternative to leg-hold traps, the Conbear traps used in water or snares, Vandervort said.

So, for all practical purposes, the initiative would end commercial trapping, a trade that has figured into the Northwest’s economy, politics and settlement since the beginning of European exploration.

State biologist Jim Lichatowich reported in a recent book that Hudson’s Bay Co. trappers working out of Fort Colville killed 3,000 beavers a year between 1826 and 1834. Most of the pelts went to Europe, where beaver-felt hats were the rage. The company hoped that if it exterminated Northwest beavers, the United States would lose interest in the region and cede it to Canada.

As recently as the early 1980s, some Washington residents made their living trapping animals for their pelts. But fur prices have plummeted since then - whether because wearing them is politically incorrect or because the market became flooded with farm-raised furs is a matter of disagreement. In recent years, many Western European countries have banned the import of wild furs.

The state Department of Fish and Wildlife reports that the value of all furs collected by trappers during the 1998-99 season was $148,000. Beaver pelts fetch $15 to $30 apiece, Breeden said. Muskrat furs sell for $2 to $3. An otter skin might bring $65, if it’s exceptional.

Traps have changed little in appearance or basic function since the days of Fort Colville. But Washington laws passed in the 1990s require off-set jaws or padding on leg-hold traps to avoid breaking animals’ legs. Traditionally, the jaws on some traps had teeth.

Traps must be checked every 24 to 48 hours, depending on certain circumstances. First-time trappers must complete a state course and pass a written test.

Trappers complain that a television commercial aired by the vote-yes campaign is misleading because it shows a coyote caught in a beaver trap that legally can be used only submerged.

Wathne said the scene was not filmed in Washington. But neither was it staged, she said.

Wathne and other anti-trapping activists contend that many pets are unintentionally captured in traps set for wildlife. Staff at the Spokane County Animal Control Shelter have seen the results.

Animal control officer Becky Anderson freed a dog from an illegal leg-hold trap with toothed jaws. The dog later lost a paw.

“I personally, years ago, took a dog out of a coyote snare,” shelter director Nancy Hill said. “Of course, it wouldn’t happen if people were obeying the leash law.”

One unintended consequence of the proposed ban could be the elimination of important disease control studies.

At the request of the state Department of Health, many trappers take blood samples from the predators they kill. Two percent to 5 percent of the samples come back positive for bubonic plague, said Jack Lilja, who administers the program. In recent years, the tests have shown small outbreaks of the disease in northcentral and northeastern Washington.

No Washington resident has contracted the plague since the late 1980s - and the victim that time was a trapper, Lilja said. Still, he said, it’s important to keep tabs on the disease so health officials know whether it’s spreading.

To do that, the department needs trappers.

“We certainly don’t have the capability to go out and trap the animals ourselves,” he said.