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To Trap or Not to Trap: That Question Faces NM House Committee Today

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Wednesday, February 27, 2013   

SANTA FE, N.M. - Anyone can get caught in a steel-jaw leghold trap. A 6-month-old kitten got caught in one in Albuquerque this month.

To address such problems, legislation has been introduced in the House designed to restrict cruel traps and poisons. Sponsored by Rep. Bobby Gonzales, D-Taos, the New Mexico Wildlife Protection and Public Safety Act would prohibit trapping or poisoning of wildlife. The measure, House Bill 579, goes to the House Energy and Resource Committee today.

Gonzales said opponents of the bill are distributing false information about trapping.

"One of the analyses coming from one of the agencies saying that no one has ever been hurt," Gonzales said. "That's not true."

Gonzales told the story of a high school senior who was bitten by her dog while the dog was stuck in a trap near Taos.

Another area resident, Arifa Goodman of San Cristóbal, told of a December afternoon when she and her two dogs went for a walk. One got caught in a trap, then Arifa got caught in the same trap trying to get her dog free. Then, while getting help for herself, her other dog got caught in a second trap. Goodman said her dogs survived the ordeal, but things could have ended quite differently for them and for her.

"I wasn't clothed for staying out all night in close to zero temperatures," she said. "I could have died up there. It took almost a year to get sensation back in my little finger, and even now it doesn't work totally properly."

Some opponents of the bill say it will hurt their livelihood. Gonzales says email response to the bill is running four-to-one in support.

Mary Katherine Ray, wildlife chairwoman for the Rio Grande chapter of the Sierra Club, said the brutality of steel-jaw leghold traps is unspeakable.

"When these things close - it's been compared to having a car door slam on a limb," she said. "In addition, there's the response of the animal. What they do is jerk and twist and fight the trap. That can really exacerbate any injury that might have happened."

After today's hearing before the Energy committee, Gonzales said, "from there it goes to the House Judiciary Committee. And if it was to be successful there, then it would come to a floor vote on the House side. And then from there it would cross chambers to the Senate side."

Sometimes it takes education for change to occur, Gonzales said, as it did when New Mexico banned cockfighting.

Colorado already has banned trapping, he said, and Arizona also has taken some initiative on the issue. Gonzales said that means unless New Mexico changes its laws, people committed to trapping are likely to come from other states to set traps in the Land of Enchantment.

The text of HB 579 is online at nmlegis.gov.


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