Citizen’s Reject the Legislature’s Plan to Reimburse Wolf-Killing Trappers

Montana Sought To Subsidize Ruthless Profiteering in Trapping

Roughly 100 countries have banned leghold traps for their cruelty, including Britain and the European Union; they are still legal and in-use in the United States.

Trapping reform in the Mountain West region of the United States is one of the most heated and polarizing political topics amongst its citizens.

While trappers themselves represent the minority, the movement for progressive animal-rights and ecological reform has found the hunting industry, agriculture, and the energy-sector rallying to the trapper’s sides to effectively blockade the passing of any new regulations or reform bills—namely for fear that they may cut into revenue.

It has been intensely disheartening to watch this real-time exemplification of just how fragile and fickle our human egos can be.

Time and time again, we have proven ourselves unable to put our collective biases aside, and relinquish our agendas, even long enough to agree that animals have the capacity to suffer—just as we do—and that trapping animals is cruelty.

Wolf dead in trap. Photo courtesy of Wyoming Untrapped.

In January of this year, a bill (Montana House Bill №279) was introduced by Rep. Bob Brown to the Montana State…