With leghold traps there is no debate: They are inhumane | Editorial

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(The Fur Bearers)

Trapping season begins Sunday in North Jersey, so if you happen to find your cat's paw caught in one of those leghold contraptions with its bones and tendons mangled, you can thank our state Legislature.

For 31 years, these enclosed foothold traps and various modifications have been banned in New Jersey, with good reason: They are inhumane. A law passed during the Kean Administration prohibited any "animal trap of steel-jawed leghold type or types," and it's been litigated and upheld numerous times.

But a few hundred fur trappers convinced the Division of Fish and Wildlife to change the game code back in June. The DFW's Fish and Game Council voted to legalize three foothold traps, spring-loaded mechanisms that grab a limb like all the others that have been banned.

And if this causes suffering to wildlife or your family pet, that's just their tough luck.

The Legislature - or two key members of the Legislature - rolled over. Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union) tried to block the DFW by drafting a concurrent resolution back on May 18th, but it got stuck: Sen. Bob Smith (D-Middlesex) won't put it to a vote in the Environmental Committee, and Sen. President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) has not allowed a floor vote.

Never mind that the resolution would pass easily, or that everybody knows these traps look as though they were designed at CIA Black Sites.

Sweeney is calling for due diligence. He says any time legislative action is taken to negate a regulation that may be inconsistent with legislative intent deserves examination, and he can revisit it in the next session.

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The problem is that the legislative intent has been clear for 31 years. The Attorney General under Gov. Kean, Irwin Kimmelman, famously called the ban "absolute," unambiguous," and applicable to "technical modifications." The law is clear: No enclosed, spring-loaded traps - period.

And why anyone would rather bow to 276 members of the New Jersey Fur Harvesters rather than the 16,000 New Jerseyans (and over 100,000 people nationally) who signed petitions to pass the Lesniak resolution is a stumper.

We know this: Anyone who says that leghold traps "do not result in the death of the captured animal, or in the potential for significant injury," as the DFW claims, simply hasn't done the research.

These traps (marketed as the Egg, the Duffer Trap, and Lil' Grizz Get'rz) are designed to exert 60 pounds of clamping pressure on an animal's paw, which can cause lacerations and broken bones. They create terror, cause the kind of anxiety that leads to self-amputations, and exposes the animal to predators.

Born Free USA, an animal rights group, estimates that more than 300,000 non-targeted animals are the victims of traps each year; and that for every intentional capture, there are two accidentally trapped. Their database shows that New Jersey doesn't have many accidents, but one reason is our ban on leghold traps.

That ban must be restored and existing law must be upheld. Until then, keep your pets indoors. There are careless legislators lurking about.
