Ultrarunning Edge Blog
| Urban Fur Trapping on Running Trails? |
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| Written by Bruce R. Copeland |
| Wednesday, 03 December 2008 20:46 |
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Here on the Wasatch Front we're having a VERY late Fall. Many of my preferred mountain trails are free of snow, but extremely muddy! As a result, I've been doing most of my running at lower elevations. That brings me to the problem I've recently encountered: fur trapping on urban trails.
The local National Forest boundary has a game fence to keep deer from coming down the mountains and eating all the tasty landscaping around urban homes. One of our best lower elevation trails follows the game fence, and I frequently run there with one of my sled dogs. Lately someone has been setting wire snare traps in breaks under the game fence to trap foxes. This is illegal along certain parts of the trail and legal along other parts.   I'm not opposed to hunting or trapping in any general sense—in fact I've hunted grouse and pheasant for years, and deer before that. Also as an ultrarunner who spends lots of time in the backcountry, I readily understand the natural balance between predator and prey, and I accept the fact that humans are sometimes the predator. But fur trapping along a semi-urban fence bothers me at several different levels. First, many people run or hike that trail with their dogs or children, and the traps pose an unreasonable hazard. Second it seems unsporting to use breaks in the unnatural fence boundary as the basis for trapping wild game. And last I believe any decent trapper ought to be able to travel at least half as far into the backcountry as an ultrarunner. Maybe I'm just being a stick in the mud; what do you think?
 (Addendum, December 7, 2008) And here's what all this nonsense leads to. The snare was tightly wrapped around the abdomen of the cat (you can see the snare wire in front of the cat's face in the picture). Fortunately we were successful in freeing the kitty.
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Comments (5) 
Laura
Thanks so much, this healthy, sleek cat is clearly a pet and the fact that you didn't lose your fingers getting it free furthers this conclusion. This is truly wrong. There is no sport in putting such traps along the holes in the fence. Imagine what a child would feel seeing her pet bloated and dead 5 days later when the pet didn't come home and the child went looking for her companion.
Last year the traps disappeared soon after I wrote this article. At the time I (naively) hoped they would not return. But this year they have reappeared, and I have personally seen a dead cat, a dead fox, and two live skunks in the traps. Fortunately my sled dog is well behaved and I was able to keep her away from the skunks when we were running past. Last Saturday the traps disappeared again (perhaps the 'trapper' was too chicken to face criticism from hunters on the opening day of pheasant season).
The Utah Department of Wildlife Resources guide book on trapping clearly directs trappers to "Avoid setting traps near trails that are frequently used by people and dogs during the trapping season." Unfortunately it appears this admonition doesn't have the force of law. If the traps reappear again, I think we will need to send complaints to DWR and see if we can get a story about this in the press. Perhaps one of us should write a story for the Providence Citizen—though the problem is obviously more extensive than just Providence, UT.
Bruce
Cut the cable. Often.