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Vermont Residents: Restrict Trapping and Hunting Coyotes With Dogs

Vermont Residents: Restrict Trapping and Hunting Coyotes With Dogs

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Officials in Vermont are considering restrictions on trapping and hunting coyotes with dogs, but these new proposed rules will still leave animals to suffer in the most inhumane ways.

The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board are accepting public comments on the new proposed regulations for both trapping and hunting coyotes with dogs. The recommendations made by the department and board are not strong enough and do not thoroughly account for the protection of wild animals and human safety. Send your public comment to ask that they strengthen these rules to further protect coyotes, non-target animal species, and humans.

In Defense of Animals

Animals caught in leghold traps often chew off their own limbs to escape or are left to suffer in excruciating pain and fear. Trapping not only harms the targeted animals, but hurts non-target wild animals, animal companions, and people as well. Last trapping season, two dogs were killed in Vermont. Hunting with dogs is an equally cruel activity. Coyotes are chased to the point of exhaustion and cornered, and dogs used for hunting are sometimes neglected or treated solely as property.

Act 159 and Act 165 were created in response to two bills introduced this legislative session to ban leghold traps and to ban hunting of coyotes with dogs, respectively. The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department convinced legislators that an outright ban was not necessary for the well-being of wild animals and human safety, despite the fact that this bloodsport is brutal and inhumane.

Animal advocacy organizations including Protect Our Wildlife, the Vermont Wildlife Coalition, and the Humane Society of the United States suggested prohibiting body-crushing kill traps on land and requiring traps be set away from trails and other public areas on all public lands in order to protect people and their animal companions. These are not included in the recommendations of the Fish and Wildlife Department and the Fish and Wildlife Board, however.

Submit a comment to the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department and the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Board letting them know that their recommendations do not go far enough. All traps should be set away from public land,body-crushing traps should not be allowed on any land, and coyote hounders should not be allowed to bait coyotes.

 

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