CA: no body-gripping trapping for recreation or fur trade.

Post date: Apr 8, 2012 4:18:40 PM

California's 1998 ballot Initiative, Proposition 4, a ban on specified traps and poisons, was passed in 1998 and is still in force.

It prohibits trapping mammals classified as fur bearing (or non-game) with body gripping traps for recreation or commerce in fur.

This includes, but is not limited to, steel-jawed leghold traps, padded-jaw leghold traps, conibear traps, and snares.

Cage and box traps, nets, suitcase-type live beaver traps and common rat and mouse traps are not considered body-gripping traps.

California isn't the only State with trapping regulations like this. In his article Is Trapping Doomed?, Tom Reed of the High Country News described similar trapping regulations in three other states:

"Voters in three states, Massachusetts, Colorado and California, have banned the recreational and commercial use of all leg-hold, body-gripping and snare traps. Arizona bans such trapping on public lands but allows it on private land."

These are not "trapping bans"; they still allow the following forms of trapping:

  • Wildlife management using a full set of trapping methods.
  • Pest control indoors and in the yard.
  • Recreational and commercial trapping using cage traps, nets, and suitcase traps.

These States continue to address wildlife problems that require human intervention. They've simply put the most dangerous parts of wildlife management into the hands of professionals who are accountable for operating safely and responsibly. In other words, these States are not getting in the way of pest control or wildlife management, but they are making the State safer for everyone--including people's dogs.