The Reality of Trapping and the Fur Industry

Trapping makes up a smaller portion of the fur trade. Even so, millions of wild animals are trapped and killed each year – mostly in the United States and Canada – all for frivolous fur fashion, like a hat or a piece of trim.

The Cruelty of Trapping Wild Animals

Trapping involves the setting of archaic metal or wire devices - such as leg hold traps and snares - in the wild, ready to snap closed on to unsuspecting animals as they pass by, often catching them by their limbs, their neck or even around their body.

Trapped animals experience fear, distress and extreme physical suffering, enduring torn flesh, cut tendons and ligaments, broken bones, severed limbs and crushing internal injuries that can lead to a slow, agonizing death. They can endure extensive, painful tooth and jaw damage from biting at traps and snares and may even gnaw off their own limbs in a frantic attempt to escape. Unable to seek shelter from the elements or access food or water, they are also targets for other predators as they are unable to flee or defend themselves. 

Trapped animals can be left suffering for days or even weeks before the trapper returns to kill them by bludgeoning, stomping, strangulation or shooting. In the case of water-set traps, such as for mink, otters and beavers, the animals succumb to a prolonged, cruel death by drowning.

Traps are also highly indiscriminate, catching not only the hunters’ target wildlife species such as coyote, lynx, beaver and raccoons, but also domestic cats and dogs, as well as threatened and endangered mammals and birds.

Weak and Fragmented Trapping Regulations

Trapping regulations are minimal to non-existent, and highly fragmented, with different states and provinces setting[JF1] [SB2]  their own rules with little oversight. In the U.S., for example, around a dozen states require traps to be checked only every 72 hours (3 days) and some have no trap check times at all for certain species or for certain traps. Most states have no limits on the number of common furbearer species trappers can kill and many animals can be trapped year-round. Very few, if any, U.S. states specify how the trapped animals should be killed, and with little oversight over vast areas of often unpopulated land, this is a barely regulated or scrutinized industry, where cruelty goes unchecked

Leghold traps have been banned or heavily restricted in more than 100 countries, yet their use - and the associated cruelty - continues in countries including Canada, Russia and the United States.  Scientists have condemned not only the use of traps but also the designation of traps as “humane”, they are certainly not humane, their use causes great suffering.