By Bekah Welch
Community News Service
UM School of Journalism
A call to the phone number for Footloose Montana, the organization behind the initiative to ban trapping on Montana’s public lands, yields only an automated voice requesting you state your name for the party’s approval. Only if Footloose accepts your call will you be directed to organizer Chris Justice. The system was implemented after a series of anonymous death threats.
The phone security is one of the first hints of the intensity of the debate over the initiative, I-177. It’s also a fight that has been going on since a couple founded Footloose in 2007. The group has mounted two failed attempts to get I-177 on the ballot. This year, after nearly a decade, Justice and the group gathered enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.
Although a central argument against trapping is the negative effect on protected and endangered species, Footloose’s campaign has focused less on wild animals, and more on domesticated ones.
Just how big of a threat traps pose to pets is a point of contention between the two sides, but many proponents of the issue are people who have had their own pets injured in traps. Betsy Brandborg, who investigates complaints against lawyers for the Montana State Bar Association, is one of those advocates. Brandborg’s Airdale, Polly, had her trapped by leg-hold snares on three separate occasions near Helena. The first time was what sparked her interest in the issue.
The second was what solidified it.
That time she reported the incident hoping the state inspection would lead to some “common sense reform.” Instead, what she got was a call from Fish, Wildlife and Parks, requesting she pay a $300 ticket for springing two traps near the one that caught Polly.
For her, the push to ban trapping grew out of an unwillingness by the state to address the issue. After the ticket incident, she contacted FWP and offered to assemble a group of lawyers to reform trapping laws. She suggested trap-free zones, for example.
It was only after they dismissed her offer that she focused her efforts on I-177. Brandborg understands that trapping is a Montana tradition, pointing out her grandfather, father and brother trapped. However Brandborg makes a distinction between a Montana tradition and the type of trapping she sees in Helena.
“Make no mistake - this isn’t your grandfathers trapping. Your grandfather didn’t drive a four wheeler or $30,000 truck up the drainage and set dozens of traps in every direction,” Brandborg said.
Jason Maxwell, the vice president of the Montana Trappers Association, hates hearing stories like Polly’s. He has two dogs, a boxer and a wolfhound, and said trappers are not monsters. They’re not hoping to catch your pet, he contends and is quick to point that many times the traps that catch pets were illegally set in the first place.
For Maxwell, the solution is not a ban, but requiring trapper education classes. Idaho has adopted this rule, and it has led to significantly fewer accidental deaths and injuries, and as Maxwell hopes, fewer “misconceptions that give trappers such a bad reputation.”
But Maxwell and Toby Walrath, the president of the MTA, see I-177 as more than just a limit on trapping. Walrath sees it as an attack on Montanan’s access to their public lands. He argues the measure is the latest in a series of attacks by animal rights activists, adding that many other states that have faced similar measures, and that restricting bear and mountain lion hunts followed.
It is not only the 5,500 Montanans who purchased a recreational trapping license in 2015 who oppose the initiative. The Montana Stockgrowers Association, a non-profit organization that aims to protect ranchers’ rights, opposes I-177, saying it is too broad to allow ranchers to effectively protect their livestock form predators. Jay Bodner, the organization’s director of Natural Resources, says that although ranchers usually deploy traps on their own land, there are certain times of the year, like during calving season, when it is critical to be able to trap on nearby public lands.
But for some who support the ban, many of the ranchers’ arguments miss the point. Dave Pauli, of the Humane Society of the United States, says he understands why ranchers trap predators who may threaten their livelihood but, as he sees it, lethal trapping is removing the symptom, not the illness.
He says that trapping and killing coyotes or other predators may actually lead to sudden increases in coyote births, causing the cycle of livestock loss and killing coyotes to continue. He points to a three-year study performed by the environmentalist group Defenders of Wildlife in Idaho that found the use of flags, guard dogs, increased human presence and scare devices, such as spot lights and alarms, was highly successful in preventing livestock loss.
Bodner, who grew up in a ranching family near Great Falls, is not convinced. He says ranchers need to be able to use a variety of tools against predators, and many members of MSGA already employ non-lethal methods. But sometimes that’s not enough.
The proposal includes exemptions for ranchers, but Bodner notes that the rancher must prove they have already exhausted all other options. By that point, Bodner says, a rancher will have likely already lost a great deal of stock.
The complex questions raised by the initiative are now in the hands of voters and for Justice, that in itself is an accomplishment.
“No matter what happens, I’m just glad Montanans finally get a chance to vote on it.”