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Preamble

WE, the Trappers of North America, prompted by a feeling of profound respect and gratitude toward the many valiant Fur Trappers who have gone before us, whose courageous deeds and exploits will forever embellish the pages of our Nations' early history, and being duly grateful for the rich legacy of wildlife bequeathed by our predecessors, do associate ourselves for the following purposes: To promote sound conservation, legislation and administrative procedures; To save and faithfully defend from waste the natural resources of the United States; To promote sound environmental education programs; and To promote a continued annual fur harvest using the best tools presently available for that purpose.

Source: NTA Trapper's Handbook, $8.00 available from NTA Store

       In a world where humans interact with wildlife habitat in countless ways, management of certain animal populations will always be necessary. Uncontrolled, many species can infringe on real human needs. We may only think of rodents or insects in a grain storage facility to appreciate the need for action.

     Parts of the world, like Western Europe, are now so heavily urbanized that the main challenge for conservationists is to protect what little is left of wildlife habitat. Even in these countries, however, wildlife must be managed. In Holland and Switzerland (often cited as places where trapping has been discouraged), state employees must now be paid to trap and shoot muskrats which are seriously damaging dikes, canals and riverbanks. Uncontrolled, muskrats are capable of astounding rates of reproduction: females can produce more than twenty young each year, while females born in the first Spring litter may produce their own young by Fall.

     Some countries including Canada and the United States, are fortunate to still have vast undeveloped lands and plentiful wildlife. The "surplus" produced by most wildlife species each year represents a valuable natural renewable resource for people living on the land in these countries.

     Regulated trapping helps to smooth out the "boom and bust" cycles which characterize some wildlife populations when Nature is left to do the managing.

     In many areas, animal populations must be controlled to protect human activities: bears destroy beehives; coyotes kill livestock; wolves prey heavily on young moose, deer, and caribou which local people depend upon for food and income; raccoons raid cornfields; hungry deer and elk ravage winter-stored hay; foxes, mink and weasels have a taste for domestic poultry; beavers can flood farmland and roadways.

     Wildlife can also serve as a reservoir for diseases (like rabies and tularemia) which are potentially dangerous to humans. Beaver and muskrat can suffer horribly for weeks before finally succumbing to tularemia or other infectious diseases. (Foxes with rabies also take weeks to die.) Natural, yes, but hardly "humane".

     Household pets are susceptible to distemper, rabies, heartworm, parvovirus, mange, and leptospirosis, all of which can be acquired from infected furbearers. According to Charles Pils, a Biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources: "While trapping is not the solution to every wildlife disease outbreak, under certain circumstances it can reduce threats to the health of humans and domestic animals....By removing population excesses which promote diseases such as canine distemper....in a localized situation, trapping can reduce and even stop the spread of a disease outbreak."

     For all these reasons - even if furs were not valuable - trapping would remain an important wildlife management tool.

     Scott Hartman, former president of the NTA and it's current Director of National and International Affairs has said: "For North America's more than one-half million trappers, the purpose of trapping varies - from assisting wildlife biologists in furbearer studies, to population and disease control, protection against soil erosion, and for food, clothing and income. And yet, thanks to good management practices, furbearers are more numerous in North America today than 100 years ago. The public needs to know that there is no trapping of endangered species and that we continue to research and encourage the use of the most effective and humane trapping techniques. Trapping has been an integral part of our American Heritage, and we intend to see that it continues to contribute to abundant wildlife and sound management programs."

[excerpt from address to the NTA's membership at the Annual Convention in Peoria, Illinois, 11 August 1988.]

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