Critics seek end to Maine's coyote-trapping program

Tuesday, January 8, 2002

By MARK SHANAHAN, Portland Press Herald Writer

AUGUSTA — Maine's long-standing practice of allowing people to snare coyotes is not having the intended effect and should be stopped. At least that's the message critics of the controversial animal-control program are sending to state wildlife officials as they consider changes to allow more coyotes to be snared each year.

"Basically, this is not good science," said Debi Davidson, of the National Wildlife Federation.

Davidson and others are calling on the state to abandon, not expand, a program that kills an estimated 2,000 coyotes annually, most of them in northern Maine. They dispute the program's effectiveness in protecting the state's deer population.

Fueling the debate is a recent study showing that at least some snared coyotes in Maine are being shot or clubbed because the wire hoop that captures them does not always kill them.

"This is an issue that's on the bubble with a lot of people," said Rep. Matthew Dunlap, D-Old Town, who is chairman of the Legislature's Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee. "Some people think we're not doing nearly enough snaring, and some think we're doing too much and want us to get rid of it."

Dunlap's committee heard Monday from state wildlife officials, who are recommending that the program be modified to increase training for snarers, extend the snare season and remove limits on the number of snares that can be deployed by people certified by the state.

The changes can be adopted by the state Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife without any action by the Legislature.

For many years, Maine has had the most liberal coyote trapping and hunting program in the eastern U.S.: Coyotes may be hunted year-round, and night-hunted from January through April. There also is a 14-day early trapping season, and a 64-day regular trapping season.

Twenty years ago, concerned about the growing number of coyotes and their impact on deer, the state instituted the snare program, which runs from December through March in the unorganized territories.

Supporters, including the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, say snaring has been effective in reducing the number of coyotes, which has helped preserve a deer population that is struggling to survive in northern and eastern Maine due to a lack of winter habitat.

"There's no doubt in my mind that this program has achieved exactly what it was intended to achieve," said David Tobey, a snarer in Grand Lake Stream. "This is a maintenance program, really."

Tobey said the number of deer taken in Grand Lake Stream during hunting season has increased significantly since he began snaring coyotes.

But there are limits to what snaring can accomplish. State wildlife biologists say long-term suppression of the coyote population in Maine would require eliminating between 7,000 and 11,000 coyotes immediately, and 70 percent of the peak autumn population thereafter.

State biologists, like Chuck Hulsey, have other reservations about expanding the snaring program. In a memo, Hulsey wrote that any "resources devoted to overseeing the recreational snaring of coyotes are resources unavailable to devote to habitat protection and management."

The state budgets $20,000 to finance the program, including payments to some of the snarers.

There are humane considerations, too.

"Killing an animal by strangling it with a wire loop often results in a slow, painful death," Hulsey wrote. "It would violate state humane laws to treat a domestic dog in the same manner a snared coyote is treated."

There was no mention Monday of the recent study, done by a state wildlife biologist, that found several of the snared coyotes had been beaten or shot. Autopsies revealed swollen heads, broken necks, bloody mouths and bullet wounds, injuries inconsistent with a snare.

Critics of the snaring program say the public is largely unaware of the practice, and they pledged to press state officials to rethink it.

"The fish and wildlife resources of this state do not belong to any single person or special interest group," said John Glowa, of South China, past president of Maine Wolf Association. "They belong to all of us and none of us."

Staff Writer Mark Shanahan can be contacted at 791-6363 or at: mshanahan@pressherald.com

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