NWCO — Blog — Center for Wildlife Ethics

Scenarios like the following arise frequently, especially in the spring months. Imagine you are the property owner faced with this dilemma:

You knew there was a spot near the roof in need of repair and you should have sealed it up before winter, but you procrastinated. It was just a matter of time before a mother raccoon decided your attic would serve as a suitable den site to raise her young. You can now hear the raccoon family stirring around upstairs. You’ve never had a problem sharing your neighborhood with the local wildlife, but you know wild animals shouldn’t be in your attic.

What do you do about this unwanted intrusion? Chances are you search Google for “wildlife removal” or some similar search term and obtain the phone numbers of local trappers, known as Nuisance Wildlife Control Operators (NWCOs). So you choose a NWCO who comes to your house, offers to trap the whole family of raccoons, and informs you that he accepts cash or check. Upon further inquiry about his trapping methods, you learn that he intends to kill them by blunt force. You immediately recoil at the thought of this mother and her babies dying for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This cruelty hits you especially hard because you know it was your failure to repair the roof that caused all of this. What do you do?

Since you are reading the Center for Wildlife Ethics blog, it’s a safe bet you’ll attempt to hire another NWCO, one who is willing to use non-lethal alternatives for managing wildlife intrusions.

But if the Indiana Natural Resources Commission (NRC) has its way, making the sensible choice and hiring a service that prioritizes animal welfare and implements non-violent, permanent solutions to common wildlife problems will no longer be a legally permitted option.

The NRC is currently accepting public comments to its proposed rule package that imposes a mandatory kill requirement on all NWCOs who address raccoon, opossum, and coyote conflicts (312 IAC 9-10-11).

The NRC claims a mandatory kill provision is justified because raccoons and opossums can “become a nuisance when they get into attics and other buildings.”

Notably though, killing all trespassing wildlife does nothing to repair an access point in an attic or minimize the desirability of other unnatural wildlife attractants.

Vilifying these wild animals as nuisances and sentencing them to death for their mere presence on one’s property is punitive. It ignores the underlying problem, what served to attract the animal to the location to begin with. While the NWCO may drive off to the next job with a truck full of raccoon pelts, he leaves behind the open trash can, missing vent cover, structural disrepair, or other unnatural wildlife attractant that not only instigated the initial conflict, but will inevitably interest yet another unfortunate animals.

Mandatory kill provisions perpetuate a cycle of violence that is already rampant in Indiana. As the NRC openly admits, trappers “are already euthanizing the majority of these animals.” (It should be noted that killing healthy animals for human convenience is not “euthanasia,” but that’s another discussion).

NRC’s proposed rule furthers the political and economic agenda of unscrupulous NWCOs and their trade associations, who typically have little interest in exploring non-lethal solutions and rely on reoccurring wildlife conflicts to help keep them in business and boost profits.

This irresponsible rule normalizes brutal practices and sanitizes the industry’s pro-killing agenda in the minds of the public. When faced with a concerned and compassionate customer, NWCOs could claim, “We have no choice in the matter. State law requires us to kill these animals.”

The NRC’s proposed rule change is so punitive it not only prohibits the relocation of these species but also prohibits releasing raccoons, opossums, and coyotes on-site and within the animal’s own established territories.

The NRC supports its morally bankrupt position by contending that raccoon and coyote populations are high. Yet the agency has no similar justification for another section in the rule package (312 IAC 9-10-4) that encourages/enables private individuals to breed these same species in captivity.

Surely, if there are so many raccoons, opossums and coyotes that the state must require NWCOs to kill every single one they trap, it would be hypocritical for NRC to allow individuals to profit commercially by breeding more of these same allegedly overpopulated animals.

Obviously, the Center for Wildlife Ethics staunchly opposes NRC’s mandatory kill provision (and this outrageous rule package in its entirety). NWCOs and/or property owners must have the legal right to contract for and implement non-violent solutions to common wildlife problems. Greed and political expedience cannot trump this legal reality, nor should it take priority over decency and common sense.

Please join CWE in opposition to the NRC’s rule package. Take a moment to submit a personalized comment here to defend Indiana’s wildlife. The public comment period closes at the end of day on March 23, 2018.

Fur trapping, similar to other forms of state sanctioned violence against wildlife, is legal today because the time, place and manner of the brutality is conveniently shielded from public view. Broader scrutiny is deflected through clever messaging tactics employed by wildlife agency public relations experts who cloak this commercial activity as a necessary evil.

Addressing all of the communication schemes employed for manipulating public opinion, silencing opposition, and whitewashing violence against animals could require one to author an entire book (or perhaps teach a graduate course at Cornell University, where so-called “human dimensions” studies includes such instruction).

While this blog could not accommodate such a detailed analysis, it may be useful to focus this discussion on the art of conflation, or more specifically, when two or more concepts that share some characteristics are merged as a single identity to the point that the differences are blurred or become lost.

The conflation of recreational (“fur”) trapping and “nuisance” wild animal control is a perfect example of how language is contrived to support and promote an agenda.

Other than terrorizing wild animals though, these two activities have little else in common.

Fur trapping and “nuisance” control are two distinct activities serving different purposes. Each activity is governed by separate licenses, applications and laws. Each depends on unique objectives, skill sets and measurements of success. A “nuisance” control permit is customarily free, yet a licensing fee is always imposed on fur trappers.

“Nuisance” control consists of the selected removal of individual animals whose behavior or condition, such as illness, can be controlled. "Nuisance animal" is a vague label used, accurately or not, to denote an animal who is causing or threatening to cause property damage, or perceived to pose a health or safety threat to domestic animals or people.

In Indiana, the hide of a “nuisance” animal cannot be sold, traded, bartered or gifted. And, in some states, anyone wishing to control “nuisance” animals for a fee, must satisfy testing, continuing education and/or annual reporting requirements.

“Nuisance” problems can be remedied non-lethally. And, the mere presence of an animal does not qualify him/her as a “nuisance”.

Conversely, fur trapping is indiscriminate and targets healthy populations of a chosen species, not individual problem animals. Fur trapping is regulated by particular seasons that correspond with the ripeness (plushness) of a specific species’ fur. Furbearing animals are either discovered dead in traps or killed by trappers, skinned for their pelts and the fur is sold for profit generating purposes.

Fur trapping is always lethal. Wildlife agencies overseeing this activity also mandate the use of “game harvest reports”.

Fur trapping does not control the spread of disease, including rabies, as sick animals are not attracted to bait. In fact, fur trapping may actually serve to exacerbate the spread of disease because only healthy, mature and potentially immune animals are the ones being killed, and therefore removed from the local population.

Despite the numerous distinctions between fur trapping and “nuisance” control, these activities are routinely conflated by trapping proponents to promote and justify more killing. Wildlife agency personnel capitalize on an uninformed public and the nuance between fur trapping and “nuisance” control to disguise the gratuitous nature of the violence, while promoting still more consumptive use of wildlife. And, as evidenced by the Liddle v. Clark, et al., litigation, this tactic has also proven successful for opening up public lands, unbeknownst to the public, for private commercial gain.

The twisted linguistics also establish a contrived need for trapping animals and enable state wildlife communication experts to package fur trapping as a necessary evil. By conflating these two activities, trapping proponents disguise recreational/fur trapping – an increasingly unpopular, commercial exploitation of wild animals – as a more acceptable, publicly palatable endeavor.

As evidenced by the Liddle litigation, the communications and messages are all calculated for the purpose of creating an appearance of responsible stewardship over public lands and the public’s well-being while mischaracterizing an otherwise secretive, dangerous, and morally reprehensible activity. It also allows connected insiders from the private sector to access public lands for commercial gain.

Center for Wildlife Ethics is working to expose trapping industry cruelty and the purposeful conflation of fur trapping with so-called "nuisance" trapping. If you have information on an animal trapping incident and would like to assist CWE's efforts to stop trapping cruelty, please complete our online survey.

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