Anti-trapping group launches campaign

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Millions of Canadian tax dollars are spent protecting the leghold trap, the fur industry and to conduct cruel trap research, alleges an animal rights group carrying out what it describes as an "international education campaign" to stop trapping.

The Fur-Bearers Association wants Canadians to pressure the government to ban the leghold trap and to stop spending millions of dollars on trap research. The campaign is also a response to what is thought to be a government scheme to deceive Canadians and Europeans about leghold trap use and the pain caused to trapped animals.

The Fur-Bearers state that the fur industry and the government have "been hatching this scheme behind closed doors, and paying for it with millions of tax dollars, all so our animals can deliver profits to a shrinking fur industry," according to a five-minute video title The Shameful Scheme,

which was screened at a Jan. 9 press conference.

"They are pretending that these traps don't hurt, that it is only poor Native people who are trapping animals," said director George Clements. "What's worrisome is the amount of misleading information that is put out to the European Parliament."

"It is basically the governments of Canada and the United States, and the fur industry, that are perpetuating the myth that humane traps exist. It just leaves us to ask why, when we know the leghold trap is still being used in Canada and, even more so, in the United States," said Michelle Clausius, executive director of the Fur-Bearers.

The European Union has banned the import of wild furs, said Stanley Johnson, a former European Parliamentarian from Britain, and a former environmental consultant to the European Commission, the cabinet of the European Parliament.

"This movement launched here today, inside Canada, is of course of enormous importance because it's not up to us in Europe to try to tell Canadians how to trap your animals, all we can do is say we don't want their products. But, finally, if there are to be changes in trapping methods, this has to come from pressure brought from within Canada and the United States itself," said Johnson.

The Europeans simply want the leghold trap banned, Clausius added, and Canada has not made that gesture.

"Anything which is not the leghold trap will satisfy the requirements of the regulation, even a Conibear (trap). Anything which is not a leghold trap satisfies our concerns," Johnson said.