The recent guest opinion by Rusty Kramer, president of the Idaho Trapper’s Association (“Trapping is a safe and effective wildlife management tool,” Feb. 10), is an offense to wildlife management professionals everywhere. I am a wildlife biologist with peer-reviewed studies published in the scientific literature, and to hear trapping being promoted as “a safe and effective wildlife management tool” struck me as completely dishonest.

Kramer’s secondary organization, cynically named the Foundation for Wildlife Management, has nothing at all to do with wildlife management. This organization’s chief claim to fame is as a front group for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to fund thousand-dollar bounties on wolves.

Trapping has never played a meaningful or ecologically useful role in wildlife management. Do we need to “manage” pine marten populations with trapping to prevent the decimation of pine squirrels? Is trapping of lynx a legitimate form of wildlife management necessary to maintain snowshoe hare populations? Must weasels be managed to keep mouse and vole populations from going extinct? Of course not. Trappers may target these animals, but the reason that state agencies make no attempt to manage these predators is because they live in a natural balance with their prey, without any human interference.

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