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California has enacted a new ban on trapping furs from animal skins, making it the first state to ban centuries-old livelihoods that were closely tied to the rise of the western border.
The Wildlife Protection Act of 2019, promulgated by Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday,
prohibits commercial or recreational trapping on public and private lands.
MP Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), who introduced the
legislation, said that it was time to end the fur catch. "It sounds particularly cruel, obviously, and it's just useless and expensive," she said.
Although commercial trapping was at the very beginning of California's economy, opening up the San Francisco Bay Area to international trade even before California's 1848 gold rush, its fortunes worsened during many decades.
Mr. Gonzalez said that the approximately six dozen trappers still working in the state, up from 5,000 a century ago, can not afford to pay the full cost of setting up and regulating their industry.
This ban also comes into play when California lawmakers plan to take stronger measures to protect animals and wildlife, often endangering secular traditions.
Lawmakers are considering proposals to ban the sale of all fur products, including fur coats, and to ban the use of animals in any state circus, at any time. Except for horses, dogs and domestic cats.
"There has been a real shift in the way we treat animals," Gonzalez said.
A total of 68 trappers reported killing 1,568 animals throughout the state in 2017, according to the California Department of Fisheries and Wildlife. The coyote, the gray fox, the beaver, the badger and the mink are among the 10 species reported.
Trapped animals are strangled, slaughtered or beaten to death, taking care not to damage the skin before skinning.
Under the law, the use of traps to catch waffles, house mice, rats, moles and voles would still be allowed.
The law followed a public outcry in 2013 when environmental activist Tom O'Key discovered in 2013 a bobcat trap illegally installed on his property near Joshua Tree National Park.
O'Key fell on the trap chained to a jojoba bush and camouflaged with broken branches just north of the 720,000 acre park, where big cats are a dominant force in the ecosystem.
He immediately alerted his neighbors and contacted the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and the Hi-Desert Star newspaper, triggering a wave of complaints highlighting the practice of trapping, killing, and skinning bobcats to supply the markets. fur in China, Russia and Greece.
"I could not have guessed that in a million years," said O'Key in an interview, "this trap would trigger an unstoppable movement capable of changing legislative thinking towards wildlife."
Assembly Member Richard Bloom (Santa Monica) enacted his 2013 Bobcat Protection Act, which followed petitioning campaigns, social media campaigns and phone calls to legislators of wildlife advocates who have described treason and murder as a cruel profession.
Eight months after O'Key sounded the alarm at Joshua Tree, the California Fish and Game Commission voted 3 votes to 2 to ban commercial trapping of the bobcat throughout the state.
The Wildlife Protection Act 2019 states that the small number of active trappers in the state can afford to pay the full cost of setting up and regulating its industry, as the 39, requires the law.
It was supported by the Center for Biodiversity and the non-profit group Social Compassion in Legislation, which launched a bill to stop the sale of dogs, cats and rabbits of industrial race.
Opponents included the California Farm Bureau Federation, which had warned that the bill, if passed, could have significant economic consequences for the agricultural sector.
The trapping industry has declined over decades in California.
Before California reached about 40 million, fur trapping played an important role in wolf and wolverine demise and in the severe decline of sea otters, fishermen, martens, beavers and other furbearers.
Over the last two decades, animal advocates have partnered with traditional conservation groups to lobby federal and federal wildlife authorities and raise concerns about cruelty to wildlife. animals to voters. Trappers are anachronistic, they said, and their traps expose wildlife to horrific suffering.
"The signing of this bill is the result of convincing data and a reversal of public opinion on animal cruelty," said Judie Mancuso, Founder and President of Social Compassion in Legislation.
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