FISH AND GAME SEEKS TO PLACE RED FOX ON FUR TRAPPING ROSTER.Byline: Associated Press The state Department of Fish and Game wants to add the red fox to the list of wildlife that can be legally trapped for its fur. The proposal, promoted by the fur-trapping industry, would allow licensed trappers to kill an unlimited number of the fox throughout the state, year-round. The five-member state Fish and Game Commission is scheduled to decide the issue April 26. Supporters of the idea want to increase their trapping opportunities and at the same time, cut the population of the non-native species. But animal rights groups and environmentalists say the traps can cause lingering, agonizing injuries, especially to foxes because there is little tissue between the bone and the trap jaws. They are gearing up for a battle over the proposal. ``We can't allow another wildlife species to be trapped in cruel, barbaric traps in our state,'' said Camilla Fox, executive director of the Fur-Bearer Defenders in Larkspur. Trappers would be allowed to use cages, snares that cinch cinch a saddle girth on an American stock saddle. Tightens with a knot on a ring instead of with straps and buckles. necks or feet, deadfall dead·fall n. 1. A trap for large animals in which a heavy weight is arranged to fall on and kill or disable the prey. 2. A mass of fallen timber and tangled brush. traps that drop heavy objects on animals, conibear traps that snap spinal columns and specially padded steel-jaw leg holds intended to prevent harm to pets or rare species that may wander into them. The department recommended the trapping in January, after receiving a request from the California Trappers Association, the California Sportsman's Lobby and the Glenn County Fish, Game and Recreation Commission. ``We saw it as an opportunity to harvest an animal and help out Fish and Game. Fish and Game is for it,'' said Dan DeMers, president of the California Trappers Association in Cameron Park in El Dorado County. ``Trappers perform a service that very few urbanites are aware of,'' he added. ``We'd be helping out fish and wildlife. That's something that trappers have always done. We help control the beaver and the muskrat muskrat, North American aquatic rodent. The common muskrats, species of the genus Ondatra, are sometimes called by their Native American name, musquash. ,'' which disturb waterways and levees.'' The red fox was imported from other states as early as the 1870s for rodent control, then for fox hunts and, in the 1920s, for fur farms. Unlike the native Sierra Nevada red fox and San Joaquin kit fox, the red fox has invaded wetlands to feed on marsh birds, including the endangered California clapper rail The California Clapper Rail (Rallus longirostris obsoletus) is an endangered subspecies of the Clapper Rail (R. longirostris). It is found principally in California's San Francisco Bay, and also in Monterey Bay and Morro Bay. . At several wildlife refuges, including the San Francisco Bay San Francisco Bay, 50 mi (80 km) long and from 3 to 13 mi (4.8–21 km) wide, W Calif.; entered through the Golden Gate, a strait between two peninsulas. National Wildlife Refuge  National Wildlife Refuge , more than 200 non-native red fox have been trapped and fatally injected. All native fur-bearing species have been trapped and hunted throughout California history. As the number of animals declined, the bear, fisher, San Joaquin kit fox, red fox, marten, river otter, ringtail ringtail or ring-tailed cat: see cacomistle. , wolverine and mountain lion were taken off the trapping list. Those species remaining are the badger, beaver, bobcat, coyote, gray fox, muskrat, mink, opossum opossum (əpŏs`əm, pŏs`–), name for several marsupials, or pouched mammals, of the family Didelphidae, native to Central and South America, with one species extending N to the United States. , raccoon raccoon, nocturnal New World mammal of the genus Procyon. The common raccoon of North America, Procyon lotor, also called coon, is found from S Canada to South America, except in parts of the Rocky Mts. and in deserts. , spotted and striped skunk, and weasel. ``No one in the agency can recall the last time that an animal was added to the list,'' said Fish and Game wildlife biologist William E. Grenfell Jr. |
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