http://www.vcstar.com/news/2013/apr/02/bill-to-protect-pets-from-traps-advances-but-ban/Bill to protect pets from traps advances, but ban on bobcat trapping stalls
SACRAMENTO — A bill that seeks to reduce the unintended deaths of domestic pets in traps designed to catch and kill small wild animals received unanimous approval, but a more controversial measure to ban trapping bobcats in California stalled before an Assembly committee on Tuesday.
Without debate, the Assembly Water, Parks and Wildlife committee gave bipartisan approval to a measure by Assemblyman Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara, that would limit the allowable size of so-called body-crushing traps used to kill animals such as skunks and raccoons that create nuisances in developed areas.
The bill, AB 789, would also require trappers to humanely kill animals that are injured when caught in conibear traps by prohibiting the use of chemicals other than those specifically designed for animal euthanasia. In addition, it requires the posting of signs notifying pet owners of the existence of traps in publicly accessible areas.
The panel, however, balked at taking up a measure to ban the trapping of bobcats, a practice that the bill’s supporters say has soared in recent years as the price of bobcat pelts on the international market has increased tenfold since 2009. AB 1213 by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, was inspired by outrage in the communities surrounding Joshua Tree National Park, where an out-of-area trapper recently killed several bobcats on private land just outside the national park. Those bobcats had become such a fixture in the community that local residents had given some of them names.
The trapping of bobcats is permitted during hunting season, and last year trappers harvested about 1,500 of the predators in California — significantly more than the average take in recent years, but still well below the 6,000 to 7,000 that had been killed annually during the late 1970s and early ’80s.
Bloom argued that because no one knows how many of the secretive, difficult-to-count animals exist in the state it is impossible for state wildlife regulators to set a sustainable limit on how many can be killed.
UC Davis Ecology Professor Fraser Schilling testified that bobcats are, along with coyotes and mountain lions, one of only three remaining predators in the California wilds. Adult bobcats, which stand about 15 inches high, typically prey on rodents, rabbits, skunks, foxes and small deer.
“When you take away any predator, the ecosystem unravels,” he said.
Los Angeles furrier Michael Pappas said bobcat pelts are used to make luxury apparel that is sold largely in North America and Europe. The California harvest, he said, has been sustainable for decades. “There is no shortage of bobcats, I can assure you that,” he told the committee.
Lobbyist Gerald Upholt, representing the California Trappers Association, asserted there is “no science-based need” to enact a ban on bobcat trapping. “Anything that occurs relative to the regulation of trapping should be based on science,” he said.
Upholt and others in the industry urged lawmakers to defer to the state Fish and Game Commission to develop a bobcat management plan to determine what, if any, limits should be placed on the annual take.
Bloom asserted that while such a plan would be desirable, the cost of conducting a scientifically valid, region by region count of bobcats would be prohibitive.
“I don’t think anyone disputes that it would be nice to have more science,” he said. “The available evidence we have is that numbers of bobcats is decreasing, the take is increasing and the cost of pelts is going up.”
Committee members put the measure on hold, and several urged Bloom to meet with opponents and consider modifying the bill before bringing it back for a vote later this year.