UPDATE: Looks like the feds will find some money for the program after all.  Read the story here.

Shortfalls in the federal budget will likely have an impact on animal damage control programs throughout the United States.  According to an article in Minnesota’s Duluth News Tribune, the USDA Wildlife Services program that hired government trappers to capture and remove problem wolves will go away due to budget cuts.

The wolves were targeted near where livestock and pets had been killed. And almost everyone who knew about the program — farmers, conservation leaders, wolf lovers, state natural resource officials, Republican and Democratic politicians — liked it.

But with a moratorium on earmarks in Washington, there’s no money assigned to the program after fiscal 2011 ends Friday, when wolf trappers will cease operations. In past years, Minnesota and Wisconsin Congress members routinely used earmarks to preserve the program, which is run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services division.

The animal damage control program wasn’t just popular in Minnesota.  Throughout the U.S., the program aided farmers, ranchers and landowners who had problems with animals ranging from coyotes and wolves to beavers and geese.

“We’re losing one of the best wolf conservation tools we’ve had. It was so effective at solving the problem without randomly harming wolves,” said Nancy Gibson, a board member of the Minnesota-based International Wolf Center. “And there was such an educational element. The trappers had so much expertise, I think they really helped the farmers avoid problems.”

Unless the program is funded, the responsibility will rely on states, local communities and private landowners to deal with the problem animals.  On the bright side, the absence of the government programs may provide an opportunity for skilled trappers to market their services and take care of animal damage control problems on a local level.

The legislation concerning the issuance and appeals process for landowners to obtain limited permits to trap beavers, muskrats and other “furbearing mammals” that pose a human risk to drinking water supplies has been batted back and forth between the governor, House and Senate.

In an effort to break a stalemate over a bill governing permits for beaver and other wildlife trapping, the state Senate passed a measure Tuesday attempting to collect more information about the number of permits issued each year at the local level and the impediments to obtaining those permits.

Hopefully with better data collection, the state will realize that there is a huge problem with people being denied permits from the Health Department, and legislation will be passed to ease the process.

Read the story here.

The change would simply make it easier for landowners with animal damage problems to jump through the hoops placed on them by their local health department.  Here’s some of the bill language:

If no response is provided by the municipal board of health within 10 calendar days or the application is denied, the applicant or his duly authorized agent may transfer the application for the emergency permit to the director.  If the director determines that such a threat exists, it shall immediately issue the emergency permit to alleviate the existing threat to human health and safety, for a period not exceeding 10 days.

If said threat to human health and safety has not been alleviated within said ten days, the applicant or his duly authorized agent shall apply to the granting authority for an extension permit to continue the use of alleviation techniques, specified in this section, for a period not exceeding 30 days. If the granting authority determines that such a threat to human health or safety exists, as defined in this section, the authority shall immediately issue an extension permit.

Essentially, the changes give the landowner a bit more leverage when trying to get a permit from the government to deal with animal damage (mostly beaver) problems.

I don’t have the original bill language, but I believe the original version (described in Marc Folco’s column) was watered down quite a bit after going through multiple readings and being sent back from liberal governor Devall Patrick’s desk with amendments.

Even though I and many others would love to see the trap ban reversed in Massachusetts, this bill seems like a common sense patch to help those dealing with animal damage problems get through the red tape caused by excess government regulation.

Read the full text of the bill here.

Raccoons: They’re on the rise in the valley, animal services workers like Stoner say, wreaking havoc on gardens, chicken coops and homes across Bozeman.

The rise of the raccoon has been a gradual one, said Phil Hettinger with TC 1 Wildlife in Bozeman. He had to think back 40 years to remember a time when one never saw the creature in the Gallatin Valley.

But the recent building boom had a way of accelerating the raccoon’s expansion.

Read the full story here.

Read the full story here.

While furbearers can be a valuable natural resource, they can also cause serious ecological problems when their population levels are uncontrolled.  For example, we simply have to look at places like Massachusetts and Washington state, where laws prohibiting trapping have resulted in overpopulation and animal damage problems from multiple furbearers.

Ecological problems also arise when furbearers are introduced into areas outside of their native range.  The newly introduced species and the natural environment it is placed in are often not compatible and a major ecosystem imbalance can often arise.

In a recent case of ecosystem imbalance with a furbearer population, trappers in Ireland have been commissioned to trap and kill thousands of American mink that are causing havoc with bird and fish populations.

Mink are not native to Ireland, but have been inadvertently introduced via escapes from fur farms in the country.  Since their establishment in the wild, mink have taken on a predatory role in a place where populations of fish and bird species are not used to such predation.  So to help minimize the negative impacts mink are causing to the country’s environment, this huge trapping effort is underway.

More than 33,000 mink which originally escaped from fur farms have colonised much of Ireland, a new report shows.

Three full-time trappers have now been engaged by the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) to catch the mink in riverside traps and to kill them before they can wipe out rare birds.

Luckily, trapping can help play a role in restoring ecosystem balance in places like these.

Read the full story here.

The Winston-Salem City Council decided on April 19 to ask the N.C. General Assembly to pass an act directing the N. C. Wildlife Resources Commission to establish a season in Forsyth County for taking foxes with weapons and by trapping them in Forsyth County. Trapping foxes is now illegal in North Carolina. Any captured fox must be released.

The reason they want to make fox trapping legal is because it’s difficult to attract coyote trappers to an area to solve animal damage problems because they aren’t allowed to harvest foxes they catch while targeting coyotes.  Locals believe that more liberal fox regulations would attract more trappers to the area and help with the coyote problem.  Plus, there isn’t a shortage of foxes in the area.

Read more here.

Read the full story here.

It’s a clear fact that a large coyote population in the area has resulted in some serious human-animal conflicts, ranging from the disappearance of household pets to the tragic death of singer-songwriter Taylor Mitchell, who was attacked by coyotes while jogging.

Another clear fact is that low fur prices have resulted in fewer trappers and hunters harvesting coyotes and helping to eliminate these overpopulation problems.

As Surette said:

My local trapper, Calvin Nickerson of nearby Glenwood, normally takes up to 20 in a year but didn’t this winter because of the price. I asked him what difference removing 20 animals from the area would have made to the general mayhem. “A lot,” he said emphatically. Mike O’Brien, manager of the fur bearers’ division for the Department of Natural Resources, generally agrees.

The local government has recently been discussing a price support.  Not a bounty, specifically, but a support that would ensure that the price of coyote pelts stay within an acceptable level year-to-year, to ensure adequate trapping effort and population control.

Part of the problem with the coyotes being suddenly brazen is that the price of their fur collapsed last year with the recession and trappers dropped off trapping them (there’s a worldwide market for the furs, used mostly as trim for cuffs, collars and parkas, but also for whole coats). The trappers’ federation has asked for price support to make up the difference to a minimum of $30 per pelt to a maximum of $50, and the province is considering it, or some form of it.

The experts believe that the price support could help achieve the province’s goal of minimizing human-animal conflicts.

He (Mike O’brien) has been scouring best practices elsewhere in North America as part of the new policy, to be announced shortly by Natural Resources Minister John MacDonell. The evidence is that bounties don’t reduce the population, he says, but trapping increases the coyotes’ “level of wariness” and keeps them farther away from humans: the most that can be hoped for.

It’s clear that the coyote problem locally, and in other places across Canada and the U.S.,  could be properly dealt with by taking the proactive approach that Nova Scotia is considering.

In the end, this is not the problem it’s made out to be, either biologically or politically. A minor amount of incentive for trapping, more public education and a targeting of problem animals will take care of most of it. The rest has to do with us living alongside nature, something we’re not very good at.

You can read the full story by clicking here.

I recently stumbed across the Wildlife Pro Network, a website and blog that’s dedicated to nuisance wildlife control and the trapping industry.

Robb Russell founded the Wildlife Pro Network in 2007 to connect the nuisance wildlife control industry with hunters and trappers.

You can find the network at Wildlifepro.net, and find the blog at skinnymoose.com/wildlifepro.

My favorite part of the Wildlife Pro Network is the podcast.  Mr. Russell puts together a regular podcast, updated with a new episode every several days.  One of the more recent podcasts, titled “Today’s Modern Trapper”, features a 2 1/2 hour long discussion between some of the legends of the trapping industry: Newt Sterling, Bob Noonan, Clint Locklear and others.

You can subscribe to the free podcast on the iTunes store, or visit the podcast site here.