Editor:
For two-and-a-half years, Sechelt council members have dragged their feet regarding a decision to ban cruel, body-gripping traps including the leg-hold, Conibear and snare traps in urban areas. Fifteen hundred concerned citizens signed a petition to ban leg-hold traps, yet council consistently ignores them. At a council meeting on Sept. 25, this issue was tabled again, to "give council time to meet with the trappers' association." Everyone knows what their mandate is: trapping. Coun. Moore stated he talked to provincial and federal trapping associations at the B.C. Municipalities conference, but did he consult with the non-trappers association? A little one-sided?
Other B.C. municipalities are speaking out and taking action against this inhumane practice which is designed to trap and hold, in agony, usually ending in death, any living thing that steps on it. It could be a family pet, a hiker, even a small child. In B.C. a trap can be set just two hundred metres from a home or school. No warning signs or identification tags on the traps are required. Surrey, B.C.'s second largest city, has proposed a trap ban, the City of Creston has asked for an end to cruel traps, and the City of Vernon has requested clarification of devices used to control problem wildlife. Gibsons is the first in Canada to prohibit body-clamping traps. Isn't it time Sechelt did too?
Coun. Doug Hockley has stated emphatically: "The leg-hold trap shouldn't be within a municipality anywhere in Canada. Both the historical rights of fur trappers and Aboriginal rights should not be considered relevant within a municipality. In order to safeguard the rights of its citizens, the paramount objective should be to ban fur trapping by anyone. One would think this should be easy to accomplish, but that is not the case. If you're a citizen out for a walk in the woods, watch where you're stepping."
Jo-Anne Sheanh, Davis Bay
