In our last episode: Choking to Death:
Killing Canada's Wolves with Neck Snares,
we exposed you to the cruel realities of
how our wolves and other canids are dying slow,
painful deaths in inhumane neck snares.
My name is John E. Marriott and this episode
we’re delving deeper into the dangers
that neck snares pose, not just to our
coyotes and wolves and foxes,
but also to our beloved family pets
and, perhaps surprisingly, to your wallet.
[Intro Music]
To many a pet is more than just a dog or cat,
but a member of the family.
They nestle their way into our lives
and create a bond that is real,
authentic, and cherished. And for many,
experiencing the outdoors with their
family pet is a favorite activity.
But as you’re about to hear
a family walk with your dog can turn into
a total nightmare when snares are encountered.
In the middle of January we went out for a hike.
For several years we've been going to the spot.
We’ve had three or four different generations
of dogs that have gone there
and it's always been great.
This January was a lot different.
Two kilometers into the hike,
maybe 20 minutes from the parking lot,
10 to 15 feet from the trail,
our dog apparently followed a scent
towards some baited traps and got snared.
The snare was really tight around his
neck and we couldn't get it off
and we started yelling and trying to
get some help cause we knew there
were snowmobilers around.
Luckily a snowmobiler came by
and had the right tools.
We had some needle-nose pliers
that we could barely get in there
and they were cutting a dog
and it still took another 10 minutes just
of trying to get the snare off
but we finally got the snare off.
People don't realize there's no switch,
pull it tighter and it gets tighter,
it just sinches down, and that's a dangerous situation.
Since then just trying to figure out
what happened, and what went wrong,
and how to avoid this, has been really frustrating.
Just learning about that it is a legal trapline,
and it's also legal for us to be there,
and it’s also legal for us to not have
a dog on a leash there.
On the Alberta.ca website there’s
quite a substantial brochure on
what's allowed in this exact area,
you can ride your horse, your bike, skidoo.
You can hunt, fish,
you can get a permit to cut trees down,
you can graze your cows there,
but there's nothing about trapping in this brochure.
So when I phoned Fish and Wildlife
I wanted to find out why that is
and they said because trapping is considered
the same as hunting.
Which makes no sense.
It’s a totally different thing.
This trapline is 40 kilometres long,
and there were dozens of traps 2 kilometres
from a road, where people park
and walk with their dogs.
Why do it so close to where people are?
So many people have had so many
bad encounters there this winter.
If trappers that are watching this
they're going to go “why don't you know
about the dangers surrounding you?”.
I mean that’s why I carry bear spray,
that's why I have a spot GPS,
I know that I need to take care of myself,
but if I don't know about this trap
and it’s purposely kept a secret from me,
that makes no sense.
There was four parking lots for this area.
One parking lot had one sign,
and that's not the parking lot
that hikers start from.
There should absolutely be a very
solid mandate to provide signs, everywhere!
Surprisingly, Rod’s story is not uncommon.
In addition to the tens of thousands of wolves,
coyotes, and foxes that are killed in neck snares
across this country each year,
there are also dozens of family dogs
that suffer the exact same fate.
Our family has been on this quarter section
for just over a hundred years.
With livestock and animals we've always had dogs,
and Titus was really apart of that.
This fall we happened to get another new neighbor.
We let him out that morning and Titus
typically he would come back to the house.
Well he didn't come back,
and into the evening there was still no sign
of Titus which got me to be getting very,
very worried, it was very unlike him.
My husband and I thought
okay we're going to go and look for some,
maybe some tracks on the road.
My husband yelled
“Kim I know where, I know where Titus is”.
I can see like a wire hanging off of this tree
and Terry says “Kim that’s a snare”.
In the search there was more snares
and more snares, and the bait,
there was so much.
We seen a whole bunch of Ravens
and birds flying around, all in one area.
And I grew up on a farm,
I know what those birds are are doing.
My heart sunk, I thought “Oh no”.
and so we started to search and
and Terry screamed from the
other side of the of the Bush
that he found Titus and he's screaming
at me “Run, run” and I got to where
Terry was and Titus was laying there
in this snare and I didn't think he was alive.
And Terry says “Kim he's alive --
get this thing off of his neck!”
You could tell that he had struggled
all night long.
His head and face had swollen so badly
and his eyes were bulging out red.
We got the snare off of his neck
and he laid there,
and he tried to get up.
It took everything he had to try and get up
and incredibly enough he was able to
make it back home.
And the next day,
he just really, he didn't, he didn't recover.
Sitting there talking to him and he passed.
I'm very glad that he was home,
with us when that happened,
and not in that snare, in that bush.
We absolutely had no clue that
there were these death traps
right next door outside our backyard.
We were very shocked to find out
when we phoned the Fish and Wildlife
that this practice is completely legal.
We, like so many other people,
thought no that's not right they need to tell us,
they need to post a sign.
We were dumbfounded.
Current regulations allow snares
to be set just 200 metres from a dwelling,
including a home or a school,
and they can be set along rural roadways
or just off trails
just as they were on the trapline
we discovered in our last episode.
To make matters worse, most of Canada
doesn’t require that warning signs
be posted to notify hikers, skiers, dog walkers,
bird watchers, anybody, that
there's a trapline nearby.
Why not?
Because trappers are worried their traps
are going to get stolen or damaged
if people know where they are.
Subtitle
Now imagine a wolf in the wild,
caught in a snare, with no one
or no way to save itself.
Is it acceptable for it to suffer
for hours or even days
before it finally dies?
Of course not,
and the Alberta Government knows this.
Why else would they be spending
our taxpayer dollars testing new models
of snares on live coyotes
at a facility in Vegreville, Alberta?
In conversation with Wildlife managers tied
to the Alberta Innovates Program,
it's obvious that they are well aware
that manual and power killing neck snares
in use on Alberta traplines
are neither effective or humane.
They know that they don't render animals
unconscious in less than 3 minutes,
which is supposed to be the gold standard
for animal welfare in killing trap research
as adopted by the
Canadian General Standards Board in 1984
So the question is:
Are you comfortable with the Government
using your taxpayer dollars to fund
snaring research by killing coyotes?
And in the meantime, why is there not
an immediate moratorium on the use of snares?
And finally, there's no mandatory
check time for snares by Trappers in Alberta
and in many other jurisdictions
across the country.
A wolf can literally get caught
on a Monday and have to suffer for days,
slowly choking to death,
until the Trapper finds some time
on the weekend,
to either come and skin it,
or to put it out of its misery.
And that brings us back to one of
the key points of this episode.
If a trapper sets out to catch wolves
with their snares, how can they ensure
that’s all they’re going to catch?
The answer is -- they can’t.
Snares aren’t selective they
capture and kill all kinds of different animals,
including our pets.
It's been a struggle for both my friend and I,
to just to leave it behind
and just get over that kind of trauma.
Cause it is legitimately traumatizing.
Like, that’s been my life is hiking with my dog,
that's what I do.
I'll go back out and go hike some more
but you know I’m going to
have a tool box with me, obviously.
When I walk around town all I see are
Canada Goose coats,
and I don't think people really understand
that that's where their hood comes from
-- there's a dog around their face.
And I think if they did,
and if they knew the genesis of where that dog
came from, and how it got there,
I think it would be not so
appealing to wear those kind of coats.
Now, in Western Canada there’s about
50 000 coyote pelts that get sold at auction.
There's tens of thousands more coyotes
that get snared and aren’t appropriate for auction.
They either get frozen to the ground,
birds come and eat them all the time,
that's what’s so hard to reconcile
with trapping is that
there is no respect
for the animal there at all.
I mean you skin them,
throw the body down on the ground
and leave it there and then
hopefully some other animal comes
and eats it and gets snarred again.
The bottom line here is neck snares
need to be banned,
enough is enough.
They’re cruel, they’re inhumane,
and they’re outdated,
so please help give our Wildlife
a voice by visiting our website
and taking action at www.ExposedJEM.com
Thanks for watching everybody
and don't forget to subscribe
to catch our next episode.