woodseye
01-09-2003, 01:54 PM
Sunday, January 5, 2003
To snare or not to snare
By DEIRDRE FLEMING, Portland Press Herald Writer
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
E-mail this story to a friend
GRAND LAKE STREAM — Chances are when Lance Wheaton's grandfather was guiding for Theodore Roosevelt back around 1900, he didn't worry what people thought about hunting and trapping. Today, Lance Wheaton cares a lot. He's not alone.
At the turn of the last century when deer were plentiful, coyotes were not a part of Maine's landscape. But since coyotes became established in the state 30 years ago, people Down East have seen the whitetail herd dwindle. Hunting deer in the fall has become a fading tradition.
In recent years, the Pine Tree Store in Grand Lake Stream has reported as few as two deer tagged a year. Back in 1941, as many as 94 deer were tagged there.
The concern over the lack of deer is the reason many support the state's coyote snaring program in this faraway town. But elsewhere in the state there is strong support for banning the program and snaring in general.
The two viewpoints are heading for Maine's biggest clash over the issue yet. Moreover, the controversy around this issue has created more than rumblings around the state, it's developed storm clouds that are making some state officials uneasy.
The Maine Legislature has ordered the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to oversee a coyote snaring program to help control coyote predation on whitetail deer in the parts of the state where the lack of habitat and hard winter limits deer survival. In northern and western Maine, two such areas where winters hamper deer surivival, hunting is the economic lifeline for local communities.
But snaring also kills in a way many feel is inhumane, and it carries with it a risk of killing animals other than coyotes, such as foxes and rabbits, or even federally listed animals such as bald eagles.
At least two bills to ban snaring in Maine will be heard in the Legislature this session and more are expected.
At least one official with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife received a threatening letter about the snaring program.
And State Police Detective Brian Smith confirmed that a Maine woman set up an e-mail address using trapper Dave Tobey's name and sent anti-snaring letters under Tobey's name to state officials.
Tobey, who has been a Maine guide for 30 years, is one of about 119 certified snarers in the state's coyote snaring program.
Meanwhile, the state's 17-year-old snaring program began this winter with new regulations and restrictions.
The new regulations require snarers to use state-of-the-art equipment and snare only in areas of need based on deer population goals.
These changes did not sway the opinion of anti-snaring groups such as Maine Audubon, the newly formed NoSnare Task Force and Maine Friends of Animals.
Maine Audubon stated that it objects to the state's snaring program because it has not been successful in helping the deer herd, it has attracted negative publicity in recent months and it is a threat to other animals. A bill, on behalf of Audubon, to eliminate the coyote snaring program and reallocate its funds toward deer-habitat management, was submitted to the Legislature by Rep. Ray Pineau, D-Jay.
Rep. Linda McKee, D-Wayne, also submitted a bill to prohibit coyote snaring. It was filed on behalf of wildlife ecologist Debra Davidson, who is working independently to end the snaring program.
And, both the NoSnare Task Force and Maine Friends of Animals hope to have a third bill submitted that would outlaw snaring in Maine altogether.
Beavers are the only animals besides coyotes that are legal to snare in the state.
Robert Fisk, president of Maine Friends of Animals, said he expects a snaring bill to be heard by the full Legislature this winter.
"We have a major campaign and there is more public understanding on the issue," he said. "Special interest obstruction of the Legislature in the past has held up the possibility of having a real public discussion."
Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Commissioner Lee Perry said because of a Legislative mandate, the department has no choice in whether or not it has a coyote snaring program, but he believes in parts of the state it helps the deer herd.
"As to whether or not I support the program, I support the management of wildlife resources," Perry said. "And the whole idea of wildlife management is human intervention. . . . It comes down to whether you want to spend the money on this type of management approach. If we have money to do it, I think it is worthwhile to manage the deer in northern Maine. If we don't have the money, then we don't do it."
The snaring program cost the department less than $20,000 to pay agents to snare coyotes, Perry said.
Susan Cockrell of the NoSnare Task Force said she doesn't know what kind of public support the anti-snaring bills will have in Augusta, but she is confident the Legislature will eliminate the snaring program.
However, Norman "Skip" Trask, legislative liaison for the Maine Professional Guides Association, said the state's hunting and fishing guides will show up in droves at any Legislative hearings on snaring to speak for the snaring program.
Randy Spencer of the Grand Lake Stream Guides Association said he will be one of a dozen guides of the 33-member association who will travel to Augusta.
"What we're about is management," Spencer said. "We'll fight it the way we did the (alewife) bill. People wanted the alewives to run freely up into the lakes and spawn there. It would have decimated a world-class fishery. We started going to Augusta. We're looking at this threat the same way."
Driving the 235 miles across the state from Portland to Grand Lake Stream, the remoteness of this region is apparent in the sheer distance. It's not only far removed, Grand Lake Stream, as the name implies, is all rivers and lakes and woodland.
Tobey said the many lakes and rivers work against the whitetails, hampering their winter migration.
Driving through the woods while tending his snares in December, Tobey pointed to trodden paths deer had worn on their way to their wintering yards.
The guide said when deer are pursued off these paths by coyotes and onto icy bodies of water, they are not able to grip the hard, shiny surface. They then become easy targets for coyotes.
This is where Tobey snares. Collectively, he and three other snarers take about 100 coyotes a year in an area about 30 miles in diameter around Grand Lake Stream.
Tobey said in 1989 and 1990 there were just two deer tagged in Grand Lake Stream, but this year there were 37. That's still a far cry from almost 100 in 1941, but Tobey believes the coyote snaring program is the reason why the numbers increased.
"It's a jubilant time. There's hope. People are really excited that it does work," Tobey said. "The renewable resource is getting healthy. . . . It would be a shame to lose snaring where we are so close to protecting the habitat for deer wintering areas."
After the state expanded the snaring program last year because of a Legislative mandate to encourage the harvest of coyotes, the public complained. The department issued stricter guidelines this winter as a result.
Now Tobey only goes where he is deployed, in areas where deer predation is rampant. These are out-of-the-way places.
He spent an hour last Friday muscling his heavy truck in and out of snowy logging roads to unhook four of his 40 snares. He spent the previous day tripping 32 snares. The deep, fluffy, new snow, he said, rendered them ineffective, so he unhooked them until the snow hardened or melted.
The snares were easy to locate because they were in the middle of tree-lined logging roads. But they were tough to get to.
Tobey guides fishermen half the year and bear hunters in the fall, but, he said, he doesn't guide for deer because there are so few. He said he snares coyotes so that his grandsons can have what his grandfather did back in 1928 when he came to Grand Lake Stream to build a deer camp.
"I'm anxious for the day the deer herd picks up a little and I can stop," he said. "Everything goes in cycles."
If there were no coyotes, locals like Tobey believe the deer herd would return in great numbers, because state biologists say the habitat in the region can support more deer.
But if there were no snaring program, they believe the deer herd would go the other way.
"It's on everyone's mind," said Sgt. Dave Craven, a game warden and a snarer in Washington County. "People are outraged. All they talk about is the coyotes and the deer. Whether you're at Helen's (Diner) in Machias or the Pine Tree Store, it's fair to say 99 percent of the people you talk to support the program. People here are close to the land."
Guides from Grand Lake Stream said certainly the economy would be lost.
"It's to support northern and eastern Maine people, the structure of the economy," said Wheaton, a third generation guide and a member of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife's Advisory Council.
"The stores are crowded with hunters in the fall. This coat was bought at the little store in town. It all comes into the system."
The town boasts 10 sporting camps and more Registered Maine Guides than any other town in Maine.
Both the town of Grand Lake Stream and the local guides association go back to 1897. The monument in the center of town honors both, said Spencer, vice president of the Grand Lake Stream Guides Association.
"We're the last bastion of real Maine guides. Here, we're apt to see (sportsmen) from Iceland, Russia, Patagonia one day, and Secaucus, N.J., and Santa Monica the next day," Spencer said. "We're really steeped in tradition."
Since the Legislature created the coyote snaring program in 1985 to help the deer herd, it has become a controversial wildlife issue, but the tension was never so intense as now.
Cockrell of Holden, who helped to form the NoSnare Task Force, said in October of those legislators supporting snaring: "They're mentally ill."
On the other hand, Rep. Matt Dunlap, D-Old Town, co-chair of the Legislature's Joint Committee of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, didn't mince his words either, saying: "Nobody wants to give the anti-hunters a victory."
Meanwhile, the director of Maine's Wildlife Division, Mark Stadler, received a copy of an Audubon article about Maine's snaring program signed "ELF" with the written message: "You are hated."
It's no wonder state deer biologist Gerry Lavigne said the questions around the snaring program seem to have more to do with whether it is socially appropriate than anything else.
Dunlap said the Legislative committee will be listening more carefully this year to those who support and those who oppose snaring. Dunlap said in the past many arguments on both sides have been filled with inaccurate exaggerations.
He said if the snaring program is eliminated, something needs to take its place. Dunlap said while many want the snaring program changed, many in the public also want the coyotes population controlled.
"Simply letting nature run its course is not a popular outcome," Dunlap said. "I don't think people will accept that. Obviously, if that were a legitimate outcome, you wouldn't have endangered species listed. We'd just let the bald eagle and lynx become extinct. We intervene all the time."
While the coyote snaring program was established by the Legislature, it is carried out by Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and some state biologists are convinced it helps the deer herd where winter and coyote predation are a problem.
"I'd hate to lose that option," Lavigne said. "It's one less management tool we have available for improving deer populations."
Lavigne said there are three ways the department tries to manage deer populations in different regions of the state: the any-deer permit that allows hunters to take a doe, the deer wintering programs that allow the state to protect deer yards through agreements with landowners, and the coyote snaring program.
Use of the newly required state-of-the-art equipment in the program is mandated to make the snaring program more humane. The required devices on the snare include a cam lock, a 50-pound compression spring, and a breakaway.
The compression spring assures a quicker kill by imposing more pressure on the one-way-moving cam lock, causing asphyxiation quicker, Game Warden Craven said.
The breakaway device allows larger animals like deer and moose to break free because it is made partially with aluminum. When a large animal pulls against the snare, Craven said the S-shaped breakaway device straightens and the snare falls apart.
Craven said tests using a 50-pound spring have shown they assure a kill in two to four minutes.
Because coyotes tend to struggle and animals like bobcats and fox do not, such smaller animals are often found sitting in a snare alive, he said.
Since he started using the 50-pound spring in 1997, Craven said he found less disturbance around the snare, indicating coyotes were dying quicker.
Tobey found this to be the case when one of his snares near the Little River caught a coyote a few weeks back. The birch sapling next to the kill pole was scraped, but not much. He said there was so little sign of struggle, he was able to set the snare in the same spot.
But Lavigne said the department will have to wait to see how well the snarers do this winter to know how well the program works now.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended in a Dec. 24 letter to the department a number of changes to help minimize the incidental take of other animals, particularly federally listed animals such as lynx and bald eagles.
Biologist Mark McCollough said the service feels the program could be made more humane by having snarers tend to snares more frequently, or having third-party inspections of snare lines to document the death of animals other than coyotes.
Perry said the primary concern around the program should be whether it is doing harm to other animals, but he said some are concerned with more than snaring.
"Some people are opposed to killing of any animals for any reason," Perry said. "One point that needs to be made is that we're not talking about the deer population statewide, and we're not talking about coyotes statewide. We're talking about deer in the northern and western part of the state where the deer population is right on the edge of its range and minor losses can decide what the population is going to be."
No matter how the issue is decided by the Legislature, the fight over snaring is not likely to end, according to the NoSnare Task Force.
"We're not going to go away," Cockrell said.
Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming can be contacted at 791-6452 or at:
dfleming@pressherald.com
To top of page
Copyright © Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
To snare or not to snare
By DEIRDRE FLEMING, Portland Press Herald Writer
Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
E-mail this story to a friend
GRAND LAKE STREAM — Chances are when Lance Wheaton's grandfather was guiding for Theodore Roosevelt back around 1900, he didn't worry what people thought about hunting and trapping. Today, Lance Wheaton cares a lot. He's not alone.
At the turn of the last century when deer were plentiful, coyotes were not a part of Maine's landscape. But since coyotes became established in the state 30 years ago, people Down East have seen the whitetail herd dwindle. Hunting deer in the fall has become a fading tradition.
In recent years, the Pine Tree Store in Grand Lake Stream has reported as few as two deer tagged a year. Back in 1941, as many as 94 deer were tagged there.
The concern over the lack of deer is the reason many support the state's coyote snaring program in this faraway town. But elsewhere in the state there is strong support for banning the program and snaring in general.
The two viewpoints are heading for Maine's biggest clash over the issue yet. Moreover, the controversy around this issue has created more than rumblings around the state, it's developed storm clouds that are making some state officials uneasy.
The Maine Legislature has ordered the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to oversee a coyote snaring program to help control coyote predation on whitetail deer in the parts of the state where the lack of habitat and hard winter limits deer survival. In northern and western Maine, two such areas where winters hamper deer surivival, hunting is the economic lifeline for local communities.
But snaring also kills in a way many feel is inhumane, and it carries with it a risk of killing animals other than coyotes, such as foxes and rabbits, or even federally listed animals such as bald eagles.
At least two bills to ban snaring in Maine will be heard in the Legislature this session and more are expected.
At least one official with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife received a threatening letter about the snaring program.
And State Police Detective Brian Smith confirmed that a Maine woman set up an e-mail address using trapper Dave Tobey's name and sent anti-snaring letters under Tobey's name to state officials.
Tobey, who has been a Maine guide for 30 years, is one of about 119 certified snarers in the state's coyote snaring program.
Meanwhile, the state's 17-year-old snaring program began this winter with new regulations and restrictions.
The new regulations require snarers to use state-of-the-art equipment and snare only in areas of need based on deer population goals.
These changes did not sway the opinion of anti-snaring groups such as Maine Audubon, the newly formed NoSnare Task Force and Maine Friends of Animals.
Maine Audubon stated that it objects to the state's snaring program because it has not been successful in helping the deer herd, it has attracted negative publicity in recent months and it is a threat to other animals. A bill, on behalf of Audubon, to eliminate the coyote snaring program and reallocate its funds toward deer-habitat management, was submitted to the Legislature by Rep. Ray Pineau, D-Jay.
Rep. Linda McKee, D-Wayne, also submitted a bill to prohibit coyote snaring. It was filed on behalf of wildlife ecologist Debra Davidson, who is working independently to end the snaring program.
And, both the NoSnare Task Force and Maine Friends of Animals hope to have a third bill submitted that would outlaw snaring in Maine altogether.
Beavers are the only animals besides coyotes that are legal to snare in the state.
Robert Fisk, president of Maine Friends of Animals, said he expects a snaring bill to be heard by the full Legislature this winter.
"We have a major campaign and there is more public understanding on the issue," he said. "Special interest obstruction of the Legislature in the past has held up the possibility of having a real public discussion."
Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Commissioner Lee Perry said because of a Legislative mandate, the department has no choice in whether or not it has a coyote snaring program, but he believes in parts of the state it helps the deer herd.
"As to whether or not I support the program, I support the management of wildlife resources," Perry said. "And the whole idea of wildlife management is human intervention. . . . It comes down to whether you want to spend the money on this type of management approach. If we have money to do it, I think it is worthwhile to manage the deer in northern Maine. If we don't have the money, then we don't do it."
The snaring program cost the department less than $20,000 to pay agents to snare coyotes, Perry said.
Susan Cockrell of the NoSnare Task Force said she doesn't know what kind of public support the anti-snaring bills will have in Augusta, but she is confident the Legislature will eliminate the snaring program.
However, Norman "Skip" Trask, legislative liaison for the Maine Professional Guides Association, said the state's hunting and fishing guides will show up in droves at any Legislative hearings on snaring to speak for the snaring program.
Randy Spencer of the Grand Lake Stream Guides Association said he will be one of a dozen guides of the 33-member association who will travel to Augusta.
"What we're about is management," Spencer said. "We'll fight it the way we did the (alewife) bill. People wanted the alewives to run freely up into the lakes and spawn there. It would have decimated a world-class fishery. We started going to Augusta. We're looking at this threat the same way."
Driving the 235 miles across the state from Portland to Grand Lake Stream, the remoteness of this region is apparent in the sheer distance. It's not only far removed, Grand Lake Stream, as the name implies, is all rivers and lakes and woodland.
Tobey said the many lakes and rivers work against the whitetails, hampering their winter migration.
Driving through the woods while tending his snares in December, Tobey pointed to trodden paths deer had worn on their way to their wintering yards.
The guide said when deer are pursued off these paths by coyotes and onto icy bodies of water, they are not able to grip the hard, shiny surface. They then become easy targets for coyotes.
This is where Tobey snares. Collectively, he and three other snarers take about 100 coyotes a year in an area about 30 miles in diameter around Grand Lake Stream.
Tobey said in 1989 and 1990 there were just two deer tagged in Grand Lake Stream, but this year there were 37. That's still a far cry from almost 100 in 1941, but Tobey believes the coyote snaring program is the reason why the numbers increased.
"It's a jubilant time. There's hope. People are really excited that it does work," Tobey said. "The renewable resource is getting healthy. . . . It would be a shame to lose snaring where we are so close to protecting the habitat for deer wintering areas."
After the state expanded the snaring program last year because of a Legislative mandate to encourage the harvest of coyotes, the public complained. The department issued stricter guidelines this winter as a result.
Now Tobey only goes where he is deployed, in areas where deer predation is rampant. These are out-of-the-way places.
He spent an hour last Friday muscling his heavy truck in and out of snowy logging roads to unhook four of his 40 snares. He spent the previous day tripping 32 snares. The deep, fluffy, new snow, he said, rendered them ineffective, so he unhooked them until the snow hardened or melted.
The snares were easy to locate because they were in the middle of tree-lined logging roads. But they were tough to get to.
Tobey guides fishermen half the year and bear hunters in the fall, but, he said, he doesn't guide for deer because there are so few. He said he snares coyotes so that his grandsons can have what his grandfather did back in 1928 when he came to Grand Lake Stream to build a deer camp.
"I'm anxious for the day the deer herd picks up a little and I can stop," he said. "Everything goes in cycles."
If there were no coyotes, locals like Tobey believe the deer herd would return in great numbers, because state biologists say the habitat in the region can support more deer.
But if there were no snaring program, they believe the deer herd would go the other way.
"It's on everyone's mind," said Sgt. Dave Craven, a game warden and a snarer in Washington County. "People are outraged. All they talk about is the coyotes and the deer. Whether you're at Helen's (Diner) in Machias or the Pine Tree Store, it's fair to say 99 percent of the people you talk to support the program. People here are close to the land."
Guides from Grand Lake Stream said certainly the economy would be lost.
"It's to support northern and eastern Maine people, the structure of the economy," said Wheaton, a third generation guide and a member of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife's Advisory Council.
"The stores are crowded with hunters in the fall. This coat was bought at the little store in town. It all comes into the system."
The town boasts 10 sporting camps and more Registered Maine Guides than any other town in Maine.
Both the town of Grand Lake Stream and the local guides association go back to 1897. The monument in the center of town honors both, said Spencer, vice president of the Grand Lake Stream Guides Association.
"We're the last bastion of real Maine guides. Here, we're apt to see (sportsmen) from Iceland, Russia, Patagonia one day, and Secaucus, N.J., and Santa Monica the next day," Spencer said. "We're really steeped in tradition."
Since the Legislature created the coyote snaring program in 1985 to help the deer herd, it has become a controversial wildlife issue, but the tension was never so intense as now.
Cockrell of Holden, who helped to form the NoSnare Task Force, said in October of those legislators supporting snaring: "They're mentally ill."
On the other hand, Rep. Matt Dunlap, D-Old Town, co-chair of the Legislature's Joint Committee of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, didn't mince his words either, saying: "Nobody wants to give the anti-hunters a victory."
Meanwhile, the director of Maine's Wildlife Division, Mark Stadler, received a copy of an Audubon article about Maine's snaring program signed "ELF" with the written message: "You are hated."
It's no wonder state deer biologist Gerry Lavigne said the questions around the snaring program seem to have more to do with whether it is socially appropriate than anything else.
Dunlap said the Legislative committee will be listening more carefully this year to those who support and those who oppose snaring. Dunlap said in the past many arguments on both sides have been filled with inaccurate exaggerations.
He said if the snaring program is eliminated, something needs to take its place. Dunlap said while many want the snaring program changed, many in the public also want the coyotes population controlled.
"Simply letting nature run its course is not a popular outcome," Dunlap said. "I don't think people will accept that. Obviously, if that were a legitimate outcome, you wouldn't have endangered species listed. We'd just let the bald eagle and lynx become extinct. We intervene all the time."
While the coyote snaring program was established by the Legislature, it is carried out by Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and some state biologists are convinced it helps the deer herd where winter and coyote predation are a problem.
"I'd hate to lose that option," Lavigne said. "It's one less management tool we have available for improving deer populations."
Lavigne said there are three ways the department tries to manage deer populations in different regions of the state: the any-deer permit that allows hunters to take a doe, the deer wintering programs that allow the state to protect deer yards through agreements with landowners, and the coyote snaring program.
Use of the newly required state-of-the-art equipment in the program is mandated to make the snaring program more humane. The required devices on the snare include a cam lock, a 50-pound compression spring, and a breakaway.
The compression spring assures a quicker kill by imposing more pressure on the one-way-moving cam lock, causing asphyxiation quicker, Game Warden Craven said.
The breakaway device allows larger animals like deer and moose to break free because it is made partially with aluminum. When a large animal pulls against the snare, Craven said the S-shaped breakaway device straightens and the snare falls apart.
Craven said tests using a 50-pound spring have shown they assure a kill in two to four minutes.
Because coyotes tend to struggle and animals like bobcats and fox do not, such smaller animals are often found sitting in a snare alive, he said.
Since he started using the 50-pound spring in 1997, Craven said he found less disturbance around the snare, indicating coyotes were dying quicker.
Tobey found this to be the case when one of his snares near the Little River caught a coyote a few weeks back. The birch sapling next to the kill pole was scraped, but not much. He said there was so little sign of struggle, he was able to set the snare in the same spot.
But Lavigne said the department will have to wait to see how well the snarers do this winter to know how well the program works now.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended in a Dec. 24 letter to the department a number of changes to help minimize the incidental take of other animals, particularly federally listed animals such as lynx and bald eagles.
Biologist Mark McCollough said the service feels the program could be made more humane by having snarers tend to snares more frequently, or having third-party inspections of snare lines to document the death of animals other than coyotes.
Perry said the primary concern around the program should be whether it is doing harm to other animals, but he said some are concerned with more than snaring.
"Some people are opposed to killing of any animals for any reason," Perry said. "One point that needs to be made is that we're not talking about the deer population statewide, and we're not talking about coyotes statewide. We're talking about deer in the northern and western part of the state where the deer population is right on the edge of its range and minor losses can decide what the population is going to be."
No matter how the issue is decided by the Legislature, the fight over snaring is not likely to end, according to the NoSnare Task Force.
"We're not going to go away," Cockrell said.
Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming can be contacted at 791-6452 or at:
dfleming@pressherald.com
To top of page
Copyright © Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.