Letters - Letter to the Editor

Animals, Jan, 2000

Ignoring the People's Will

The work of Mike and Ruth Callahan, founders of the Pioneer Valley Wetland Volunteers ("Busy for Beavers," Profile, November/ December 1999), has not only benefited people and beavers: it is a showcase for the viability of the state legislation that protects wildlife.

But in recent months, attacks upon Massachusetts's Wildlife Protection Act have increased despite the fact that 64 percent of voters approved Question One (the ballot initiative). Those who seek to violate the clear will of the people want to bring back use of the Conibear trap, a cruel device that may break the spine of a beaver or a muskrat but leaves unseen and unaddressed the suffering of the animal before it dies. Even so, under the provisions of the act, that trap can be used with a permit when other measures have been tried for 15 days and have failed.

During the past decade, citizen-sponsored ballot measures have passed in 10 different states with solid pluralities. Issues included prohibiting the trophy hunting of mountain lions in California, banning same-day airborne hunting of a variety of animals in Alaska, and outlawing the leghold and other traps on Arizona public lands. On issues of overt cruelty to animals, the voting public responds with an unequivocal message.

A major factor in the campaign now leveled against the Wildlife Protection Act has been the comportment of the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, the agency charged with implementing this law. Its campaign to undermine it was openly voiced in the pages of its magazine, Massachusetts Wildlife, even as signature gathering began. They have spurned the offers of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to fund flow devices that would ameliorate beaver-related problems and provide training to go with them.

It is significant that since the law took effect in early 1997, the division has logged in 690 complaints of beaver damage yet has granted only 13 permits to use restricted traps. Instead, they have been telling individuals who approach them with problems that there is no recourse available for them and that they should contact their legislators and work to get the law revised.

Citizens in Massachusetts--and across the nation--need to think about the dangerous precedent of allowing an initiative petition to be overturned. If we allow this to happen, we are giving an arrogant elite a green light to ignore the public's wish as well as the state constitution.

Virginia Fuller Belmont, MA

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