I am a little unsure about the main objections of the group(s) wanting to ban animal traps in the City of Vernon. It appears to me that if they get the approval of the City of Vernon as well as other cities and municipalities in B.C., they will attack trapping on a province-wide basis.
In the case of the City of Vernon, they could best handle this situation by passing a by-law that would make it an offence for anyone other than a licenced B.C. trapper (having taken the province of B.C. approved training) to trap animals.
Conscientiously minded registered trappers do not set traps where there is a chance of public or pet conflict. If it is necessary to use traps in a populated area, for beaver, for example, traps are set in the water late at night and removed at daybreak.
The most likely source of conflict could come from unknowledgeable residents using old traps which are illegal to use in the fur trapping industry.
As a 70-year-old registered trapper, I remembered an article on the formation of the Association for the Protection of Fur Bearing Animals. If I can go back before the formation of this association, there was a woman in Victoria, B.C., Clara Van Steenwyck, who wrote a trapper by the name of Frank Conibear and provided him with $800 to develop his trap. In the 1940s, the Association for the Protection of Fur Bearing Animals was formed. The president was the long-time provincial legislator E.E. Winch and Van Steenwyck became vice-president. E. Webster was secretary-treasurer. Their main focus was to fund the development of a humane animal trap.
Conibear traps were field tested in B.C. and were patented in Canada and the U.S.A. They were mass produced in the late 1950s and became world renowned as the No. 1 humane trap. I own a prototype Conibear trap and have been familiar with and have used the production models with their numerous improvements for more than 50 years.
Albert Hanson, Vernon
