An online petition started by an anti-trapping activist calls for the resignation of two Fish and Game commissioners because of their ties to a pro-trapping group and its fundraiser raffling off an opportunity to trap black bears in Maine.
The petition, which had more than 61,000 signatures by Wednesday afternoon, faults commissioners Paul DeBow and John Caveney for serving as county-level directors of the New Hampshire Trapping Association, an organization that has lobbied to expand trapping in the Granite State.
It also takes issue with the group’s current fundraiser, a raffle to take part in a five-day bear hunting and trapping trip in Maine, the only state in the continental U.S. that still permits bear trapping.
Neither man plans to resign, and they both reject the petition’s claim that their actions make them unfit for the board.
Kristina Snyder, who initiated the petition, says trapping is inhumane because of the injuries it inflicts on bears and cubs that often struggle to escape.
Snyder, who leads the group NH Citizens Against Recreational Trapping, added that the commissioners’ role in the NHTA sets a bad precedent, with the raffle effectively encouraging trappers to go elsewhere to skirt New Hampshire regulations.
“It became a moral and ethical question for me,” she said in a phone interview Thursday. “Here are two sitting commissioners on the New Hampshire Fish and Game Commission who are supposed to abide by the rules.”
Snyder said the raffle seems like a “ ‘do as we say, not as we do’ type of thing.”
Caveney, a Spofford, N.H., resident who represents Cheshire County, said there’s nothing unethical about his role in the NHTA or the raffle.
New Hampshire state law requires that a nominee to the 11-member Fish and Game Commission must be an “active outdoorsman holding a resident fishing, hunting, or trapping license in at least five of the 10 years preceding the appointment.”
That person also must have five years of “active membership in a conservation or sportsmen’s organization in this state.”
As to the raffle, Caveney noted that Mainers have twice voted — once in 2004 and again in 2014 — to maintain their state’s regulations allowing bear baiting, trapping and hounding.
“It’s not an illegal pursuit, obviously,” he said. “It’s just an opportunity that the New Hampshire Trapping Association has taken as a fundraiser. That’s it.”
DeBow, a Plymouth resident who represents Grafton County on the commission, said the raffle is replacing the NHTA’s annual fundraising banquet, which was canceled this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He also said bear trapping is legal in Maine and accused anti-trapping groups of raising concerns as part of a long-term effort to change the Fish and Game Commission’s composition.
Snyder and she and DeBow clashed in 2016 over the state’s controversial plan for a limited bobcat hunting season. At the time, DeBow was president of the Trapping Association and argued in favor of the proposal for 50 permits he said would help monitor the population’s growth.
However, the Fish and Game Department withdrew those plans after months of public outcry.
“They’re just trying to stir things up and create a discussion,” DeBow said of the petition. “There’s absolutely nothing that I can see that would be a conflict of interest or like I’m working both sides of the fence.”
It doesn’t appear that trapping was ever used to manage New Hampshire’s black bear population, according to Andrew Timmins, the bear project leader at the state’s Department of Fish and Game.
But, he said, there were no laws preventing farmers from setting traps to protect livestock and property up to the late 1950s.
“I’ve never seen any records on how many bears were taken under that approach, but I assume it was relatively low,” Timmins said.
Both DeBow and Caveney said there’s been no talk of expanding bear trapping to New Hampshire.
DeBow said that’s largely because much of the forest frequented by bears is also traversed by people, who could unexpectedly get caught in a snare. Maine, he said, has much more land with little to no human footprint.