In response to the inaccurate and unfair Sept. 14 letter by Barbara Felitti, who appears to be an anti-anything hunting or trapping person from Protect Our Wildlife.

First: The Fish & Wildlife Board is made up of people with some level of knowledge and concern for hunting, fishing, trapping and conservation. Much like the First Conservationists in this country 100 years ago, hunters, trappers, and fishers are the ones who do the most for conservation and always have. And not like many anti-groups will tell you so they have more animals to go after, but because they care and see what’s really happening out there.

Second: The Best Management Practices was never developed to serve European fur markets (most fur today is used for crafts or sold to China) but to develop the most humane types and use of various traps. The foot hold continues to be the most humane and useful trap still today. It took decades for these methods to develop and are constantly being updated today. I have released bobcats and other animals with no injury from foot hold traps. When properly used, they pose no threat of damage and a non-target animal can be released. Other methods are either deadly to a non-target animal or of limited or no use for some species.

The rabid anti-everything real conservation types with groups like POW have no real facts or science on their side. Most, like the founder of POW, were not even up here when we lost most of the muskrat population to disease caused by overpopulation back in the 1990s because of the fur market and people stopped trapping them. When you can’t even cover the cost of your gas, it’s no longer profitable to trap. That is when trapping wildlife for profit really died in this country. Thank God for recreational trapping or we would be having more rabies, more flooded roads and fields and more species dying of disease from over populating.

I was fortunate to go on a caribou hunt back in 2004 in northern Quebec. At the time they could not get enough people to hunt them DUE TO OVERPOPULATION AND DISEASE A HERD OF OVER 400,000 WENT TO LESS THAN 10,000 TODAY! Yes I put that in caps to stand out as that is what happens when you do not have proper conservation.

Greg Paulman

Monkton