Hunters and trappers have filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming New Mexico’s new fur-trapping laws are unfair and discriminatory. As of April 2022, the Wildlife Conservation and Public Safety Act also known as Roxy’s Law has banned the use of traps, snares and...
Californians can now officially celebrate the end of fur sales in the Golden State. A statewide ban on the sale of new animal fur products went into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, making California the first state in the U.S. to implement such a ban. Its citizens have waited...
Mary Katherine Ray helped outlaw traps in her state Adapted from an interview by Lindsey Botts January 1, 2023 A few years after moving to a remote area of southern New Mexico, I saw a Sierra Club ad in the local paper. I was a longtime member and thought,...
Trapping on Public Lands Last week a dog walking with its owner was caught in both a snare and leg hold trap off of FS-137 outside of El Rito. These illegally set traps on National Forest land were subsequently removed by New Mexico Game and Fish. The road the traps...
The trapper accused of killing Roxy, a Northern New Mexico cattle dog who was strangled to death in a snare near Santa Cruz Lake, recently was found not guilty. The verdict was immensely disappointing. It feels like justice slipped through the cracks, alongside the...
Chimayó trapper Marty Cordova was acquitted by a jury this week of 10 counts of illegal trapping, three years after state officials alleged that he set a snare that strangled a dog near Española, his attorney said Thursday. The death of the dog, named Roxy, attracted...
The Ann Arbor, Michigan fur sale ban passed less than a year after an outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in mink on a Michigan fur farm and the infection of a Michigan taxidermist with a COVID-19 variant found in mink. As it turns out, fur...
ANN ARBOR, MI — The future is fur-free, animal rights activists told Ann Arbor officials Monday night, Aug. 16. City Council responded by voting 10-0 to give the final OK to a new ordinance banning sales of fur products in the city. “This is yesterday’s business,”...
Israel has become the first country in the world to ban the sale of fur for frivolous fashion, effective 6 months from now, with a few exceptions. Humane Society International/UK, which leads the #FurFreeBritain campaign for a UK fur sales ban, hopes Israel’s ban will...
Estonia just became the first Baltic state to ban fur farming. The Riigikogu (Estonia’s parliament) passed amendments to the existing Animal Protection Act and Nature Conservation Act on Wednesday. The act will now prohibit the breeding and keeping of animals solely...
On a November evening in 2020, tourists hiking in Santa Fe County came across a dog caught in a leg hold trap just off the hiking trail — one of five dogs that month alone injured by hidden traps. This dog was in severe pain, dehydrated and slowly dying. But these two...
SANTA FE — When Mary Katherine Ray volunteers for Trap Free New Mexico, an organization that opposes trapping of fur-bearing animals in the state, it can be an intense experience. She told members of the Senate Conservation Committee on Tuesday that she receives...
Robert Harrison, Ph.D, University of New Mexico[1] December, 2020 Summary: Wildlife enthusiasts are well aware of the potential of leghold traps to severely injure wild animals. Less appreciated is how many wild animals suffer such injuries in the course of an...
BY ALBUQUERQUE JOURNAL EDITORIAL BOARD Monday, December 7th, 2020 at 12:02am New Mexicans have worked hard over the years to do right by the animals in our state. We have banned cockfighting, horse tripping and coyote-killing contests. We have made dog fighting a...
by Mary Katherine Ray | December 4, 2020 Many people are surprised to learn that fur trapping—the exploitative relic of the 1800s—still goes on today in our crowded, fragile world. Worse, the steel-jawed devices and wire neck-snares that trappers still use can be...
LAS CRUCES – On Nov. 20, a man on his morning walk discovered multiple piles of dead and skinned coyotes off a main road near Santa Teresa. Kevin Bixby, executive director of the Southwest Environmental Center in Las Cruces, went to the site to check out the scene on...
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 25, 2020 New Mexicans are warned of gruesome sights and danger while on public lands over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend—on the two-year anniversary of the death of “Roxy,” the dog who became the namesake for anti-trapping legislation...
A dog name Joe encountered a leghold trap near Veguita, NM this spring. When Joe arrived at our vet on Friday he was ripped up from head to tail. Joe underwent three hours of emergency surgery to clean and sew up the bite wounds and sew bottom skin and bone together...
By Jan Hayes, Founder, Sandia Mountain Bear Watch The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish has recently released its Final Adopted Bear Rule for the next five years, 2020-24, and the news is not good for New Mexico’s bears or for those of us who had hoped for some...
