Drivers in Albuquerque and Las Cruces are confronting a brutal reality about wildlife management in New Mexico thanks to a series of billboards, bus shelter ads, and bus banners recently unveiled by WildEarth Guardians.
The billboards feature a bobcat in a steel leg-hold trap with the message “Trapping is Torture: Protect Public Lands.” The billboards were deployed this month in an effort to mobilize popular support to support for a New Mexico legislative campaign to ban trapping on public lands.
It’s a message New Mexico’s citizens badly need to hear. Thousands of wildlife are killed every year in the Land of Enchantment due to the dangers of recreational and commercial trapping. There has been a number of high-profile incidents of dogs being injured or killed recently.
“As a dog lover, I was horrified by the recent story of a beloved dog strangled to death by a trap right in front of her desperate owner,” Dist. 43 Rep. Christine Chandler (D-Los Alamos). “I believe it is time to eliminate from public lands the indiscriminate and cruel devices on that can kill or severely injure pets and other collateral animals and encourage responsible and respectful hunting practices that do not cause such unnecessary suffering.”