The animal traps in Yangmingshan hurt a lot of stray animals

Life Pets & Domestic Animals
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http://www.wretch.cc/blog/berryesun&article_id=11725209
( The articles below is English translated version of the original article from the blog link above. Hope anyone that can help this issue can give these animals a hand. )

The animals traps in Yangmingshan hurt a lot of stray animals

This is a friend’s experience in Yangmingshan. She cares about it very much. Since she first saw many three-legged dogs in Yangmingshan, she has been going there and caring about these dogs once every week. Later she found that besides those dogs she saw before, there are a lot more dogs injured by the traps in Yangmingshan! Therefore, she began to raise the public concern: not only call-in to Wang Wenhua’s programs, but also contacted me. Later this was reported in the media. I hope people’s concern would not vanish soon. We still need to make a lot of efforts to get people pay attention to this serious issue, otherwise it will soon be forgotten. Until now she has been to Yangmingshan six times for the trap issues, and I only followed her for three times. Every time she went to Yangminshan, she made news bulletin. Here is her first one. ( The news bulletin file is at the blog )

In Taiwan, there are so many traps placed in the mountain area, which suggests an interests conflict relationship between human and animals. According to my field research, in cases stray animals run into farms, flower gardens, chicken and ducks’ house, and even the kitchen of the school. They tramp and steal the food, so some people just buy the traps and set up traps to harm them. A trap, sometimes costs only 35 dollars NT, is very cheap in Taiwan, and people can definitely easily buy traps in tin store. Without regulation from the source, for example, prohibition of using of traps, it is almost impossible to stop using traps. Even with laws, to catch the moment that the people just set up the traps and prosecute them is still very difficult. Furthermore, farmers can deny the traps placed at their farm are set up by themselves.

This is a serious problem. Were it not any other solutions to protect the farms? For example, just to barricade the farms. Is it the violation of public danger crime when the children get hurt from the traps? Hope people will not use private punishment to punish stray animals. The new Animal Protection Act stipulates that it is not legally allowable to put animal clips(i.e. traps) on private lands. It will leads to fine of NT$15,000 to 75,000.

December 2007, Legislative Yuan modified and passed the Amendment of Animal Protection Act. The amendments are: one who intentionally abuses or harms animals, and causing serious deterioration of body, loss of vital organs, or death, shall be fined from NT$100,000 to NT$500,000, and his name or photo may be publicly announced. As to repeated offenders, if there are more than two times of violation, the party shall be sentenced imprisonment for no more than one year, detention, or be fined for no more than NT$100,0000 in combination. The limitation on the method to capture animals is added in the Act, which stipulates that without the permission of competent authorities, one is not allowed to use explosives, poison, electrical, corrosive substances, other type or firearms than narcotic gun, and animal clip to capture animals. The violating one shall be fined from NT$15,000 to $75,000.

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On Taiwan there does not appear to be a lack of laws.

There does, however, appear to be a noticeable lack of enforcement of these laws.

I hope this situation can be successfully dealt with. Make someone lose ‘face’ and something might be done. For a short time at least.

Good Luck.

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Thanks a lot for your reply.

I am a volunteer of AnimalsTaiwan, and I know that there are many English speakers that may be the Mr./Miss Editor reading this forum.
I knew that the friend who took the photos in the YangMin Mountain have tried a lot to get public notice about the god damn animals clip, but still in vain.
Hope that anyone who has a glance with this messages can help to spread this message, or give me some suggestions about how to get media coverage.

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This kind of trap is cruel by nature and is a threat not only to stray animals, but also to pets and people, especially children. They certainly should be banned. It means banning the manufacture and sale, as well as the use, of such traps.

Note: Aboriginal hunters have traditionally placed snares and other kinds of traps as part of their way of life. In more recent times, they have used jaw traps. Some aborigines might object to bans on jaw traps and/or snares as an interference in their traditional way of life. For me, such an objection would be overridden by the cruelty and danger issues in the case of jaw traps and snares, but not necessarily in the case of other kinds of trap.

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We live in an area where there are many gardens, mostly squatting on public land alongside the cycle track, and lots of the gardeners use these traps. We’ve had one dog caught, luckily while we were there and could immediately release her. Swelling, no permanent injury.
But over the New Year holiday, our cat went missing for five days, and finally arrived home dragging a front leg. We now have a three legged cat. She’s healing up well, and adapting to her amputation remarkably well.
But I’d love to know, who can we call? Who do we agitate to?

Sue

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You/we could start by writing letters to the papers.

Two political figure known to like animals are Apollo Chen of the KMT and commentator Sisy Chen. Ma Ying-jeou adopted a stray dog and Chen Shuibian has one too…

There is an earlier thread about animal traps - click here. (The threads could be merged.)


Ban leghold traps!

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[quote=“kaipakati”]We live in an area where there are many gardens, mostly squatting on public land alongside the cycle track, and lots of the gardeners use these traps. We’ve had one dog caught, luckily while we were there and could immediately release her. Swelling, no permanent injury.
But over the New Year holiday, our cat went missing for five days, and finally arrived home dragging a front leg. We now have a three legged cat. She’s healing up well, and adapting to her amputation remarkably well.
But I’d love to know, who can we call? Who do we agitate to?

Sue[/quote]

I used to live up in Shi-Jr. Right in the heart of the place. Ground floor.
There was a stray cat we used to give a bit of food to every day.
Then it vanished.
A few weeks later I was told by someone they saw it with a trap on it’s back leg.
Then a few days later, it was at my door with half it’s back leg missing. It was right down to the bone.

I managed to catch it using a fresh tin of tuna… and paid the vet 3000 (a huge discount) for an amputation.
After a couple of weeks looking after it we let it go (it couldn’t adjust to the other cats in our place, maybe if it was alone it would have been OK).

After a day I never saw it again.

But in the heart of the city there are traps.
One of the (many) reasons I would never let a cat outdoors in Taiwan.

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one useful plan would be to ban their sale, import, manufacture and possession.

but at the same time the situation that supplies the massive number of stray dogs and cats (essentially all abandoned ‘pets’ or their descendents) needs serious attention.

licenses for dog owners with an annual fee, compulsory microchipping of all dogs bred and sold, registration of all dogs, licensing and regular inspection including large annual fee for any breeder of dogs, enforced castration and spaying of all dogs and cats sold, regular CNR programs in association with removal and killing excess strays in an area, proper attention paid to littering (provision and regular maintenance and cleaning of animal-secure trash cans by the hillside attractions themselves, and comprehensive school age and beyond education, advertisement campaigns and enforcement of anti-litter legislation, etc) and fines for people feeding wild dogs and cats are just a start.

without one end of the story already in place, there is no will to enact the other. but by all means, go out and remove any traps you find, or attach them to the testicles of those setting them. good luck with the broken jaw.