Surrey Council wants to ban body-clamping animal traps

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SURREY (NEWS1130) – A call by animal advocates to ban body traps has picked up support from BC’s second largest city.

Surrey City Council is asking the province for permission to put restrictions on what kind of traps can be used.

The city’s ban would come with a $500 fine; Surrey would follow the lead of the town of Gibsons, believed to be the first in Canada to prohibit body-clamping traps.

However, Surrey wants the province to okay its plan before going ahead. City Councillor Linda Hepner says it’s about cruelty concerns.

“They actually entrap animals that are not necessarily those that they are after. In fact, some of our domestic animals have been injured or killed in such traps,” she explains.

Surrey uses cage traps when it needs to catch animals considered a nuisance.

“We have not used body-gripping traps, and I think those are the inhumane traps that we just simply don’t want in our city,” says Hepner.

A delegation from the Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals went before Surrey City Council in October, 2011 to request the ban.

Six months later, the BC Trappers Association also appeared in front of council to argue the province already bans the use of many traps.

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