News Release from the Outdoor Industry Communication Council
For Immediate Release — November 12, 2024
Contact: Jim Curcuruto (203-450-7202 or jim@stewardsofconservation.org)
HED: How to Communicate the Value of Trapping
SUBHED: Both trappers and anti-trappers want healthy landscapes and abundant wildlife. That’s a great place to start — and end — a debate about the merits of regulated trapping
“When it comes to natural-resource arguments, in our haste to point out all the ways we disagree, I think we forget to appreciate all the things we agree on.”
That’s from Stan Steele, director of government affairs for the Oregon Trappers Association. And in his particular case, he’s talking about Beaver State beavers.
“There’s not a fur-taker I know of who doesn’t want as many beaver on the landscape as we can possibly have. Which harvester would want to catch the last beaver? Trappers are working for the very same thing that anti-trappers are working toward: abundance. The difference, of course, is that we’re interested in the management part of that equation, because we know that management is the key to abundance.”
Trapping opponents are often more interested in removing an important wildlife management tool: legal, highly-regulated trapping.
Steele delivers his perspectives in a gentle tone, with relatable anecdotes, and an almost grandfatherly patience. You want to lean in to listen to him, and to know more about his life experiences. In other words, he’s an authentic person first, a trapping evangelist second. That’s an important distinction, says Steele, and one that’s been lost on the most shrill advocates for legal trapping.
“Normally when we hear about trapping, it’s because there’s a real threat against it,” says Steele. “It’s in the legislative arena, or the subject of a fiery debate, and both sides are shrill and emotional. Believe me, I can get shrill when I’m backed in a corner, but I’m not sure we’re communicating to the people who matter when we’re shrill.”
The people who matter, Steele says, are those voters and the unaligned public whose votes and opinions determine the fate of many natural-resource issues, whether it’s a ban on beaver trapping or the election of pro-hunting and trapping legislators.
“We routinely hear from national surveys that public support for trapping is among the lowest of our traditional sports of hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting,” Steele observes. “But we also note that when people hear from trappers, who explain the practice and importance of trapping, support rises. That tells me that trappers need to be more intentional about talking to non-trappers, and we need to be talking about the wider societal benefits of trapping.”
What? Trappers going on the offensive instead of defending their traditions to a hostile audience? Steele says simply talking about what trappers do, and why they do it, can be remarkably effective at either changing people’s minds, or at least keeping them from opposing trappers and trapping.
“There’s a strong preservationist line of thinking shared by opponents to hunting and trapping,” Steele observes. “I think it’s important to recognize our shared support for preservation, which I would describe as a legitimate reaction to ecological crisis. If a resource is in full crisis mode, then it may well be best to close down all use of it. But we’re not in crisis mode. We have the tools to manage resources, and trapping is one of our best and most proven tools.
“One of the most persuasive arguments at our disposal is to ask people to look around our shared spaces and observe all the ways we manage things in our anthropomorphically challenged world,” says Steele. We manage parking, and we manage airline travel. We manage housing developments, we manage sewage and students in school.
“If we want to have the wildlife abundance that I believe we all want, then we need to manage wildlife,” says Steele. “I talk about the B’s, each of which needs to be managed in its own way: bumblebees, bulls, bucks, bobcats, beaver. What do they have in common? Active management is the pathway to their abundance. That’s a simple message that’s lost in all the noise when we yell at each other.”
About the Outdoor Industry Communication Council
Formed around the commitment to educate all Americans about the origins of conservation funding in America, the Outdoor Industry Communication Council is powered through a multi-state conservation grant and represented by companies, wildlife agencies, professional communicators, and conservation organizations. This project is funded by the Multistate Conservation Grant Program (F23AP00404), supported with funds from the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program and jointly managed by the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
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