California has passed into law a new ban on fur trapping, becoming the first state to outlaw the practice widely considered to cause untold suffering to wild animals. The Wildlife Protection Act of 2019 was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newson on Wednesday 5 September. The legislation prohibits commercial or recreational trapping on both public and private lands.
The law was first introduced by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonazlez (Democrat- San Diego), who said:
“It seems especially cruel, obviously, and it’s just unnecessary and costly.
Not only does the cruel fur trapping trade decimate our increasingly vulnerable wildlife populations, running this program doesn’t even make fiscal policy sense. Taxpayers are subsidizing this unnecessary commercial activity because the cost of managing this program isn’t even covered by the revenue from trapping license fees.”
The ban prohibits the trapping of wild animals such as grey fox, coyote, beaver, badger and mink- with this fur sold and imported into the UK. The ban is another damaging blow to apologists of the Canada Goose brand, whose coats feature fur trim made from wild coyote fur caught using barbaric traps banned in Europe.
The is another Bill currently making good progress in the Californian legislature. AB44 seeks to ban the manufacture and sale of new fur products across the state and, if passed, will be considered to be the most groundbreaking moment for the anti-fur campaign for many years.
AB 44 recently passed the Appropriations Committee and will now go to the Senate, where- if voted through- it will then go to the Governor to be signed into law.
The tactics of the fur industry has been exposed during this
process, as it was revealed corporate
interests paid people off to help kill a bill. They also tried to pay a high
school activist to publicly oppose a bill banning fur products in California—
but instead, she blew the whistle.
“They told me I could get paid to pretend to be a
grassroots opponent of the fur ban, even after I told them that I don’t oppose
it,” she said.
There were also posts on Facebook also promised
“an easy $100” fighting tyranny, that were created by Andrew DiGiovanna, who
verbally opposed the bill during public hearings- actually a ploy to get people
to pose a grassroots organization opposing the fur ban.
The Fur Council of America reported spending more
than $100,000 on lobbying efforts between January and June 2019.
