Torturous Body-Gripping Traps on Public Lands Hurt Pets, Children, and Wildlife

You're out exploring the beautiful wilderness with a furry companion animal or other loved ones. You're enjoying the sights of lush, rich trees and an incredible backdrop of mountains, or streams, or sunlight pouring into a forest.

Then, one of you - maybe your pet, a child, or even you yourself - steps on something. Instantly, the sound of screams fills the once-peaceful landscape. One of you has stepped onto a body-gripping trap, and it has clamped onto their body with bone-crushing pressure.

It seems obvious that a scenario like this should be illegal, but in the U.S., it's not. That's why U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler introduced the Refuge from Cruel Trapping Act, which would ban the use of these horrible contraptions within the National Wildlife Refuge System. Sign the petition to demand that Congress pass this bill!

Body-gripping traps like snares, Conibear traps, and steel-jaw leghold traps, are designed to crush or break an animal's limb, neck, or spinal column. Their metal "jaws" spring into action and slam shut on whoever accidentally trips the device, leaving the animal - or person - in excruciating pain, sometimes waiting hours to die, or chewing off their own body parts in desperation.

The nation's 570 wildlife refuges should clearly be places where wildlife - and people - can move about unharmed, without fear of horrific pain, injury, or death from one of these traps. Yet right now, public lands are still prime grounds for trappers to lay out their cruel torture instruments.

And these traps routinely capture more than wild animals. In the state of Vermont alone, we already know of at least 13 pets who have been caught in these devices, only halfway through 2025. That means it's likely that many hundreds of pets suffer these horrible agonies each year. Children have fallen victim to them as well. In North Carolina, one young boy had to undergo a multiple-hours-long operation with six doctors to remove a metal trap from his arm.

As Susan Millward, the CEO of Animal Welfare Institute, said: "Public lands belong to all of us--not just the select few who wish to set traps that smash limbs or agonizingly strangle airways."

Sign the petition to demand that Congress finally make U.S. public lands safe for all by banning the use of dangerous body-gripping traps within the National Wildlife Refuge System!
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