Since numbers of hunters continue to decline, state wildlife agencies in the United States are working overtime to entice adolescents into participating into the violent hunting culture through “Youth Trapping Camp” weekends for kids like the ones Friends of Animals discovered kicking off in upstate New York over Columbus Day Weekend.


The horrific  Pat Arnold Youth Trapping Camp is being promoted by the NY Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), not surprisingly, because state wildlife departments receive revenues from the sale of trapping licenses. Children between the ages of 12 and 14 are invited to attend these weekends, which will teach them how to capture animals in inhumane metal leghold traps, kill them and then skin them so they can also earn a state Trapper Education certificate, an accomplishment the blood thirsty fur industry is likely thrilled about.

But Friends of Animals is not.


New York and other states in the country torturing and exploiting furbearing animals should be banning leg-hold devices outright like neighboring New Jersey, not encouraging young people to use them. And the NY DEC should be teaching respect for wildlife as the ever increasing human population squeezes it into tiny habitats, not how to torture and kill it.


Plus kids these days don’t need to be placed in emotional and psychological jeopardy as they are taught to kill and treat living, sentient beings as unfeeling, inanimate objects.

Leave a message on the Facebook page for the Pat Arnold Youth Trapping Camp and contact the NY DEC by calling 518-402-8924 or emailing wildlife@dec.ny.gov and let them know they should be providing youth wildlife appreciation camps instead of ones devoted to the abuse and killing of wildlife.And no matter where you live, you can also help raise awareness about the unnecessary suffering  that is caused by trapping by writing to letters to the editor of your local newspaper and reaching out to legislators and telling them you would like to see an outright ban on leghold traps where you live.