Washington Bans Steel-Jaw Leghold Traps
 by Citizen Initiative

On November 7th, Washington voters approved an initiative by a 55% to 45% count banning steel-jaw leghold traps and other body-gripping traps for commerce in fur or recreational trapping. The initiative also bans the use of Compound 1080 and sodium cyanide, two deadly poisons used by the US Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services program to kill coyotes. The passage of I-713 marks the fifth time in the last six years that voters have passed an initiative outlawing cruel and indiscriminate traps. AWI’s companion organization, The Society for Animal Protective Legislation (SAPL) was a major supporter of this effort. Unfortunately, a similar initiative, Measure 97, was defeated in Oregon. SAPL and other groups are assessing the idea of redrafting the measure in order to place it on the November 2002 Oregon ballot.

During the last decade, voters have approved more than a dozen laws to protect animals through statewide ballot initiative processes, banning activities ranging from trapping to cockfighting to bear baiting. Campaigns & Elections, a non-partisan magazine devoted to election coverage, rated animal protection as the number one issue on state ballots across the country in the year 2000 elections.

Trapping wasn’t the only subject on state ballots this year. Montana voters adopted I-143 to outlaw the shooting of animals on game farms, a practice known as “canned hunting” and to bar the creation of any new game farms, which are not only cruel to captive wild animals slaughtered for meat or antlers, but also spread disease to free-ranging native wildlife. Alaska voters approved Measure 6, restoring a ban on land-and-shoot wolf hunting originally approved by voters in 1996 but arrogantly overturned by the state legislature over Governor Tony Knowles objection.

Ballot measures continue to provide an important tool for citizens to adopt laws directly when state legislatures and executive agencies fail to heed the people’s interest in protecting animals from cruelty and violence.