Kristina Snyder lives in Chester and is the leader of NH Citizens Against Recreational Trapping.

Imagine having your whole world torn apart. By that I mean losing your children or your lifelong mate. How would you feel? How would you carry on? In nature sometimes it is brutal out there and wild animals suffer this fate, predator and prey is an age-long story. However when it comes to humans inflicting suffering on animals, then the game changes. Humans make choices and take action out of desire and want, not necessarily because there is an actual need in order to survive.

The New Hampshire Fish & Game Department controls basically everything wild. They dictate the hunting and trapping seasons. The claims of the agency are they don’t pay attention to sentiment or emotion, they only see numbers. If an animal population is large enough, then humans can kill some of them. What is increasingly apparent, however, is that many of these wild animal species are being killed when they have dependent young or are pregnant females.

Foxes, raccoons, skunks, opossums, gray squirrels, and coyotes are hunted while they are trying to raise families, for example. Red squirrels, woodchucks, and porcupines have absolutely zero protection, no season other than open. All of these animals have distinct personalities and devotion to their young if one takes the time to observe and study them and witness their behavior. Gray foxes and coyotes even mate for life.

Wildlife rehabilitators are the first indicators of climate change affecting wild animal reproduction signified by the orphaned babies they receive. Wild animals are having babies earlier in the year. The hunting season for furbearers such as fox and raccoon runs until March 31, however many furbearers are pregnant or are already rearing young as early as February. Coyotes have no closed season and are openly hunted year-round and trapped for over 5 months. In addition, Gray squirrels are having second litters with clear dependent young in September, but the hunting season for gray squirrels starts Sept. 1.

Why does Fish & Game allow this? It is because they are an agency that was set up to specifically cater to the hunting and trapping crowd. In order to serve on the Fish & Game Commission you have to have a hunting, trapping, or fishing license. The department makes a pretense it is there to be the guardians of wildlife, but I am not so sure. I feel qualified to comment given my observance and attendance of the goings-on at the department for well over a decade. A higher-up once told me directly that the only animals that actually “need” to be managed are deer and bears. Everything else is just to provide recreational opportunities.

What do we do? How do we make a difference and allow wild animals to raise their families and at the very least get season dates changed and limits put on take? Why should one hunter or trapper be able to kill over fifty raccoons? How do we stop this wanton killing? Politically it is hard to get traction. Since animals do not vote, legislators aren’t willing to go out on a limb for them. Plus, the New Hampshire House Fish & Game & Marine Resources Committee is stacked with hunters protecting their agenda. A wall hits us at every turn. Even journalists don’t seem to prioritize animal stories outside of cats and dogs.

All animal activists can do is keep plugging along, hoping that the apathetic middle of humanity will finally tune in and swing the tide in our favor of protecting these animals from human willful cruelty. If only everyone could have compassion for these animals, wouldn’t the world be a nicer place? In nature, there is some really cruel stuff that happens, but human beings make decisions on their desires. What is their excuse for all of this killing?