MSPCA Position: Oppose
Sponsors: Representative Frost (H. 940); Senator Mark (S. 634)
Status: Referred to Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources. Hearing held 10/21/2025.
Several bills introduced this session would repeal or significantly weaken existing restrictions on the use of body-gripping traps in Massachusetts, including legalizing leghold traps, Conibear traps, and snares.
These devices were heavily restricted under the 1996 Wildlife Protection Act (WPA), which Massachusetts voters passed with overwhelming support. The WPA was enacted to address longstanding concerns about animal suffering, indiscriminate trapping of non-target species, and public safety hazards to pets and people. A 2022 survey reaffirmed the public’s position, finding that more than half of Massachusetts voters oppose any effort to weaken the current law.
Key Points
Body-gripping traps are inhumane. Designed to capture animals by the body, limb, or head, these traps frequently cause severe injury, prolonged suffering, or death. Veterinary organizations, animal welfare experts, and public agencies have long recognized their inhumane nature. Caught animals may sustain broken bones, torn muscles, dislocated joints, and lacerations — and may struggle for hours before dying or being discovered.
They lack species selectivity. Body-gripping traps cannot distinguish between target and non-target species. Pets, threatened or endangered species, and other wildlife are all at risk. Recent incidents include a fox caught in an illegally set leghold trap that required extensive rehabilitation. If these devices were legalized, such cases would become more frequent, with potential harm to companion animals and protected species alike.
Trapping is ineffective as a long-term solution. Scientific studies and field data consistently show that lethal trapping rarely resolves wildlife conflicts. In 75% of sites where beavers were trapped, recolonization occurred within two years, often sooner. This “vacuum effect” means that removing animals simply opens the habitat for others to move in. Recreational trapping is even less effective, as it occurs primarily in late fall and winter — outside the peak conflict periods of spring and summer.
Current law provides for necessary intervention. The WPA does not ban all lethal trapping. It allows the use of body-gripping traps under regulated circumstances, such as when non-lethal methods have failed and there is a documented public health or safety threat. Over nearly three decades, municipalities, conservation commissions, and property owners have successfully resolved beaver and muskrat conflicts under these guidelines without the need for broader legal use.
Proven, humane alternatives exist.
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Flow devices manage water levels around beaver dams to prevent flooding without removing the animals. Beaver Solutions, a Massachusetts-based company, has installed more than 1,300 devices statewide, with a documented effectiveness rate of over 98%.
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Culvert-protective fencing systems prevent damming at road crossings and other infrastructure, with a success rate of 98–99% in tested cases.
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Humane box and cage traps are used for research, relocation, and wildlife management projects, allowing safe capture and release when necessary.
Public sentiment remains consistent. The Wildlife Protection Act passed in 14 of 15 counties, 75% of municipalities, and 95% of legislative districts. That broad-based support has endured for nearly three decades. The 2022 survey confirms that the majority of residents continue to support maintaining strong restrictions on inhumane trapping methods. Rolling back these protections would undermine proven, science-based approaches to wildlife management and disregard the will of Massachusetts residents.
Oppose S. 634, An Act conserving our natural resources (Senator Mark)
This bill would strike a portion of the Wildlife Protection Act to allow various local, state, and federal agencies to use restricted Conibear traps, so-called “dog-proof” traps, and devices “designed not to harm animals.” These traps are still body-gripping devices that compromise the welfare of a trapped animal in a manner similar to the already-prohibited devices. Importantly, current law effectively allows the use of alternatives to these devices. Box and cage traps are used successfully for studying animals, such as coyote, and are an effective means of trapping wildlife. Wildlife research and management should move forward, not backward. Consequently, research should utilize humane and non-invasive tools, not archaic devices (or modernized versions thereof) that cause stress, injury, and sometimes death of captured animals.
Oppose H. 940, An Act relative to beavers (Representative Frost)
This bill would repeal the entire Wildlife Protection Act, Ch. 131 §80A. In doing so, this bill would revert Massachusetts law not just to what it was prior to 1996, but it would also remove even the minimal restrictions that existed before that time. This move would be a significant step backward for the Commonwealth—to a time when archaic trapping devices were used recreationally on land and not only inflicted immense suffering on our wildlife, but also threatened the lives and safety of our companion animals.
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