Your Support has Never Been More Important
Dear Members,
I am writing today to say thank you for all your support for our work to end trapping on Montana’s public lands. This marks one year since I became part of the Footloose Montana organization. It has been an exciting and volatile year as we all have experienced. Footloose Montana has been engaged in many issues critical to ending trapping. From fighting for wolves to be spared from traps, to strengthening the ordinance that penalizes trapping in the City of Missoula, to creating areas in the urban-wildland interface of Montana cities that will be made forever off-limits to trapping.
These are important building blocks in our goal of ending trapping on public lands in Montana. We can win this fight, but it is going to take some time and continued growth of our coalition, which now includes WildEarth Guardians, Western Watershed Project, the Mountain Lion Foundation, WildWest Institute and the Humane Society of Western Montana.
Groups are working with us because they see the potential of our efforts and they support the end of trapping.
We understand you are being asked to give a lot in this political season, but we must keep moving on these and other important projects, such as our Trap-Release workshops that have become so vital to people across this state who want to learn how to recognize where traps are set, and what to do if their family pet or true companion in life is ever caught in a trap. These workshops help people save the lives of their companion animals from indiscriminate, hidden traps and snares that lace our public lands.
We are asking for your support. To help you get a better understanding, I have interviewed some of you on camera to speak from your heart and share important stories of how trapping has impacted your life and the lives of your friends and companion animals. Please take a few minutes to watch these brief videos over the coming days and weeks. They make it clear how a recreational activity barely visible can cause lifelong trauma to anyone, to many. Just click on the link that will be provided.
For instance, together, we can stop the unlimited trapping of beavers who keep our waters clean and abundant, provide life for all other creatures, and mitigate drought and fire.
We must prepare for another grueling Montana legislative session, where wildlife and public lands are attacked and sold to the highest bidder.
We must be a voice for wildlife, perhaps as never before. In the urgent time of climate change and what is already called the sixth great extinction, we can no longer wait for elected officials to figure this out, we must be the strong voice that makes change.
A shocking recent US Fish and Wildlife Service decision claims that climate change is not impacting wolverines. Footloose Montana is a plaintiff that has been involved in this suit for the past five years. There are at the most 300 wolverines left in the Lower 48, most of them in Montana. The new lawsuit will occur on the new ruling which ignores the real effects of climate change--reduced snow pack essential to the survival of wolverine, continued trapping in wolverine habitat, and the fate of an animal being severely impacted by the fragmentation of our forests.
All our wildlife and our own public safety is compromised by legal trapping. You can save land, but as long as traps are legal, you cannot save our animal friends.
We are asking for your help in these battles!
Many thanks for your heartfelt continued support.
Sincerely,
Stephen Capra, Executive Director
Footloose Montana
Stephen@footloosemontana.org
Dear Members,
I am writing today to say thank you for all your support for our work to end trapping on Montana’s public lands. This marks one year since I became part of the Footloose Montana organization. It has been an exciting and volatile year as we all have experienced. Footloose Montana has been engaged in many issues critical to ending trapping. From fighting for wolves to be spared from traps, to strengthening the ordinance that penalizes trapping in the City of Missoula, to creating areas in the urban-wildland interface of Montana cities that will be made forever off-limits to trapping.
These are important building blocks in our goal of ending trapping on public lands in Montana. We can win this fight, but it is going to take some time and continued growth of our coalition, which now includes WildEarth Guardians, Western Watershed Project, the Mountain Lion Foundation, WildWest Institute and the Humane Society of Western Montana.
Groups are working with us because they see the potential of our efforts and they support the end of trapping.
We understand you are being asked to give a lot in this political season, but we must keep moving on these and other important projects, such as our Trap-Release workshops that have become so vital to people across this state who want to learn how to recognize where traps are set, and what to do if their family pet or true companion in life is ever caught in a trap. These workshops help people save the lives of their companion animals from indiscriminate, hidden traps and snares that lace our public lands.
We are asking for your support. To help you get a better understanding, I have interviewed some of you on camera to speak from your heart and share important stories of how trapping has impacted your life and the lives of your friends and companion animals. Please take a few minutes to watch these brief videos over the coming days and weeks. They make it clear how a recreational activity barely visible can cause lifelong trauma to anyone, to many. Just click on the link that will be provided.
For instance, together, we can stop the unlimited trapping of beavers who keep our waters clean and abundant, provide life for all other creatures, and mitigate drought and fire.
We must prepare for another grueling Montana legislative session, where wildlife and public lands are attacked and sold to the highest bidder.
We must be a voice for wildlife, perhaps as never before. In the urgent time of climate change and what is already called the sixth great extinction, we can no longer wait for elected officials to figure this out, we must be the strong voice that makes change.
A shocking recent US Fish and Wildlife Service decision claims that climate change is not impacting wolverines. Footloose Montana is a plaintiff that has been involved in this suit for the past five years. There are at the most 300 wolverines left in the Lower 48, most of them in Montana. The new lawsuit will occur on the new ruling which ignores the real effects of climate change--reduced snow pack essential to the survival of wolverine, continued trapping in wolverine habitat, and the fate of an animal being severely impacted by the fragmentation of our forests.
All our wildlife and our own public safety is compromised by legal trapping. You can save land, but as long as traps are legal, you cannot save our animal friends.
We are asking for your help in these battles!
Many thanks for your heartfelt continued support.
Sincerely,
Stephen Capra, Executive Director
Footloose Montana
Stephen@footloosemontana.org