pop pop your over your private message limit but here was my last responce.
please oppose scr11, A three Judge panel of the Appellate Division of the Superior Court found in a unanimous decision that the N.J. Fish and Game Council acted within its rights and the intent of the 1984 law that banned the steel jawed leg hold trap when it legalized the dog proof trap for use during the 2015/2016 trapping season. The court also ruled that the dog proof trap was not a steel jawed leg hold trap as defined in the 1984 law. The trap that was in question is “foot enclosing” and does not operate as jaws with only one movable side of the trap.
New Jersey rabid raccoon attacks have been endangering public health for some time. These are just a few of the instances where the public was effected and endangered.
· Boonton Township, Morris County Park, July 27, 2016. A 76-year-old Morris County man was attacked by a raccoon, park closed after attack.
· A rabid raccoon attacks and mauls a six-year-old boy on his way to school in Elmwood Park, N.J. January, 28, 2016.
· Police warning residents of Hasbrouck Heights, N.J. after Raccoon attacks. June 20, 2016.
· A raccoon attacks terrifying neighbors in Denville.
Despite an expanding raccoon population in New Jersey and the high rate of rabies found in that population, the New Jersey Assembly voted to ban the use of the encapsulated Dog Proof trap as a means of controlling raccoons.
Subsequently this new trap was reviewed by the New Jersey Attorney General who found it to be a legal alternative to the steel jawed leg hold trap that was banned by statute in 1985 and the results from the first seasons use of this trap indicates an increase in the raccoon harvest and not a single reported case of a non-targeted species being captured