New API Video Exposes the Cruel Truth Behind Wildlife Trapping

Animal Protection Institute
Tuesday, 25 June 2002

API is excited to announce availability of our new trapping video CULL OF THE WILD: The Truth Behind Trapping. Featuring new and archival footage and exclusive interviews with trappers, wildlife biologists, veterinarians, members of Congress, and wildlife advocates, CULL OF THE WILD: The Truth Behind Trapping exposes the inherent cruelty of trapping and refutes the myths perpetuated by trapping apologists.

Trapping is a relic from a less enlightened time when fur was the height of fashion and the lone trapper was an icon of the American West. However, millions of animals continue to be trapped and killed for their fur each year. Millions more are killed because they accidentally stumbled into traps set for other animals. CULL OF THE WILD: The Truth Behind Trapping makes the case that trapping with body-gripping traps -- whether for profit, recreation, or "wildlife management" -- is unjustified in the 21st century, and leaves the viewer with renewed hope that this barbaric practice can be stopped through grassroots activism, increased public education, and changes in public policy.

Awards:

Selected for screening at the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival

Reviews:

"Provides important thought and heart provoking information to a world that must act now. Animals and the future are relying upon our passion, compassion, and commitment to end this senseless, destructive history." --Julia Butterfly Hill, author of The Legacy of Luna

Excerpts:

Nedim Buyukmichi, DVM, Professor of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis

"As a veterinarian, I look at the trap…as an abominable device that … cannot be allowed to be used … because it is unconscionably cruel."

Frank Camenzind, Ph.D., Wildlife Biologist

"The trapper will come back to the [set] and find that there's a leg there that the animal's chewed it off, broken it off, twisted it off. In some cases the animal's still alive in the trap, or another predator's come along and killed it."

U.S. Senator Bob Smith (R-NH)

"We spend about 10 to 15 million dollars a year in so-called 'predator control.' They kill indiscriminately animals that don't even kill [domestic] sheep. The bottom line is - it would cost less money if we paid each rancher for his lost sheep."

Patrick Redig, DVM, PhD, Director-The Raptor Center, U of MN College of Vet. Medicine

"One of the big problems with traps despite claims to the contrary is that by their very nature they are non-selective in what they catch, evidenced by the fact that we see eagles and owls and hawks of various types that are caught in traps, and we only see those that people bring to us - so we believe that's probably the tip of the iceberg."

Camilla Fox, National Campaign Director, Animal Protection Institute

"We have been trapping, poisoning, and killing coyotes for the last century, and yet the number of coyotes has proliferated during this period, and this is partially in response to our trapping efforts to exterminate their populations."

U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR)

"It's absurd, these traps cannot be made humane, they have no brain, they maim and they kill in very, very vicious ways."

CULL OF THE WILD: The Truth Behind Trapping was produced by 21st Paradigm, a non-profit film corporation that creates progressive media specific to environmental and animal welfare issues. The film has been selected by Bullfrog Films, the country's oldest and largest publisher of environmental videos and films, for distribution to exclusive markets. It is available for activists, individuals, and non-profit organizations, and directly to media outlets from the Animal Protection Institute.

For more information, or to contact Animal Protection Institute, see their website at: www.api4animals.org