BANGOR – The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife on Thursday proposed reforms to its controversial coyote snaring program.

With Commissioner Lee Perry’s expected approval, snarers will be required to use a type of spring-loaded snare that is believed to kill more quickly and humanely than other models. There also will be changes in regulations governing where snaring may occur.

“The purpose is to go out and catch these critters and kill them, the sooner the better, and there’s equipment out there to do that,” said Norman “Skip” Trask of the Maine Trappers Association, speaking in favor of the plans.

Early last spring, Maine’s 20-year-old coyote control program came into the spotlight after an internal study leaked to the media indicated many coyotes suffer for hours or even days in snares before dying.

“I will agree, we’re on the defensive,” said George Smith, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, a lobbying group that supports the snaring program. “It’s been all fouled up. The purpose today is to get back to the origins of the program.”

The snaring program was created to destroy coyotes in areas where biologists believe the predators are killing large numbers of deer. Snarers are trained by DIF&W, and may receive compensation. Training standards and geographical ranges have varied and the program has become more controversial in recent years.

Mark Stadler, director of the department’s wildlife division, said the state’s coyote snaring program would be tied directly to the state’s deer management districts for the first time. Snaring will be permitted only in areas where the deer population is below “carrying capacity,” and there is present or historical evidence of coyotes preying on deer.

Only in the case of an extreme winter that causes great hardship for the deer population would coyote snaring be permitted in zones that have healthy deer populations.

A small group of snarers at Thursday’s meeting unanimously supported the new criteria for deciding where snaring may occur.

The new rules will provide a more scientific basis for a program that critics have accused of being arbitrarily administered, but it will not greatly change the areas where snaring occurs. The northern two-thirds of the state, Down East regions and the western Moosehead Lake area all fall within districts where biologists believe the deer population is too low, so snaring will continue there.

Snarers, as well as representatives of SAM and the Maine Trappers Association, also gave their approval to requiring a spring-loaded snare with a particular type of lock and a “breakaway” device that permits large game animals such as moose to escape.

Thursday’s meeting, held at the Bangor Motor Inn, was an annual review of the snaring policy that occurs each fall behind closed doors, and without public notice.

Invitations were sent to specific members of the public – snarers, camp owners and sportsmen’s lobbying groups, as well as to department biologists and administrators. A Bangor Daily News reporter also was permitted to attend, and was told the meeting was public.

However, on Wednesday, after anti-snaring activists learned of the meeting, DIF&W officials declared it private. When several activists and members of the media arrived Thursday afternoon, Stadler allowed everyone to remain, but those who were not invited were not allowed to participate in the debate.

Several members of NoSnare, an advocacy group that supports a ban on snaring, attended. Afterward, they expressed their mistrust of the department.

“When you invite certain members of the public – whether they be the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine or the Maine Trappers Association or whatever – to discuss rules, it’s certainly not democratic to block the rest of the public from it,” said Daryl DeJoy of Penobscot.

“I find it slightly ironic that the people who I accuse of being in bed together [SAM and the department] have clandestinely rented a hotel room in the middle of the day,” DeJoy said.