Misty Edgecomb’s article (BDN, Nov. 9-10) aimed a long overdue spotlight on the disgraceful rationale behind Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s coyote snaring program. Nosnare Task Force members know that when Maine citizens of conscience learn the facts, they will demand an end to snaring.

Our goal to ban the neck snare in Maine, rather than being about “animal rights,” is a matter of “human rights”: our rights as taxpayers, the owners of Maine’s wildlife, with a legitimate stake in its management, to know that our state government is not licensing and paying trappers to brutalize animals at the behest of extremist special interest groups. Many task force members are scientists: my own graduate degree is in forest sciences, and the task force includes, among others, foresters, ethicists, ecologists, naturalists, and biologists. We have asked to see the scientific support for this program, but the IF&W biologists who have abandoned their scientific education and our wildlife to politics can’t produce it; as Ms. Edgecomb wrote, “no one ever takes full responsibility.”

Members of the Nosnare Task Force will not tolerate animals being tortured for political cronyism and to justify what Henry Hilton blithely calls “seat-of-the-pants wisdom.” So, in the bright light of a brand new day, we challenge IF&W biologists to refuse to implement the 2002-2003 snaring program. Ethical scientific professionalism demands it, and those who stand with us can count on the full backing of the vast majority of Maine citizens.

Susan Cockrell

Holden